“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” -Dr. Though separated by 17 years, these tragedies were strikingly similar in their institutional origins, and both events could - and should - have been prevented. Their requests to keep the astronauts in space long enough to launch a rescue mission and bring them safely home were overruled by shuttle program management, whose overriding concern was to maintain the ambitious flight rate and budget required to complete a key section of the International Space Station “on time.” The calamity had been predicted with eerie precision by NASA engineers in the days immediately following the foam hit. At 200,000 feet above the earth, the shuttle disintegrated over Texas, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Seventeen years later, on the morning of February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia was on its return from space to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida when hot gases began to penetrate the thin aluminum shell of the spacecraft at the same spot where a large piece of dislodged foam had slammed into the underside of the shuttle’s left wing during its ascent 16 days earlier. It was, as the 1986 Rogers Commission investigating the tragedy concluded, “an accident waiting to happen.” The temperature at liftoff was 15 degrees colder than any previous flight, and the fragile O-ring seals hardened in the cold air and vaporized. Repeated warnings by NASA and contractor engineers about the dangers associated with the fragile rubber rocket seals - known as O-ring seals - in the massive twin rocket boosters, particularly at colder temperatures, were downplayed and/or went unheeded, all under unrelenting pressure to meet an accelerating flight schedule. On January 28, 1986, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds into flight, killing all seven crew members, including America’s first civilian in space, an effervescent schoolteacher from New Hampshire named Christa McAuliffe. Mark Maier ( is the Founding Chair of the Leadership Programs at Chapman University in Orange, California, USA.Īuthor’s note: Revisiting NASA’s space shuttle disasters

Space shuttle explosion 1982