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Message
re: The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded after liftoff 40 years ago today...
Posted on 1/28/26 at 10:44 am to crash1211
Posted on 1/28/26 at 10:44 am to crash1211
quote:
I remember physicist Richard Feynman showing how the O-ring seals lost resilience in cold temperatures.during a hearing on TV.
And the only reason that tidbit got even to the Rogers Commission was because Sally Ride did an end-run around her management at NASA (which didn't want it exposed and would've fired her and other leakers):
quote:
But it wasn’t Feynman’s discovery. It was Sally Ride’s.
Ride, a physicist and astronaut, was on that investigative commission too, and it was she who uncovered the suppressed data about the O-rings. As her fellow commission member, General Donald Kutyna, revealed to Popular Mechanics:
One day Sally Ride and I were walking together. She was on my right side and was looking straight ahead. She opened up her notebook and with her left hand, still looking straight ahead, gave me a piece of paper. Didn’t say a single word. I look at the piece of paper. It’s a NASA document. It’s got two columns on it. The first column is temperature, the second column is resiliency of O-rings as a function of temperature. It shows that they get stiff when it gets cold. Sally and I were really good buddies. She figured she could trust me to give me that piece of paper and not implicate her or the people at NASA who gave it to her, because they could all get fired.
Kutyna passed on the tip to Feynman, and Feynman’s showy demonstration broke open the investigation and made the nightly news.
Kutyna kept Ride’s secret until after she died in 2012. All the while, Richard Feynman has been glorified as the hero of the story—that’s how he seemed to me when I was a teenager, and it elevated by another mile the pedestal on which I placed him. Even now that I know the truth, I still think of the episode as a story about Feynman, and I unthinkingly illustrated my article with a photo of him doing his magic trick with the ice water.
LINK
1
Posted on 1/28/26 at 10:45 am to Wally Sparks
quote:
People at NASA and Morton Thiokol should've been jailed over this.
meh, odds of a catastrophic accident on a space shuttle mission was anywhere between 1/9 to 1/100, final tally was 1/67, iirc, I'm not for cover ups or pushing through prematurely strictly for profit, but we needed the technology gained from that program and higher risk levels had to be accepted, mistake was putting a civilian on board without any mission specific need to be there
Posted on 1/28/26 at 10:48 am to 777Tiger
quote:
meh, odds of a catastrophic accident on a space shuttle mission was anywhere between 1/9 to 1/100, final tally was 1/67, iirc, I'm not for cover ups or pushing through prematurely strictly for profit, but we needed the technology gained from that program and higher risk levels had to be accepted, mistake was putting a civilian on board without any mission specific need to be there
The problem was they knowingly flew a flawed design and it finally bit them in the arse with seven dead crew members.
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:03 am to Wally Sparks
I found it clever how he gave Feynman the direction to search for answers
"One day [early in the investigation] Sally Ride and I were walking together. She was on my right side and was looking straight ahead. She opened up her notebook and with her left hand, still looking straight ahead, gave me a piece of paper. Didn't say a single word. I look at the piece of paper. It's a NASA document. It's got two columns on it. The first column is temperature, the second column is resiliency of O-rings as a function of temperature. It shows that they get stiff when it gets cold. Sally and I were really good buddies. She figured she could trust me to give me that piece of paper and not implicate her or the people at NASA who gave it to her, because they could all get fired. I wondered how I could introduce this information Sally had given me. So I had Feynman at my house for dinner. I have a 1973 Opel GT, a really cute car. We went out to the garage, and I'm bragging about the car, but he could care less about cars. I had taken the carburetor out. And Feynman said, "What's this?" And I said, "Oh, just a carburetor. I'm cleaning it." Then I said, "Professor, these carburetors have O-rings in them. And when it gets cold, they leak. Do you suppose that has anything to do with our situation?" He did not say a word. We finished the night, and the next Tuesday, at the first public meeting, is when he did his O-ring demonstration ... I never talked with Sally about it later ... I kept it a secret that she had given me that piece of paper until she died [in 2012].[3]
"One day [early in the investigation] Sally Ride and I were walking together. She was on my right side and was looking straight ahead. She opened up her notebook and with her left hand, still looking straight ahead, gave me a piece of paper. Didn't say a single word. I look at the piece of paper. It's a NASA document. It's got two columns on it. The first column is temperature, the second column is resiliency of O-rings as a function of temperature. It shows that they get stiff when it gets cold. Sally and I were really good buddies. She figured she could trust me to give me that piece of paper and not implicate her or the people at NASA who gave it to her, because they could all get fired. I wondered how I could introduce this information Sally had given me. So I had Feynman at my house for dinner. I have a 1973 Opel GT, a really cute car. We went out to the garage, and I'm bragging about the car, but he could care less about cars. I had taken the carburetor out. And Feynman said, "What's this?" And I said, "Oh, just a carburetor. I'm cleaning it." Then I said, "Professor, these carburetors have O-rings in them. And when it gets cold, they leak. Do you suppose that has anything to do with our situation?" He did not say a word. We finished the night, and the next Tuesday, at the first public meeting, is when he did his O-ring demonstration ... I never talked with Sally about it later ... I kept it a secret that she had given me that piece of paper until she died [in 2012].[3]
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:08 am to 777Tiger
delete
This post was edited on 1/28/26 at 11:10 am
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:09 am to RollTide1987
I heard a news bulletin on the radio.
I always held my breath after that when they told a shuttle to go with throttle up.
I always held my breath after that when they told a shuttle to go with throttle up.
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:09 am to Canon951
I was in 5th grade Science class. We were supposed to watch it live but some other teacher was able to get to the limited TV sets. After it blew up, they rolled a TV into our class so we could watch the coverage after the disaster.
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:10 am to 777Tiger
The NASA management was boasting way crazier numbers. Something like 1 in 100,000. This is one reason Feynman wanted it grounded until measures could be put in place.
Rogers Commision Report
Rogers Commision Report
This post was edited on 1/28/26 at 11:11 am
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:12 am to crash1211
quote:
The NASA management was boasting way crazier numbers. Something like 1 in 100,00.
I believe you can manipulate stats to build an argument for either side, so I don't know for sure, when the last one went down the numbers they were throwing around were 1/300
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:32 am to 777Tiger
Was in 8th grade and home sick. Woke up and it was everywhere.
I have met so many people that were also home sick that day.
There must have been some kind of pandemic in 1986 and no one realized it.
I have met so many people that were also home sick that day.
There must have been some kind of pandemic in 1986 and no one realized it.
This post was edited on 1/28/26 at 11:33 am
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:33 am to wareaglepete
quote:
Was in 8th grade and home sick.
at first read I thought "where was he? why was he homesick?"
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:34 am to RetiredSaintsLsuFan
You had a cell phone on a construction site on 86?
Posted on 1/28/26 at 11:53 am to RollTide1987
7th grade science class.
Was happy to see them roll the cart with the TV into class. Wasn't happy for long.
RIP Astronauts
Was happy to see them roll the cart with the TV into class. Wasn't happy for long.
RIP Astronauts
Posted on 1/28/26 at 12:16 pm to Ace Midnight
Man I was blissfully thinking those guy were either deceased or instantly knocked out from the explosion... I always buried the idea that they rode that thing down to the ocean fighting for their lives.
Another piece of innocence lost. :(
Another piece of innocence lost. :(
Posted on 1/28/26 at 12:32 pm to xBirdx
quote:
You had a cell phone on a construction site on 86?
Construction trailer with a landline phone in it?
Common af in 1986.
Posted on 1/28/26 at 12:32 pm to RollTide1987
I was a student at LSU just parked heading to class and heard it on the radio. By the time I got to class it was all anyone was talking about.
This post was edited on 1/29/26 at 4:38 am
Posted on 1/28/26 at 12:33 pm to Meauxjeaux
quote:
Construction trailer with a landline phone in it?
yep, we had those all over town
Posted on 1/28/26 at 12:42 pm to RollTide1987
In kindergarten, they walked our freezing florida asses outside to watch it. Definitely the oddest recess in my personal history. The teachers were definitely more thrown off by the event than us kids.
Posted on 1/28/26 at 12:42 pm to Wally Sparks
quote:As other poster noted: Not so clear cut. There was a lot of internal debate as to whether it was flawed or not to operate at that low ambient temperature. Some felt strongly about it, while others caved to peer pressure. Hindsight is always 20/20.
People at NASA and Morton Thiokol should've been jailed over this.
Posted on 1/28/26 at 12:43 pm to Meauxjeaux
quote:
Man I was blissfully thinking those guy were either deceased or instantly knocked out from the explosion... I always buried the idea that they rode that thing down to the ocean fighting for their lives.
Another piece of innocence lost. :(
Makes them even more badass to me. NASA was trying to normalize space travel, making it seen like they were getting on the bus to go downtown to the office. There's nothing normal about space travel, not then, not now.
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