Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

509 Words3 Pages
CASE STUDY – SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER DISASTER On January 28th 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger had launched but then broke apart just 73 seconds into its flight, resulting in the death of all seven of its crew members – one of these being Christa McAuliffe -the first ever member of the Teacher in Space Project. This report deals with why the launch should never have happened. The launch was originally planned to take place on the January 22nd, but delays and bad weather pushed the launch date back to January 28th. On that day, the weather was forecasted to be extremely low, almost at the minimal temperature for launch. This prompted the managers and engineers of Morton Thiokol to have a teleconference with NASA engineers on the 27th January to discuss whether or not the launch should be suspended. At the meeting with the NASA engineers, we vociferously tried to convince NASA that the launch should be abandoned, but they felt that our arguments were contradictory to what was said prior to the meeting. It was stated that the low temperatures would negatively affect the rubber O-rings, preventing them from sealing properly on the joints of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB’s). The NASA managers though, felt that these concerns were unnecessary as there were two O-rings - a primary and secondary – and if the primary failed, the secondary would seal. Personally, I agreed with the engineers as NASA’s argument was not proven and also, the secondary O-ring was never intended to be a replacement, but instead, was a failsafe. Our engineers knew that if the launch had gone ahead as planned, it would almost certainly end in catastrophe. The NASA managers wanted more conclusive evidence of why the launch should be scrapped, though. At this point, our (Morton Thiokol’s) managers came to the conclusion that the launch should go ahead as planned so as not to disappoint their
Open Document