Nasa's Challenger Tragedy Research Paper
NASA’s Challenger Tragedy
January 28, 1986 was marked as one of the darkest day of NASA’s history when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff killing all seven crew members. It was NASA’s 25th, mission but unfortunately not a successful one. Challenger’s disaster appeared in a period of small budgets, workforce and a need for the space agency to confirm its successfully shuttle program. Pressures settled because of the need to meet client obligations, which transformed into a requirement to launch a certain number of flights per year at the scheduled time.
NASA was a government agency formed in 1958, a year after the launch of Soviet Union’s Sputnik. At the beginning NASA was created as a civilian space exploration …show more content…
The discussion begun with the O-rings issue that could not resist at low temperatures so that the primary and secondary seals would not function properly. Their advice was not to launch if the temperature was below 53°F, the lowest temperature tested by the O-rings on a previous mission. Morton-Thiokol engineers argued for an hour during the presentation about the cold weather and the effect that it could create problems of joint rotation and delayed O-ring seating. After the technical presentation, engineer Bob Lund presented his recommendations, focusing on the low temperature data that Morton-Thiokol had regarding the effects of cold on the operative boosters, stating that, he boosters had experienced O-ring erosion at this temperature. The engineers had no low temperature data below 53°F to present, except Boisjoly’s personal observation and they failed to demonstrate with data that it was unsafe to launch at lower than 53 degrees. He read his recommendations and commented that the predicted temperatures for the morning’s launch was outside the data base and NASA should avoid starting the maneuver and so temperature could increase and the O-ring temperature to at least
January 28, 1986 was marked as one of the darkest day of NASA’s history when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff killing all seven crew members. It was NASA’s 25th, mission but unfortunately not a successful one. Challenger’s disaster appeared in a period of small budgets, workforce and a need for the space agency to confirm its successfully shuttle program. Pressures settled because of the need to meet client obligations, which transformed into a requirement to launch a certain number of flights per year at the scheduled time.
NASA was a government agency formed in 1958, a year after the launch of Soviet Union’s Sputnik. At the beginning NASA was created as a civilian space exploration …show more content…
The discussion begun with the O-rings issue that could not resist at low temperatures so that the primary and secondary seals would not function properly. Their advice was not to launch if the temperature was below 53°F, the lowest temperature tested by the O-rings on a previous mission. Morton-Thiokol engineers argued for an hour during the presentation about the cold weather and the effect that it could create problems of joint rotation and delayed O-ring seating. After the technical presentation, engineer Bob Lund presented his recommendations, focusing on the low temperature data that Morton-Thiokol had regarding the effects of cold on the operative boosters, stating that, he boosters had experienced O-ring erosion at this temperature. The engineers had no low temperature data below 53°F to present, except Boisjoly’s personal observation and they failed to demonstrate with data that it was unsafe to launch at lower than 53 degrees. He read his recommendations and commented that the predicted temperatures for the morning’s launch was outside the data base and NASA should avoid starting the maneuver and so temperature could increase and the O-ring temperature to at least