The guy who designed the o-rings was yelling his ass off actually. He KNEW they were brittle at low temperatures and he told everyone who would listen that there was a problem. The issue was that he was ignored by NASA.
Roger Boisjoly doesnt deserve this slander.
Badger_8th on
Having watched a number of documentaries on what happened, it’s so easy with hindsight to look back and say yep they blew the call….I’m sure the engineers from multiple contractors are constantly saying this is out of spec, this is a concern, etc, and how you ultimately decide what’s a true threat and what’s just people covering their own asses is so, so hard. You’re never going to be able to say yep this launch is 100% safe, we covered all our bases. There’s always going to be something. And everyone on the Internet is confident that they would have never made the same mistake.
_TheBigF_ on
As silly it sounds, [this is one of the best explanations I’ve heard](https://youtu.be/vF-vrL0htbE?si=osZXZaGblJf9IF8X) of why NASA higher ups pushed to launch on that day. I all came down to the Teacher in Space Program and how she was supposed to leach a lesson from space.
Fr05t_B1t on
Fun fact: big bird was almost big fried bird
HeaveninHeaven on
he’s trying to flea the scene
USSMarauder on
>On this day 40 years ago, a generation of American school kids were traumatized in real time.
So much so that Challenger going boom is sometimes used as the dividing line between Gen X and Millennials
ojqANDodbZ1Or1CEX5sf on
The story of how all this information became public knowledge is a *wild* one. You may have heard (or seen, even) something about Feynman doing a cool science demonstration on a televised hearing. And that’s cool and he *did* figure it out largely on his own – but he was fed information by a whole chain of people that lead him to that conclusion.Â
[Sally Ride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride) was serving on the presidential commission and she was an astronaut at NASA. While at NASA she was slipped a test sheet that showed the O-rings could fail at low launch temperatures. This person wanted to remain anonymous – and still is – presumably to keep their job and avoid the fate of most whistleblowers.Â
Ride was also working for NASA, so to protect herself – and the person who informed her – she passed this sheet on to [Donald Kutyna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Kutyna) (who was also serving on the Rogers commission) without saying a word. He, in turn, had Feynman over for dinner. After the dinner, he showed Feynman an old car he was working on – but couldn’t get to run properly, because some O-ring was failing due to the cold. (And, [according to himself in this interview](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a18616/an-oral-history-of-the-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster/), made sure Feynman did his piece of live-TV science at the right moment.)
Sally Ride is also a notable figure for other reasons: first American woman in space as well as the youngest at that point as well as the first LGBTQ astronaut (that we know of). That last piece only became public with her death, and the story of her role in the O-ring story even later
8 Comments
Tragic
The guy who designed the o-rings was yelling his ass off actually. He KNEW they were brittle at low temperatures and he told everyone who would listen that there was a problem. The issue was that he was ignored by NASA.
Roger Boisjoly doesnt deserve this slander.
Having watched a number of documentaries on what happened, it’s so easy with hindsight to look back and say yep they blew the call….I’m sure the engineers from multiple contractors are constantly saying this is out of spec, this is a concern, etc, and how you ultimately decide what’s a true threat and what’s just people covering their own asses is so, so hard. You’re never going to be able to say yep this launch is 100% safe, we covered all our bases. There’s always going to be something. And everyone on the Internet is confident that they would have never made the same mistake.
As silly it sounds, [this is one of the best explanations I’ve heard](https://youtu.be/vF-vrL0htbE?si=osZXZaGblJf9IF8X) of why NASA higher ups pushed to launch on that day. I all came down to the Teacher in Space Program and how she was supposed to leach a lesson from space.
Fun fact: big bird was almost big fried bird
he’s trying to flea the scene
>On this day 40 years ago, a generation of American school kids were traumatized in real time.
So much so that Challenger going boom is sometimes used as the dividing line between Gen X and Millennials
The story of how all this information became public knowledge is a *wild* one. You may have heard (or seen, even) something about Feynman doing a cool science demonstration on a televised hearing. And that’s cool and he *did* figure it out largely on his own – but he was fed information by a whole chain of people that lead him to that conclusion.Â
[Sally Ride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride) was serving on the presidential commission and she was an astronaut at NASA. While at NASA she was slipped a test sheet that showed the O-rings could fail at low launch temperatures. This person wanted to remain anonymous – and still is – presumably to keep their job and avoid the fate of most whistleblowers.Â
Ride was also working for NASA, so to protect herself – and the person who informed her – she passed this sheet on to [Donald Kutyna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Kutyna) (who was also serving on the Rogers commission) without saying a word. He, in turn, had Feynman over for dinner. After the dinner, he showed Feynman an old car he was working on – but couldn’t get to run properly, because some O-ring was failing due to the cold. (And, [according to himself in this interview](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a18616/an-oral-history-of-the-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster/), made sure Feynman did his piece of live-TV science at the right moment.)
Sally Ride is also a notable figure for other reasons: first American woman in space as well as the youngest at that point as well as the first LGBTQ astronaut (that we know of). That last piece only became public with her death, and the story of her role in the O-ring story even later