1986 Challenger Shuttle Essay

Why was the 1986 Challenger Shuttle launch such a “high profile” launch?
 The crew involved- This was the first time a civilian astronaut was going to space (the teacher). NASA had a lot to gain from this mission. Since the press was interested as well as government officials (president) NASA knew a mission like this could really boost their budget.

 Sear complexity- This was the most complicated launch in history, more so than the Apollo moon landing. This shuttle was reused 9 times prior to this launch. It also had a wide variety of goals and capabilities whereas Apollo had just one, to the moon and back.

 Reusability- This was the first attempt to produce a reusable spacecraft.

 Pressure to fly- Since NASA was losing public interest

The decision to launch didn’t fall into one person’s hands but was rather a collective agreement. Though communication was lacking the Challenger was often delayed. The Challenger was originally scheduled for launch in 1985, but had been postponed to accommodate changes in payloads. However “late Monday night the decision to push onward with the launch was made. Despite the very real concerns of some of the engineers familiar with the actual vehicle subsystems, the launch was approved. No one at NASA wanted to be responsible for further delaying an already delayed launch. “ Bob Ebeling and Mark Boisjoly were both engineers and are best known as the main people who tried to cancel the launch. The O-ring problem at lower temperatures wasn’t something we later learned. Ebeling knew that given low enough temperatures it would fail and cause the main tank to explode. However, “Problem reporting requirements are not concise and fail to get critical information to the proper levels of management. Little or no trend analysis was performed on O-ring erosion and blow-by problems.”

http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/general/ethics/shuttle.html
What were the concerns regarding the