Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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If you had left New York by car at seven minutes past one this morning, by 2.55 you could have made Philadelphia, 95 miles in an hour and 48 minutes. In that same time this morning, a man went around the world.
25,000 miles, 17,000 miles an hour. Nobody else has ever done anything like it. Nobody else can really know how it feels. His vehicle, a machine that until today was only a term in the vocabulary of fiction. It was a spaceship propelled into orbit by the power of a huge rocket, circling the Earth at altitudes you can't measure by height, only by distance, as much as 180 miles out beyond the surface of the globe.
The spaceship was built in Russia. The takeoff and the landing somewhere in Russia. The name of the man, Yuri Alexievich Gagarin, major in the Soviet Air Force, the first man into space. On April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into outer space.
The 27-year-old Soviet Air Force pilot completed a single orbit around Earth in a spacecraft named Falstok 1 before returning to his home planet, ejecting from the capsule and parachuting safely to the ground. "I can see the clouds," he said. "I can see everything. It's beautiful." Yuri Gagarin's voyage was an incredible achievement for mankind, and it was an incredible triumph for the Russians, who celebrated in the streets.
a validation of communism and its technological supremacy during the peak of its Cold War with the United States. Upon Gagarin's landing, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, issued a challenge to the rest of the world: "And now let the capitalist countries try to catch up with our great nation, which has opened the way to outer space." But the race was not over. Not until a man walked on the moon.
which wouldn't happen for another eight years. So the Soviet missions in space continued throughout the 1960s, each one more ambitious than the last. By 1967, the USSR planned to orbit the Earth again, but this time there would be two spacecrafts involved. Soyuz 1 would be launched into the cosmos, with aerospace engineer test pilot and cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov along for the ride. Soyuz 2 would arrive the following day,
And while in space the two capsules would dock together long enough for Komarov and another cosmonaut to exchange positions in their respective aircrafts and return to Earth in different vehicles, it would be another historic moment for mankind, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the communist revolution. But prior to the launch of Soyuz 1,
Engineers at the Soviet space program discovered a multitude of issues with the aircraft. 203 manufacturing defects, design faults and structural problems that guaranteed a dangerous, near impossible, navigation to the stars. These concerns were reportedly shared with Communist Party leaders. Even Soviet space hero Yuri Gagarin recommended that the flight of Soyuz 1 be postponed. But he, and everyone else, was overruled.
the launch of Soyuz 1 would proceed according to plan. Vladimir Komarov, the prospective pilot of the defected aircraft, was well aware of the issues but chose not to back out of the flight. Yuri Gagarin had been penciled in as the backup pilot. Komarov would not dare risk the life of his friend and national hero. So on April 23, 1967, the day after what would have been Vladimir Lenin's 97th birthday,
Colonel Vladimir Komarov climbed inside of the Soyuz 1 and was launched into the sky. Almost immediately he realized it was doomed. One of the solar panels on the capsule failed to open properly, which meant that the entire ship was underpowered. An antenna was lost so communication with ground control was spotty. The orientation detectors were impaired. Then the automatic stabilization system went dead.
all the while Komarov was circling the planet. Eighteen times around he went, picking up an additional malfunction for every lab completed. He stayed up there for over 27 hours floating in near total darkness, waiting for the arrival of Soyuz 2. But it never came. In fact, Soyuz 2 never even launched. The second mission had been delayed indefinitely, courtesy of a thunderstorm near the Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Vladimir Komarov would have to find his own way back home.
and it was running dangerously low on fuel. Meanwhile, United States listening stations in Istanbul, Turkey had intercepted the Soviet communications and were listening to Komarov's predicament unfold.
That's Colonel Komarov speaking with Yuri Gagarin.
The first man in space asks the stranded cosmonaut how he is feeling, being up there all alone. "I'm feeling great," Komarov answers. "Everything is alright." "Understood," Gagarin replies. "Here, comrades recommend breathing deeper. We look forward to landing." All was calm at the moment. Komarov had successfully maneuvered the capsule back into the Earth's atmosphere. But soon, those quiet moments of intense focus turned into panic, terror, and anger.
The auxiliary parachutes that were meant to slow the descent of Soyuz 1 failed to deploy. Komarov crashed into the ground at full speed. By the time rescue teams reached their fallen comrade, there was nothing left but a piece of his heel bone. Although it has never been proven, those US listening posts claim to have heard Vladimir Komarov screaming and cursing at the people responsible for sending him into space with botched equipment. Heat is rising in the capsule.
were allegedly the last words he ever spoke. People paid homage to cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, relatives, friends, brothers, spacemen, government and party heads, honoring the hero of the Soviet Union, whose tragic death marks another chapter in man's conquest of space. Pioneer spaceman Gagarin paid tribute to his comrade as the urn containing the ashes was carried to its final home.
Vladimir Komarov was honored with a state funeral. He is remembered as the first in-flight fatality in the history of space travel. However, the Soviet Union was notoriously tight-lipped about what was happening behind the Iron Curtain.
Much of the world relied on spies and communications intel to learn the truth, especially when it involved Soviet failure. And many of its space programs failures would be revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. In October 1960, more than 150 people had been incinerated on a launch pad after a missile exploded.
In 1961, a fighter pilot named Valentin Bondarenko was burned alive during cosmonaut training. Czechoslovakia also reported that four other cosmonauts were lost in space in the late 1950s, and they're still out there somewhere, forever trapped in their winged tombs, probably getting pelted by all of the space garbage that humans have dumped there, or maybe bumping into old friends, who also never made it home.
If that was true, that meant that Yuri Gagarin was not the first man in space, nor was Vladimir Komarov the first person to perish in flight. And two brothers in Italy claimed to have even further proof. Achille and Giovanni Giudica Cordiglia had built an experimental listening station in their home so that they could tune in to the communications of the American and Russian space missions.
Just weeks before Yuri Gagarin's first man-in-space achievement, the two men claimed that they had heard a cosmonaut suffocating to death over the radio. They claimed they could hear his heart beating through the speakers. And that's not all. The Judica-Kordiklia brothers also claimed to have intercepted communications from the first woman in space. And it was not Valentina Tereshkova, the woman who usually holds that title. What? I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know what I'm talking about.
That's her. The first woman in space. Nameless, faceless, and burning alive on audio. But probably not really. According to experts in the Russian language, the unknown woman in the recording speaks in broken grammar and gibberish, as if the words were being said by someone that had just begun to learn the language.
which, coincidentally, would describe the Judica Cordiglia as "Kid Sister". Furthermore, engineers have described the communications gear that was used by the brothers as being incapable of capturing those signals from so far away, and some of the Soviet space terminology used in the recordings is apparently inconsistent with normal protocol. The evidence suggested that the Judica Cordiglia recordings were a hoax. The true history of the Soviet space program may never be fully known.
But there's no denying that many brave souls have sacrificed their lives to explore the unknown, Russian and American alike. There is inherent risk in pushing the boundaries of technological capability, risk that each space traveler readily accepts when they put on the helmet donning their country's respective flag.
What is unacceptable is when these brilliant and brave men and women become pawns on the political chessboard, or collateral damage in the name of progress, or casualties of preventable accidents for an opportunity at good publicity, shot to the moon for all the world to see, on equipment built by the lowest bidder. One small step for man, two steps back for humanity.
Public, political, and media pressure leads to the launch of a space shuttle destined for catastrophe on this episode of Swindled.
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The most historic step in the history of the space program in that it gives man for the first time the capability of routinely and at a moment's notice when necessary of getting to and from space with either men or equipment. And this all can be done within the framework of a space program which is useful
in science, applications and exploration and can be fit in to essentially what is today's space budget. There are perhaps four main reasons why the space shuttle is important and is the right step in the manned space flight and the U.S. space program.
First, the shuttle is the only meaningful new space, manned space program which can be accomplished on a modest budget. Second, the space shuttle is needed to make space operations less complex and less costly. Third, the space shuttle is needed to do many useful things. And fourth, the shuttle will encourage greater international cooperation in space flight. The president is particularly anxious
but I stress the international aspects of this. This program will be open to all the nations of the world, and it is his hope someday that foreign visitors from all over the world will be able to participate by moving to and from space in the space shuttle.
In February 1967, President Richard Nixon's Science Advisory Committee recommended that the American space program, NASA, consider a more economical ferrying system for its missions. Budget constraints were on the horizon. Gone were the days of Apollo-level funding. NASA needed to develop something reusable, some kind of vehicle that could ferry people and equipment back and forth to space like a truck or a shuttle bus.
After two years of delays, six test flights of the first space shuttle were conducted in 1977. By 1981, the design was ready for regular missions. The shuttle program became the focus of NASA's short-term future. The shuttle program was also an opportunity to field a more inclusive crew. In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to travel in space. Two months later, Guy Bluford became the first black man to do the same.
One of NASA's goals with the shuttle was to open the doors of space travel to everybody, because one day people from every walk of life will be squeezing into a rocket ship like it's a discount airliner. Interstellar travel will become the norm. And by 1985, after more than 20-something shuttle missions for Americans, space travel had become normalized. After Neil Armstrong walked on the moon to close out the 60s, the public's interest in the United States space program had been waning.
Live broadcasts of the launches were becoming fewer and farther between. So what? If a human being designed and built a mind-blowing piece of reusable technology, they can leave the planet, come back safely, and then leave again. Big deal. Who cares? NASA cared, and they wanted to use future shuttle missions to renew the public's interest, especially amongst kids. One of the ways the space agency planned to accomplish this was by sending Sesame Street's Big Bird into outer space on the shuttle.
Unfortunately, the 8-foot tall yellow bird suit could not fit inside the crew cabin comfortably.
So NASA settled on the next best thing. At NASA we have always believed that we must aim high if we are to reach the stars. We are continuing in that tradition with the Teacher in Space project. With it we hope to communicate to the millions of young people throughout America some of the wonders and mysteries of spaceflight. More than 11,000 teachers from all over the United States submitted applications to become the first civilian to participate in a spaceflight.
Once in orbit, that teacher would conduct a series of classroom lessons from the shuttle that would be telecast live into every American living room. After a rigorous selection process that included medical exams and various physical tests, in July 1985, NASA made their selection. Vice President George H.W. Bush did the honors. Well, we're here today to announce the first private citizen passenger in the history of spaceflight.
The president said last August that this passenger would be one of America's finest, a teacher. Well, since then, as we've heard, NASA, with the help of the heads of our state school systems, has searched the nation for a teacher with the right stuff, the teacher who will be going into space, Krista McAuliffe. Is that you?
Krista Mikulov was a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher and mother of two from Concord, New Hampshire. She was the perfect person for the job. It's not often that a teacher is at a loss for words. I know my students wouldn't think so. I've made nine wonderful friends over the last two weeks. When that shuttle goes, they might be one body, but there's going to be ten souls that I'm taking with me. Thank you. That's great.
Krista McAuliffe was as intelligent and knowledgeable as she was kind and endearing. She had a smile perfect for magazine covers, and a personality that worked well in television interviews, like this one on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, who interrupts Ms. McAuliffe mid-sentence to tell a rather prescient joke. Are you in any way frightened of something like that? I mean, it's a normal question, because just the other day it was kind of the head of frightening, and one of the engines went out. Yes.
I really haven't thought of it in those terms because I see the shuttle program as a very safe program. But I think the disappointment would be very hard. Who was it once said? Deke Slayton, I think. They asked him how he felt. I may be giving credit to the wrong astronaut. He says, how do you feel when you're up there in the capsule? He says, it's a strange feeling when you realize that every part on this capsule was made by the lowest bidder.
Teacher Krista McAuliffe was assigned to mission STS-51L on the shuttle Challenger. It would be NASA's 25th shuttle mission overall and the Challenger's 10th. STS-51L was scheduled to take place about six months later on January 22, 1986. The other six members of the crew were already preparing. The mission commander was former Vietnam fighter pilot Dick Scobie, an incredibly accomplished war hero who was no stranger to dangerous situations.
STS-51L would be his second shuttle mission. The pilot of the Challenger would be Michael J. Smith, another Vietnam veteran from North Carolina who reportedly had enough war medals to cover his chest. Ellison Onizuka from Hawaii was also on the crew.
On a previous mission, the 39-year-old mission specialist had become the first Asian American to reach outer space. There are a lot of outcomes from these projects which will affect both our society and the rest of the world.
At 36 years old, Judith Resnick, another mission specialist, was one of the most experienced members of the crew. She was the second American woman to have traveled into space and the first American Jew. Her job was to operate the robotic arm that would deploy and retrieve the Spartan satellite, one of the primary goals of the mission.
I see it as something that we must do, and I see it as something that's part of man's nature to explore. That's mission specialist Ronald McNair. STS-51L would be his second space mission, and this time he would bring along his saxophone. Ronald, an expert in physics and laser technology, had been rehearsing a saxophone solo that would become the first original piece of music ever recorded in space.
The piece was set to be included on an album produced by French composer Jean-Michel Jarre. The final member of the Challenger crew was Greg Jarvis. Like Krista Mikulov, Greg was not an astronaut. He was a satellite engineer with the Hughes Aircraft Company who planned to perform a series of fluid dynamics experiments to test the effects of weightlessness on liquids carried in tanks. Mr. Jarvis' love of flying came from his time serving as a captain in the Air Force.
Over the next several months, the seven members of the Challenger crew trained together non-stop. It was an opportunity to grow closer together. Even as their launch date kept getting further away, delays in previous shuttle missions had pushed the schedule back. The launch moved from January 22nd to the 23rd, then to the 24th, and it was further delayed due to bad weather and an issue with the exterior hatch door. But finally, the time had come.
Tuesday, January 28th, 1986. But even that day proved to be a close call. It was cold, below freezing, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, of all places. That morning, there were icicles on the launch pad. But after a few hours of delays with the help of rising temperatures, no critical issues were discovered by NASA engineers. The launch could proceed.
"This is a beautiful day to fly," Commander Scobie told NBC News as he approached the entry hatch of the shuttle. It was true. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. As the rest of the crew followed behind in their blue launch suits, a member of the NASA closeout team approached teacher Krista Mikulov and handed her a shiny red apple, an old tradition to take along on her futuristic journey.
The Challenger space shuttle was launched at 11:38 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. T-minus 21 seconds and the solid rocket booster engine gimbal now underway. T-minus 15 seconds.
We have main engine start. 4, 3, 2, 1. And liftoff. Liftoff of the 25th base shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower. Challenger. Good roll program confirmed. Challenger now heading downrange.
Seconds after liftoff, a small puff of grey smoke appeared near the vicinity of the field joint on the right solid rocket booster. It was not noticed at the time by crew or command post, nor were there any other indications of a problem, even as the puffs of smoke grew larger and darker in the first few seconds of the flight.
About a minute after takeoff, the shuttle's engines throttled up to full thrust as planned. Around that same time, a small flame can be seen flickering out of the aft joint of the right SRB. Seconds later, the smoke changes color as the fire begins burning the leaking hydrogen from the external tank. 73 seconds into their journey,
The Challenger disintegrated 48,000 feet in the air. The families and friends of the flight crew watching from the grandstands were ushered away as debris rained down from the sky. A sky that was full of gray smoke and runaway rockets, which a NASA official would eventually trigger to self-destruct. As for the forward fuselage that contained the cabin that housed all seven members of the Challenger crew,
By all accounts, it had been instantaneously incinerated. There was no chance at survival. President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation in mourning later that evening. The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us for the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.
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Within minutes, emergency rescue teams parachuted in, converging on a search area 18 miles east of Cape Canaveral. Debris continue to fall for 50 minutes and more. And obviously you can't send aircraft and ships into an area where debris is falling, where they themselves may be in danger.
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, search and rescue teams from every branch of the United States Armed Forces scoured the area of the Atlantic Ocean that had been littered with fragments of the shuttle. An Air Force vessel had recovered the Challenger's right wing and the left side of the fuselage.
A ship captained by the US Coast Guard collected other debris, including a few of the astronaut's notebooks, a deflated soccer ball that belonged to Ellison Onizuka's daughter that he had brought aboard, and a flight deck tape recorder that contained never-released audio of pilot Mike Smith's last words. A simple, uh-oh.
According to a 1988 article written by Dennis Powell that originally appeared in the Miami Herald's Tropic magazine, that same Coast Guard crew also found an astronaut's helmet in the water that still contained ears and a scalp.
Later that week, a human foot washed up on Cocoa Beach about 20 miles away from the Kennedy Space Center. Some lady had retrieved it and took it home as a souvenir. These searches have not revealed any evidence that the crew of Challenger survived. Details of these more grotesque findings were not released to the media. NASA did not want to intensify the already gigantic public relations nightmare that it had on its hands.
The space agency's official story was that the astronauts died instantly and painlessly as God's shuttle scooped them up in midair and transported them to heaven, where they were surrounded by puppy dogs and flowers and all of their previously past friends and family. Jimi Hendrix was there playing guitar with John Lennon. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
It was the same approach NASA had used in 1967 during Apollo 1, when three astronauts burned to death on the launch pad thanks to a design flaw. NASA's official story at the time was that the men were killed immediately without suffering, but after a widow of one of the astronauts sued the space agency, it was revealed that the three men had actually burned alive in agony for over a minute.
This time around it would be a discovery by one of the Challenger search teams on March 7th, 1986 that would turn NASA's latest official story on its head. During a routine dive, one of hundreds that had taken place in the first six weeks of the rescue effort, two white legs were spotted in the water sticking out from underneath a piece of equipment that had been classified as Target 67.
Imagine the relief when the rescue team realized that those white legs belonged to an empty space suit. Now imagine the horror when they realized that the piece of debris that the suit was trapped beneath turned out to be the shuttle's crew compartment, with the crew still inside. They were almost unrecognizable. Six weeks at the bottom of the ocean is rough on the skin.
so are the shrimp, crabs and other scavengers that feast on the sea's floor. Not to mention the damage suffered from the impact of slamming into the ocean from almost 50,000 feet above while trapped inside of a metal capsule. A complete recovery would not be an easy task. The gelatinous bodies of the Challenger crew were pulled from the wreckage one by one. Judy Resnick was first, then Krista McAuliffe.
The remains were placed inside of black plastic body bags and hidden on deck out of sight from the prying cameras of the media, who waited every day at the docks for the ships to return to see what had been found. By the end of the day, three of the Challenger crew members had been pulled to the surface. The recovery team changed methods when the effort of navigating the twisted and sharp metal proved to be too dangerous. Instead, the entire capsule was lifted out of the water with a crane so the recovery could continue on dry land.
but as soon as the cabin pierced the surface, the body of Greg Jarvis squirmed free. He was spotted bobbing on top of the water before submerging again and drifting away. It took another month before a former astronaut in a rented fishing boat was able to track him down again. Initially, NASA denied that the bodies of the crew had been recovered. It was only after the media had been tipped off by a member of the rescue crew that the findings were announced.
NASA also refused to allow the local medical examiner's office to perform the autopsies, as they were legally required to do. Instead, the remains were stuffed into large plastic garbage cans and surreptitiously transported to an Air Force base on the back of a pickup truck. When the Brevard County medical examiners protested the space agency's secrecy, NASA publicly invited them to be present for the examinations.
That invitation was later withdrawn without reason, and the autopsies were performed by the federal government alone. NASA signed the death certificates themselves. Their official report concluded, "The cause of death of the Challenger astronauts cannot be positively determined, even though the evidence suggested otherwise." At least three of the Challenger astronauts had turned on their emergency air supplies after the explosion.
Switches on the dashboard had also been flipped as the pilots made a futile effort to regain control. Investigators believed that most, if not all seven members of the crew were wide awake as the fuselage plummeted back towards the earth for over two and a half minutes. All seven were almost assuredly killed and dismembered after colliding with the water at over 200 miles per hour. Even if they had survived the impact, there was no way out.
Rescue crews had no way of tracking them down easily since the shuttle did not have an emergency locating transmitter on board. You have to remember, there are severe weight restrictions. NASA Administrator James Beggs later said, "Every piece of equipment you add cuts into the payload." As Dennis Powell points out in his article for Tropic Magazine, an emergency locating transmitter weighs less than 10 pounds.
And while what the NASA administrator said is true, those strict weight restrictions did not prevent the Challenger from hauling 700 embroidered patches, 1600 flags, 47 copies of the United States Constitution, as well as various pins, ornaments, town seals, and other assorted knickknacks that had been gifted to the crew. NASA had been so arrogant about the unlikelihood of a disaster that it did not even bother to include a way to find its astronauts if trouble arose.
That same arrogance, as the President's commission investigating the disaster would soon discover, is why the disaster was allowed to happen in the first place. The accident of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28th evoked a wave of concern over the future of the US space program. President Reagan demanded
President Reagan demanded an investigation and named an independent commission. Led by former Secretary of State William Rogers, the mandate of the commission was to review all the evidence and other aspects of the accident and to develop recommendations for corrective action. Five months later, the panel issued its report documenting its findings.
After months of exhaustive hearings and intensive studies, the Rogers Commission, which was comprised of 14 members including some notable names such as Sally Ride, Neil Armstrong, and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, issued its findings in a 200-plus page report on June 9th, 1986.
The commission found that the Challenger shuttle had exploded because of a leak in its right solid rocket booster. The flames from that leak burned through the shuttle's external tank, rupturing the liquid hydrogen tank in the process, which mixed with the liquid oxygen that had been released when the right booster destroyed the tank that housed it. The two liquid gases mixed together, add to it some aerodynamic forces and the entire shuttle disintegrated. It all happened in a matter of milliseconds.
The commission had also found that the leak in the SRB was the result of a faulty O-ring. Just like the black rubber seals used in your household plumbing, except on a rocket booster size scale, the O-rings in the shuttle were not designed to handle the unusually frigid conditions that were present that launch day. The colder the temperature, the less resilient the O-rings performed.
In other words, after stress, the rings would not return to their original circular shape, which could result in leaks and blow-bys at the field joint, which is exactly what happened in the case of the Challenger. NASA officials discounted this cold weather theory during the hearings. The federal government of the United States would never knowingly send a teacher on a mission that would result in certain death, at least not until the year 2020.
but Commission member Richard Feynman demonstrated the technical failure brilliantly with nothing but a glass of ice water. "I took this stuff that I got out of your seal and I put it in ice water and I discovered that when you put some pressure on it for a while and then undo it, it maintains, it doesn't stretch back, it stays the same dimension. In other words,
Even worse, the commission found that NASA was already well aware of this issue.
In fact, there had been issues with the shuttle's O-rings during at least seven of the past 24 flights, all of which had lower than normal temperatures at launch. Hot gases during those flights were eroding not only the primary seal, but the backup seal as well. An engineer at Morton Thiokol, the company NASA contracted to build the solid rocket boosters, wrote a memo warning about the problem six months before the Challenger launch.
In a July 31st, 1985 memo, Morton Fire Call Engineer Roger Beaujolais urged immediate action. He recently read the memo at a Presidential Commission hearing. It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to dedicate a team to solve the problem, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities.
Roger Boisjelet's memo led to an August meeting at NASA headquarters, where management for the Marshall Space Flight Center, the team responsible for the rockets, insisted that the flights continue. They would fix the issue on the fly, they assured. But they never did.
On the evening before the Challenger launch, when the engineers at Morton-Thiokol realized the temperature at liftoff would be below the recommended minimum of 53 degrees Fahrenheit, a meeting was called and the engineers agreed that they should recommend to NASA that the launch be stopped. At 9:00 p.m. that night, a teleconference was set up between the engineers and management at Thiokol and officials at NASA's Kennedy and Marshall Space Centers.
This is Roger Borgelais at one of the President's Commission meetings recalling that night. So that night we presented the information on the basis of what we knew. And what we knew, and I feel very strong about it, is that we had a problem with temperature. The conclusions were that we should not fly outside of our database, which was 53 degrees.
"I am appalled by your recommendation," responded George Hardy, the deputy director of science and engineering at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "My God," thought I call, said Larry Malloy, Marshall's manager of the Solid Rocket Booster program. "When do you want me to launch?" "Next April." It was clear what NASA wanted to do. It was obvious that they were feeling the pressure.
The recent delays and embarrassing technical snafus had caused the public and the media to lose confidence in the once impressive organization. The previous shuttle flight held the record for the most delayed ever. NASA did not want to repeat that performance. There were also concerns about a satellite, which apparently needed to be launched immediately due to planetary positioning or else they would have to wait another year.
And let's not forget President Ronald Reagan. He was scheduled to give the nationally televised State of the Union address on the evening of the launch. Reagan wanted to make a comment about Krista McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, the first private citizen in space. True American exceptionalism.
Richard Cook, the lead resource analyst at NASA for the Solid Rocket Booster program, one of the first people to warn of catastrophic failure, reportedly spoke with a former Reagan aide years after the disaster and was told that Reagan called the shot. Quote,
The impetus was loud and clear.
During the teleconference with NASA, the engineers and managers at Morton Thiokol asked for time off the line to rediscuss their recommendation not to launch amongst themselves. The engineers held firm with their decision because they believed their data to be accurate, but Thiokol management were not convinced. Jerry Mason, the senior vice president of the company, asked the head of engineering to "take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat."
The engineers were horrified and remained opposed. This is Thiokol engineer Alan McDonald. In fact, I made the direct statement that if anything happened to this launch, I told them I sure wouldn't want to be the person that had to stand in front of a board of inquiry. At 11:30 p.m., the night before launch, Morton Thiokol telefaxed to NASA its final recommendation to proceed.
That night, Thiokol engineer Bob Ebling reportedly went home and told his wife quote, "It's going to blow up." The morning of the launch, Rockwell International, the contractor responsible for building the actual shuttle, contacted NASA to let them know that they could not assure that it was safe to fly. They compared their risk to playing a game of Russian roulette. But since Rockwell stopped short of insisting against the launch, NASA chose to fly.
NASA ignored the warnings of not one but two contractors on its way to disaster.
As the commission reported, "The Space Shuttle's solid rocket booster program began with the faulty design of its joint and increased as both NASA and contractor management first failed to recognize it as a problem, then failed to fix it, and finally accepted it as an acceptable flight risk."
By its own calculations, NASA management had determined that the probability of a shuttle crash was 1 in 100,000, a far cry from the 1 in 100 odds estimated by the actual engineers who built it. As Richard Feynman pondered in Appendix F of the Rogers Commission Report, quote, "...since one part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a shuttle up each day for 300 years, expecting to lose only one."
we could properly ask, what is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery? That fantastic faith, the commission found, was the result of NASA's organizational dynamics. Bearers of bad news were openly punished. Leadership was defensive. There was an air of perfection about its image. Legitimate concerns were dismissed or criticized. NASA's espoused value of safety first gradually eroded, just like the faulty O-ring at Greenlit.
The organization became more concerned with adhering to its overly ambitious launch schedule and securing funding and looking good on TV. Everyone kept their heads down and mouths shut, even though they knew what was happening was wrong. Just like the Nazi accountant who paid the invoice for the poisonous gas that was used to murder millions of people. Slowly, America's space program lapsed into administrative evil. Speaking of Nazis, NASA probably never would have landed on the moon without them.
During Operation Paperclip in 1945, the United States government actually adopted over 119 German engineers and scientists to bolster its technological and military superiority. They were given US citizenship and shielded from being tried for war crimes.
75% of those German scientists and engineers had been card-carrying members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, including Wernher von Braun, an aerospace engineer and pioneer whose team designed and built the Saturn vehicles that launched the Apollo spacecrafts into orbit.
One of the reasons Werner Von Braun's team was so successful was because of his dirty hands approach to management. While he was the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, Von Braun insisted on every aspect of a launch being designed, developed, fabricated, and tested under one roof.
During the Challenger days of the 80s, NASA had adopted a more decentralized project management style approach. Cost and scheduling considerations carried more weight in decision making. Problems and concerns were overlooked. Internal competition among NASA's three space centers was exacerbated. Dysfunction and destruction arose.
In the wake of the Challenger disaster and subsequent Rogers Commission findings, there was a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program as the rocket boosters and reporting structure underwent a full redesign. Nobody was charged with the crime, but the families of the seven deceased astronauts were eventually awarded about a million dollars each in settlements with NASA and Morton Thiokol. In the 15 years to follow, NASA's shuttle program completed a slew of successful launches.
And 22 years after the Challenger disaster, Krista Mikulov's backup teacher in space Barbara Morgan joined the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour for a successful mission in 2007. A brave act made even braver after the same institutional problems that led to the Challenger disaster in '86 had resurfaced in 2003.
Almost instantaneously, the camera crews in Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, in the Palestine area, in Waco, Texas, started to record the video that you're seeing here, the debris of the space shuttle Columbia hurtling to Earth. It had been traveling at 12,500 miles an hour at roughly 39 miles up in the sky. So a wide, wide debris field, very dangerous for anyone in that vicinity of Texas or Louisiana.
Rogers Commission member Robert Hotz had predicted such a recurrence when the commission closed. "We knew damn well the minute the commission went out of business, NASA would go back to business as usual. We have the feeling that nothing much has changed. The problem is not that they'll get one off. They'll get one off, and maybe two or three, but they're heading for trouble down the road." The images and news of the 2003 Columbia disaster was deja vu for the engineers who had worked on the Challenger.
Not that it was something they were ever able to forget in the first place. In 1986, Morton Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjele talked to NPR about the effects the Challenger disaster was having on his health. I had a hard time sleeping at night. I was having nightmares and I was carrying my emotions on my sleeve at that time. I started to come down with real severe physical problems in the beginning of April. It culminated in a
and a couple of real severe cases of double vision. And I had a terrible band of headache in my forehead and that band kept getting more difficult and more severe and more difficult to handle. Roger Bourgele died on January 6, 2012 at 73 years old. Another Thiokol engineer, Bob Ebelink, also struggled for years with not doing enough to stop the Challenger launch.
On the 30th anniversary of the disaster, Ebling expressed guilt to NPR. And I think that was one of the mistakes that God made. He shouldn't have picked me for that job. I don't know. But next time I talk to him, I'm going to ask him, why me? You picked a loser.
After the interview, Ebling reportedly received thousands of messages of support from the public and former co-workers, assuring the engineer that what happened wasn't his fault. And according to Bob's daughter, thankfully, before his death in March 2016 at 89 years old, Mr. Ebling had finally let that part of his life go. There is still relief to be found on Earth. Let us make recommendations to ensure that officials deal in a world of reality.
They must live in reality in comparing the cost and utility of the shuttle to other methods of entering space. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, aka Deformer, aka The Lowest Bidder.
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