THE BOOK REVIEW
BY HARALD DAHLE
When we were sure that the Space Shuttle Program was well behind us, and all the books that have been written about it where published, comes a rear little gem of a book, Challenger: An American Tragedy, written by Hugh Harris. The book has sixty -one pages, sixteen chapters, six photographs and no statistical graphs.
So what is so special about this newcomer and why should this book be found in every library in the Unites States and hopefully read by every student born after 1986 at home and abroad as well as by «Shuttle» enthusiasts in every country around the world. The answer lies with the author and his brilliantly written sixteen chapters. They are in chronological order, with matching page numbers on the right side,
Chapter one: A look back twenty-eight years (3)
Chapter two: A cold, cold night (5)
Chapter three: The launch (10)
Chapter four: After the launch (17)
Chapter five: Challenger and the White House (22)
Chapter six: Reporters, reporters everywhere (25)
Chapter seven: The Commission (27)
Chapter eight: Scoop! (29)
Chapter nine: Whose fault was it? (31)
Chapter ten: The search at sea (34)
Chapter eleven: Putting together the pieces (38)
Chapter twelve: Commission conclusions (41)
Chapter thirteen: The crew (44)
Chapter fourteen: The response (47)
Chapter fifteen: The return to flight (51)
Chapter sixteen: The challenge remains (54)
This is the true and "down-to-earth" story about the Challenger STS-33/51-L Shuttle disaster which happened on Tuesday, January 28, 1986, as seen through the eyes of Hugh Harris, the veteran NASA launch commenter who spent thirty-five years covering major technological events, often being referred to as "The Voice of NASA".
At 11:38 a.m. EST, on Tuesday, January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning on Thursday January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger's launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems.
Finally the shuttle lifted off. Seventy-three seconds later, thousands on the ground and millions watching the event on television, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire. There were no survivors. However, Jane Smith, widow of Challenger Pilot Michael Smith, was very upset by what she had observed from the publicly televised hearings of the Roger Commission. She had also learned that the astronauts really had survived the explosion and had not been killed instantly as NASA first reported. Close examination of the flight films revealed the crew cabin separating intact from the rest of the orbiter after the explosion.

On this faithful morning Harris had started the day early. «The night of Tuesday, January 28, 1986, was the coldest I can remember in Florida,» he writes, «but when I left my house in Cocoa Beach at two a.m. I wasn't thinking of the cold. I was worrying about getting to the Kennedy Space Center on time.» Thus starts Hugh «NASA voice» Harris his gripping story on that fateful morning. He had watched the previous twenty-four lift-offs of the Shuttle from the firing room, successfully returning to the Earth.
In Chapter seven and twelve Harris explains the work and conclusion of the Roger Commission appointed by President Reagan. "NASA and Thiokol accepted escalating risk apparently because they got away with it last time" commission member Nobel Laureate Richard B. Feynman, professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, observed in the same section of the report that the decision making process had been "a kind of Russian roulette. The shuttle flies with O-ring erosion and nothing happens. Then it is suggested, therefore, that the risk is no longer so high for the next flight. We can lover our standards a little bit because we got away with it last time. You got away with it, but it shouldn't be done over and over again like that".
The press played an important role as well, writes Harris; And continues, once the cause of the accident was known, reporters scrambled to see how long the O-ring problem had been known. The New York Times and Washington Post printed articles revealing that even budget analyst, Richard Cook, had mentioned O-ring concerns, pointing out the impact of a potential accident on future budgets.They also reprinted memos from Thiokol Propulsion (Morton Thiokol Inc) and their Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) engineer Roger Boisjoly, in which he warned management at NASA about a real and present danger. No one among the senior management at NASA was competent to take action and stop the scheduled Challenger lift off.

The end conclusion was that everything NASA management did in the short term with regards to understanding of the rubber seal O-rings that prevented hot gases from leaking through the joints between the segments of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters (SRB's) was rational, but set the stage for greater problems later.
If the primary and secondary O-rings did not do their job and failed to "seal" effectively because of loss of resilience (spring-back capability) due to cold temperature, a fiery jet could escape from an SRB field-joint at ignition, impinge on the adjacent surface of the huge external tank filled with 1.6 million pounds of liquid hydrogen and oxygen that was attached, there was likely no way for the Shuttle and it's crew of seven astronauts to survive the fireball.
The accumulative impact of many such rational decisions proved in the end to be disastrous for Challenger and it's crew of seven astronauts. Author Hugh Harris concludes his book by reflecting on the tragedy: "The real tragedy of an event like Challenger," he writes, "is in the loss of people and accomplishments and inspiration they would have contributed to mankind; yet even their loss has inspired thousands of others to carry on for them in meaningful ways. They have not been lost to the world, but made it a better place".
I have read Challenger: An American Tragedy By Hugh Harris and recommend it highly. Five, well deserved stars, and best of all, «The Dream is (still) alive!» I look forward to Harris' next book project with great anticipation: «NASA in the Multimedia Age». Nobody can take on such an important project and lead it to a successful conclusion better than the visionary Mr. Hugh Harris. To paraphrase Sir James Dewar, "Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open."