Space shuttle

Review: Challenger

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
Cover image of "Challenger" by Adam Higginbotham

Challenger, Adam Higginbotham. Avid Reader Press (ISBN: 9781982176617) 2024.

Summary: The heroism of the seven Challenger crew members and why a critical design flaw was ignored, resulting in their deaths.

I wanted to engage in some “magical thinking” in reading this book. The images of the Challenger explosion played over and over on our TV screens on January 28, 1986. We realized we were watching seven human beings come to a sudden end to their high aspirations. Or as it turned out, tumbling in an intact cockpit to an ocean impact and watery grave.

Adam Higginbotham didn’t allow me to engage that magical thinking. In the Prologue, through the eyes and words of public affairs announcer Steve Nesbitt, the disaster replays, underscored by his understatement, “Obviously a major malfunction.” Still, I wanted it to be different.

First, Higginbotham takes us back to the Apollo program, begun disastrously in the capsule fire that killed three astronauts. He traces the response and the subsequent successes of the program. And then the questioning of what NASA should do next. It was a time when government wanted to scale back the massive spending of the Apollo program rather than embark on further grandiose adventures.

And so the idea of a reusable space plane won approval, sold as a way to make space flight routine. But budget constraints resulted in the design decision to deploy reusable Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) to launch the shuttle into orbit. No manned space flight had used solid boosters. But the Titan missiles used them successfully, manufactured by Morton Thiokol, who won the contract for the shuttle boosters. However, these were much larger, and needed to be assembled in sections with the joints sealed by an asbestos putty and two concentric O-rings.

In testing, engineers found that on ignition, the joints flexed in a way where a gap in the seal occurred momentarily, allowing hot gasses to escape, to burn through. These charred some of the inner O-rings but did not get past the outer O-ring, and the joint sealed. There were other problems. Valves and turbine blades in the liquid fuel main booster. And hear resistant tiles that would fall off, exposing shuttle surfaces to potential “burn through” on re-entry. Engineers found fixes, including storage and assembly procedures for the SRBs. And the shuttles were approved for flight.

Higginbotham profiles each of the people who made up the crew of Challenger. Along the way, we learn the name of George Abbey, the NASA administrator who made the final call in astronaut selection and personally contacted each person. He introduces each individual: Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judy Resnik, Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe, the school teacher who had prepared to teach lessons from space. He traces the career trajectory that led to each being assigned to the Challenger launch.

As the astronauts are training, Higginbotham takes us behind the scenes as concerns mount about the SRB joints. The engineering team at Morton Thiokol, working under Allan McDonald, Director of the program, and Roger Boisjoly, the senior scientist on the project, find more evidence of failures of the joints to fully seal. After a cold weather launch of Discovery in 1985, a significant breach of the inner ring and major charring of the outer ring were found. The joint had held, but barely. Management delayed a redesign of the joint. Boisjoly started studying the cold weather properties of the O-rings, finding they ceased to work at cold temperatures.

In some ways, the tragic climax of the book is the night before what would be a launch in record cold temperatures. The Morton Thiokol engineers unanimously recommended “do not launch.” I kept hoping they would listen and postpone the launch. But senior executives at Morton Thiokol, under pressure by administrators at NASA overrode that recommendation. The saddest moment for me was when Boisjoly, persuaded by colleagues to watch, saw the explosion. He was never the same, despite courageous testimony before the Rogers Commission.

Finally, Higginbotham takes us through the aftermath. This includes the Rogers Commission and the effort to cover up the engineers “do not launch” recommendation. But thanks to the courage of McDonald and Boisjoly, the truth came out. Also, Higginbotham documents the recovery efforts, including the recovery of the burnt through joint of the right booster. And the recovery of the cabin, flight recorder, and remains, confirming that the cabin was intact until it hit the ocean. And at least Mike Smith was conscious to the end.

What Higginbotham traces through his book is what can happen when a corporate culture turns toxic and dysfunctional. Specifically, we see what happens when the best interests of astronauts are over-ridden by political and profit pressures. But we also see the courage coupled with hard work of the seven who flew that fatal mission. We only wish the administrators had matched their courage and integrity.. Because ultimately, it wasn’t merely a powerful rocket that failed, but rather a group of powerful people.

Review: The Six

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts, Loren Grush. New York: Scribner, 2023.

Summary: Traces the story of the first six American women astronauts from their selection, through their training and missions, along with the special media attention they received.

I grew up with the early space program. I followed the Mercury Seven. I made models of the rockets they flew. I didn’t dream of being an astronaut–maybe an engineer in the space program. I did not think at the time that there were women who thought about going into space–as an early chapter of this book states: “But Only Men Can Be Astronauts.” I didn’t know about the Mercury Thirteen–women who passed the same physical screening as the men–but were excluded from consideration. And so it would go through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. But women continued to dream of going into space. When the new space shuttle program was announced, the electrifying announcement came that applications would be open to women.

Loren Grush, a space reporter for Bloomberg News, brings us a well-researched account for the first six women who won places in the program in 1978–Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon. She begins by describing their astronaut dreams and the competencies they brought to the new group of astronauts–doctors, an oceanographer, engineers, a chemist among them. We follow each of the women as they learn of the opening, their decision to apply, and then as they participate in the finalist interviews and medical testing. Then came the call from George Abbey asking, “are you still interested in coming to work for NASA?”

Grush describes the media attention, the lame jokes by Johnny Carson and the questions no male astronaut would be asked. Ironically, the men felt kind of left out for once. The training began in earnest, and, with it, the challenge to convince everyone there that they could do the job. We see the deftness of several women in manipulating the robot arms that would be crucial in launching satellites and observatory platforms. They match the men, except none can fly in the front seat of the T-38s–women had not yet been allowed to qualify as military jet pilots–and so all were mission specialists and could not pilot a shuttle.

The question though was “who would be first.” While all counted it a privilege to be on any mission, only one could be first. While all the women are covered, particularly Judy Resnik, who later died on Challenger, Grush focuses special attention on Sally Ride as the first, the media pressure she faced, her growing ability to cope with it, and the success of the mission. We learn of her troubled marriage, and her awakening to her love for Tam O’Shaughnessy, making her the first LGBTQ+ person in space, as well as America’s first woman. Ride also played key roles in the Challenger investigation, including passing along crucial engineering information she’d been given focusing attention on the flawed O-rings that led to the fatal burn-through and explosion. She also played a crucial role in redefining NASA’s mission, including a focus on studying changes to our own planet, crucial in the decades of climate change ahead.

Grush offers accounts of the missions each woman was on, including Anna Fisher’s MacGyvered fix that was used to attempt to activate a satellite that did not activate as it should have and Kathy Sullivan and Dave Leetsma’s space walk practicing a delicate satellite fueling operation. The women demonstrated that they could handle whatever was assigned them. And there was evidence that Judy Resnik was the one who activated Captain Dick Scobee’s emergency oxygen, possibly giving him some extra moments of life as the Challenger cabin tumbled to the sea.

The Challenger accident comes toward the end of the book and the reactions of each of the surviving women is described. The shuttle program was paused as boosters were re-designed and safety protocols were reviewed. The women had done their work. Additional women joined the astronaut corp subsequent to the accident, including one who would pilot a shuttle. Grush traces the subsequent careers of the surviving five.

Grush has given us an account that is combination of history and six biographies. It is an account that shows six women spotlighted because they were women who simply wanted to do a job–which they did. Some were mothers and people questioned whether it was proper for them to be astronauts–something no one asked of the men who were fathers. They were a part of a generation who went from being excluded from jobs or paid less because of their gender to moving the needle toward a greater parity, something we have not totally achieved yet. But they showed there was no reason but our prejudices to keep women from reaching for the stars. Grush helps us realize just how much these women accomplished toward that dream.

________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Challenger: An American Tragedy: The Inside Story from Launch Control

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Challenger: An American Tragedy: The Inside Story from Launch Control
Challenger: An American Tragedy: The Inside Story from Launch Control by Hugh Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The end of January seems the cruelest time of the year, to me. This year, we were deep in the polar vortex. Five years ago, it was at the end of January when my wife received a cancer diagnosis. In 1978, the end of January brought the blizzard of ’78 to the Midwest that stranded me for five days in Bowling Green, Ohio. And January 28, 1986 was another cruel day, as seven astronauts including our first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe, died in the Challenger disaster.

The memory of that day is burned into the minds of boomers and GenXers. We still can see the image of a huge explosion with two diverging trails as the solid rocket boosters continue on their own. We remember the closeups that show the fiery gases burning through the right solid rocket booster joint at the same moment as Commander Dick Scobie confirmed, “Roger, go at throttle up”. At 73 seconds, the main fuel tank exploded and the whole launch vehicle began to disintegrate.

At 58.778 seconds into powered flight, a large flame plume is visible just above the SRB exhaust nozzle indicating a breach in the motor casing.

At 58.778 seconds into powered flight, a large flame plume is visible just above the SRB exhaust nozzle indicating a breach in the motor casing.

This brief account by Hugh Harris, know as “the voice of NASA” during most of the shuttle missions gives what I would call a bare-bones account of these events. We don’t get biographies of each of the astronauts. We don’t get moment-by-moment minutiae of the launch countdown. We don’t see in detail all the discussions between Morton Thiokol, the maker of the solid rocket booster, and NASA about launch safety. We only get hints of the management structure that led to key figures not getting the key information that would lead them to cancel a mission for safety reasons. We do not get highly technical discussions of the O-ring and joint failure that led to fuel burn-through. Nor do we get gory speculation about how the astronauts died. On this last he simply quotes a report indicating inconclusive findings that did leave open the possibility that they were alive after the explosion but couldn’t have survived the ocean impact.

What we do get is an eyewitness account of what things were like that morning–the cold weather, the ice on the launch structure, the previous delays, the final preparations for launch, the first 73 seconds, the explosion and its aftermath–search and rescue, NASA’s frantic efforts to understand what went wrong, the commission hearings, and the rebuilding program that followed. Nearly all of it was familiar to me but it is the perfect account for someone who wants to understand the basic outlines of what happened and why and how NASA responded.

Perhaps the most telling moment was during hearings when noted physicist Richard Feynman simplified the complex discussions about whether the O-rings were responsible by taking a piece of O-ring material in a C-clamp, submerging it in ice water, and then showing its inability to return to its initial form. Temperatures the morning of the launch reached 20 degrees Farenheit.

Most chilling was to see the “russian roulette” thinking that led to failure to address the O-ring problems despite previous partial burn throughs. In the past, secondary O-rings contained it and so the thinking developed, that if it didn’t happen before, it wouldn’t this time. The irony was that NASA didn’t learn. On the first shuttle flight after the disaster, Discovery showed evidence of damage from insulation that compromised the heat absorbing tiles on the wing surfaces, the same type of damage that led to the break up of Columbia in re-entry in 2003.

So, for the NASA geek or disaster lover, this is probably not enough. But if you want to get more than a Wikipedia article summary of the disaster, this is a well-written eyewitness account that covers the basic ground.

View all my reviews