Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

“[F]or the young engineers at NASA, the idea of the program as a stirring adventure, and the early exhilaration of constantly improvising solutions to previously unimagined technical challenges, was gone. The theoretical recognition that things could possibly go wrong was supplanted by the cold realization that they would.”

The disaster that befell the Apollo mission cemented the reality of the danger of space exploration for the NASA engineers, introducing The Risks and Rewards of Ambition. Importantly, the program—still in its infancy—began to understand the full extent of the risk being taken. Not every element was within the control of humans, and thus each space had to operate with the range of “acceptable risk” (See: Index of Terms).

“But there were others who had trained for the moon program and seen their dream snuffed out with the cancellation of the final Apollo missions. Many of the old guard could be forgiven for regarding the new intake of astronauts, and the competition they would soon represent, with suspicion and resentment.”

As NASA sought to revitalize the space program with the inception of the shuttle program, they opened up their recruitment policies. However, as this quote indicates, the change was not welcomed by all. Many astronauts were unwilling to extend the opportunities that they themselves were still waiting to experience to a younger, and more diverse, set of colleagues. This is a reminder that, though space exploration is a matter of scientific advancement, it involves human emotions and flaws.

“While the newly arrived astronaut candidates were still—briefly—naïve enough to believe the agency’s most optimistic forecasts, the veterans in the office had long ago learned that NASA often told the public and Congress one thing, while it quietly made plans to do another. One old hand liked to joke that the letters of the agency’s acronym stood for Never A Straight Answer.”

The duplicity of NASA is illustrated here, underscoring The Political and Economic Pressures of Exploration. The practice of providing conflicting information to involved parties foreshadows the way that NASA’s handling of difficult situations would prove especially damaging with the failure of the Challenger launch.