Challenger

The Challenger

Jamie Knowles

Psychology of Disaster

Instructor: Gary Springer

December 13, 2015

January 28, 1986 our nation watched the televised launch of the Challenger. A site many of us will not forget. This space launch was being broadcasted across the United States live from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This launch was one of the most publicized launches due to these seven individuals were the first civilians going into space Seventy-three seconds after liftoff the challenger appeared to disintegrate into a ball of fire. Television cameras turned away quickly as the seven astronauts plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean. This was the tenth and final mission of the shuttle.

The crew members of the highly anticipated launch included, Mission Commander

Francis R. Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialist one Judith A. Resnik, Mission Specialist two Ellison S. Onizuka, Mission Specialist three Ronald E. McNair, Payload Specialist one Gregory B. Jarvis, and Payload Specialist two Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe was a thirty-seven-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire. She was the initial passenger for the Teacher in Space Program (Dunbar).

The crew’s mission was to set up two satellites. The first was the Tracking Data Relay Satellite-2. This was to support communications with the space shuttle and twenty-three other spacecraft’s. The second was the Spartan Satellite. This was for the observation of Halley’s

Comet, which they were to later retrieve. Gregory Jarvis was to conduct fluid dynamic tests.

Christa McAuliffe was to conduct live telecasts. This was all to take place in a six-day flight

("1983-1986: The Missions and History of Space Shuttle Challenger.").

The shuttle was originally scheduled to launch in July of 1985. Then was rescheduled for

November. Both times there were payload changes and it was again rescheduled for January 22,

1986. Mission delays began and it was held up on the twenty third, and the twenty fourth. By January twenty fifth they could not meet the morning lift off time. There was no way to launch at a later time because of the reentry window and again rescheduled for the morning of the twenty sixth. On January twenty sixth there was bad weather. The next day there was mechanical problems. The ground servicing equipment hatch closing fixture could not be removed from the orbiter hatch. Meaning they could not secure the crew in the cabin. Finally, the launch was scheduled for the morning of January twenty eighth when a hardware interface module in the launch processing system failed. This monitored the fire detection system and the flight was delayed for two hours (Murray, Altabbakh, Grantham, and Damle pg 13-14).

January 28, 1986 at 11:38am the launch took place. At one minute and thirteen seconds the transmission with the crew was lost ("Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster."). The last words transmitted were “uh oh” from the pilot (Spector). The Challenger did not explode as people believed, but there was combustion that was visible. Structural failures from the heat caused it to break apart. The crew cabin tore loose from the rest of the shuttle and took two minutes and forty-five seconds to smash into the Atlantic Ocean. The crew may have been briefly being aware something was wrong, because a few emergency air bottles had been activated. They most likely lost consciousness from the air pressure before hitting the water at over two hundred miles per hour. The force of the hit is what destroyed the cabin and ended their lives (Dunbar). Pieces from the shuttle that have been retrieved are located in a missile silo at Cape Canaveral ("7 myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster - Technology & science - Space | NBC News.").

President Ronald Reagan created a special commission to investigate the accident. The team of thirteen engineers, test pilots, and scientists concluded that the cause of the accident was a pressure seal O-ring in the aft joint. The O-ring was not able to hold up in cold weather and had design flaws ("Presidential Commission Report on Space Shuttle Challenger Accident." Ch IV). It had been tested in temperatures down to fifty-three degrees but never at the temperature of the launch that day, twenty-six degrees. They also concluded there were serious problems in the decision making process of the management. Thiokol (a subcontractor responsible for the solid rocket boosters) was having communication issues with NASA, because they were not on site together. Despite engineer’s warnings about the O-rings, management forced them to let go of technical issues. It was more important to meet the flight schedule because of global competition. The European Space Agency was gunning for the commercial satellite business and Russia was launching a probe for Halley’s Comet (Murray, Altabbakh, Grantham, and Damle pg 13-14).