Challenger: The Final Flight (2020) s01e02 Episode Script

Yeah, I just found it the other day.
It's like--
Yeah, I didn't even remember it.
It was a birthday present from Christa.
She always kept a journal
and hoped that I would do the same.
This journal entry is July 4th, 1985,
and this was right before Christa,
I believe, was selected.
"So there's been
quite a bit of excitement recently.
[crowd cheering]
[Lisa] This coming January,
a space shuttle will be launched
carrying one of America's teachers.
Each state elected two representatives,
and I am proud to have my sister
as a representative from New Hampshire.
Christa runs, plays sports,
does not drink much, and never smoked,
and I think she has a great chance.
The final decision is up to NASA.
It will be nice to see her today
at my parents'.
My husband, Bob, his sister, Sally,
and mother, Gert
are all going to join
in celebrating Independence Day,
and the possibility of having
an astronaut in the family."
[theme music playing]
[audience applauding]
Space shuttle is back. Is it back?
Is it… Does anybody know?
Where is it?
I think it came in Monday,
the space shuttle.
It's back. Look at this,
three people know.
This is incredible, space missions!
The most exciting thing
that there ever was to happen.
Right now, people don't even follow
the spa-- I mean, it's…
They should make it exciting. I don't know
how they could make us all watch again.
Maybe they should send up some guy
that doesn't want to go.
[audience laughing]
[applause]
Wouldn't you watch? I mean, I think
everybody would watch that, you know…
Dragging some guy
down the hall, you know…
put him in a spacesuit.
He's holding on to door jams.
[audience laughing]
See his face in the glass on liftoff.
[audience laughing]
[applause]
I think the public anticipated something
more than what they got.
When it becomes routine,
people lose interest in it,
and because of that,
it was no longer front page.
It was second page,
third page, eighth page.
That was my metric that I used
to determine how excited
the public was for this program.
They got bored with flying to the moon,
you know, the American public.
So why wouldn't they get bored
with flying around the Earth?
We worried about it a lot because
it's the public's support for NASA
that keeps it going.
NASA began to think
this was time for us to bring in
a non-professional astronaut
to experience and share space flight.
The day is coming when you don't
have to be an astrophysicist
or an astronaut or a medical doctor
to go into outer space.
NASA, in fact, is looking
for the first non-astronaut
to fly a shuttle mission.
The opportunity for the public,
in some form,
to fly on this spectacular vehicle
was there.
[Nesbitt] I remember hearing a lot of
names like Tom Wolfe or Walter Cronkite.
Almost every news anchor in the country
wanted to be the one to go up.
Writers, journalists,
or having a great poet go, or an artist.
[Joan Rivers] What's your one big fantasy?
-What is--
-I wanna go up on the space shuttle.
That's… You could do that.
-It's wonderful.
-[applause]
I remember hearing some talk about
Big Bird being a possible
spaceflight participant,
but you couldn't get a Big Bird costume
into the crew compartment.
All kinds of people have applied to fly
on the shuttle:
doctors, entertainers,
writers, TV news anchors,
and yesterday,
President Reagan announced his decision.
Today, I'm directing NASA
to begin a search
in all of our elementary
and secondary schools,
and to choose as
the first citizen passenger
in the history of our space program,
one of America's finest, a teacher.
[woman 2] My husband and I
were watching the evening news,
and he says that I said,
"I'm going for it."
I don't remember saying that,
but I definitely remember thinking about
what a fantastic opportunity this is.
But when that shuttle lifts off,
all of America will be reminded
of the crucial role
that teachers and education play
in the life of our nation.
[Barbara] And so,
I went to school the very next day
and mentioned it to my colleagues.
Three of us went to see
our superintendent.
He thought it was crazy
that we wanted to go into space. [laughs]
[anchor] These are some
of the applications from teachers
hoping to be chosen for that flight.
[Barbara] There's something like 11,000
teachers completed those applications.
Everybody has a fantasy.
My fantasy was to be an astronaut.
The competition is gonna be stiff,
but… it would be great
to be that person selected.
[Scobee Rogers] The competition
with these 11,000 teachers
was narrowed down to ten.
Ten finalists.
[Barbara]
We went to the NASA Johnson Space Center,
where we would undergo evaluations
that needed to happen
before, uh, being selected to fly.
[anchor]
Even though they just arrived this week,
the teachers have already had their share
of prodding, poking, testing, and running.
It's all part of the screening process
that will eventually lead
to one of the group making history.
[Barbara]
That's when I first got to meet Christa.
[Lisa] My sister Christa was always
a very special person.
Growing up in a very small house…
The house had three bedrooms,
and there were seven of us.
Christa, my younger sister Betsy,
and I shared a room.
I remember when she would go out on dates
with her boyfriend, Steve.
When I would wake up in the morning,
she would always have a little something
next to Betsy's and my dresser,
like a book or maybe a piece of candy,
and I thought that was an unusual thing
for a teenager to go out on a date
and think about her siblings.
And that's just who she was.
She and Steve both graduated college,
and they got married.
She was, I believe, 21.
She had the belief that
she could do extraordinary things,
but she also believed that
everybody could do extraordinary things.
When Christa saw the Apollo go up,
she said,
"Well, I wish I could go into space."
She was just thrilled
about the whole idea
that they were thinking
of sending a teacher to space.
[Barbara] NASA had three questions
that they would ask us.
They gave us two of the questions,
and we were told that the third question
would be a surprise.
Describe your philosophy of living.
"My philosophy of living."
Well, I think my philosophy of living
is to get as much out of life as possible
and to certainly
involve other people in that enjoyment,
but also, because of the country
that we live in, to be a participant.
[anchor] NASA officials
will pick a finalist and a runner-up
before the end of the month.
[camera shutter snaps]
The winner will go to space in January.
When NASA was starting
to open up the space shuttle flights
to people who were not
professional astronauts,
that was not well-received
within the Astronaut Office.
We really, truly, didn't believe
that we were as safe, if you would,
as that would tend to lend you to believe.
We were still learning
how to operate the system
and to develop the capabilities
to do it regularly and successfully.
We accepted those risks, but we thought
they were always going to be managed.
My first major assignment at NASA
was about three weeks
after I'd come on board.
My supervisor said, "Go over
to the Office of Space Flight,
talk to the engineers, and document
the problems they were having
with the solid rocket boosters."
I had been hired to work
on the space shuttle program
as a budget analyst,
and one of the big cost factors
was the cost of the solid rocket boosters.
When I got over there,
the engineers told me
that after each shuttle flight,
on every agenda, NASA listed problems
in the solid rocket boosters.
I didn't know the extent of the issues,
so I started looking at the problem.
NASA is a nationwide organization.
The solid rocket boosters
were managed
by the Marshall Space Flight Center
in Huntsville, Alabama,
which had responsibility
for the solid rocket boosters
and for the solid rocket booster
contractor, Morton Thiokol, in Utah.
[Covey] I'd been to several test firings
of the solid rocket boosters
in Utah on several occasions.
Whenever an astronaut would
go to our contractor locations,
our general message was,
"The work you do
is paramount to my safe flight,
and we want you to remember that,
that there are people that are dependent
upon how well your product performs."
[McDonald] I was the director
of the Solid Rocket Motor Project
for the Thiokol Corporation.
This was the first time that we were
involved in a vehicle using solid rockets
that actually launched people into space.
[boosters firing]
[narrator] Twin solid rocket boosters
produce a combined thrust
of over five million pounds for liftoff.
Two minutes later,
the solid boosters will burn out,
separate from the external tank.
[operator] We see… Set flight.
[astronaut] Roger…
[narrator] Then parachute
to a water landing and recovery
in the Atlantic Ocean.
The boosters will be refurbished
and returned to service
on a continuing basis.
We recovered the boosters
that fell back down into the sea,
and we were able to inspect them
and evaluate the performance.
When I started out at Thiokol, I was
in the reliability engineering section.
That's when we started to see some
erosion inside of the boosters.
[McDonald] When we brought
the boosters back, pulled them apart,
and pulled the O-rings out, inspect them,
we could see it got burned,
right where we saw a hole,
where gas had come through
at that exact location,
and there's a little bit of the O-ring
missing that had actually burned off.
It's not something that we'd want.
What you'd want is to have the O-ring
come back whole and un-singed.
The O-rings are rubber,
and you've probably seen
little O-rings in the hardware store.
These O-rings are a little over
a quarter-inch in diameter,
but they're 40 feet long
to fit around the whole circumference
of the case segments.
And they fit into grooves,
and so they stay in place.
And then when the joint is assembled,
they seal against the opposite surface,
and there are two of those
in each field joint.
[McDonald] The reason there's two there
is because we had to have redundancy
so that if one O-ring failed, the other
one would hopefully keep the seal.
If the seal erodes, then the hot flame
that's causing that erosion
will burn across the O-rings
and come outside,
and we'd have a rocket motor leak.
And then the rocket would blow up.
It was a significant concern.
[Cook] This O-ring problem
continued to happen,
and the solid rocket booster engineers
felt it was not being
effectively dealt with.
And so I continued to meet
with the engineers
to investigate the problem.
I worked at Thiokol, and I carpooled
to work with my dad, Bob Ebeling.
Dad was working on the boosters.
He told us about the O-ring issue.
That was really disconcerting to him
because he knew that a teacher
was going up in space,
and this was a major problem.
He felt if you don't fix this,
eventually, there would be
a catastrophe.
We're here today to announce
the first private citizen passenger
in the history of spaceflight.
This passenger would be
one of America's finest, a teacher.
[Barbara] The day that the announcement
was made at the White House,
it was just  the ten of us
sitting there, waiting.
Ann Bradley, she was our superintendent.
We said to Ann, "Let us know who it is.
This is not a beauty contest."
[Bush] First, the backup teacher,
who will make the flight
if the winner can't.
-Barbara Morgan, congratulations.
-[applause]
[Barbara] Christa had been joking with us
about when she's gone,
her husband Steve would feed the kids
cereal, and that would be their meals.
Ann says, "Christa, I hope
you've stacked up on a lot of cereal."
[Bush] The winner, the teacher
who will be going into space,
Christa McAuliffe. Where's-- Is that you?
[all laughing]
I wanted to be the prime, like we all did,
but I was so excited for Christa.
She was the perfect choice,
and I was so excited to be her backup
and to get to learn alongside her.
It's not often that a teacher
is at a loss for words.
I know my students wouldn't think so.
I've made nine wonderful friends
over the last two weeks,
and when that shuttle goes,
there might be one body.
But there's gonna be ten souls
that I'm taking with me. Thank you.
-[Bush] That's great.
-[applause]
[Lisa] When she was selected,
we were not that surprised.
I think we almost expected
her to be chosen.
[anchor] Husband Steve
heard the news on the radio.
Everybody who knows her, I think,
honestly thought that, you know, there--
There may have been candidates
who were certainly her equal,
but that there was nobody
that would be superior to her.
[crowd cheering]
[Lisa] It was quite an exciting time.
The girl next door
was gonna ride in a shuttle.
This was a real galvanizing moment
and completely enthused…
a lot of people.
Well, she's the first teacher in space.
The first teacher,
and also a woman, thank goodness.
[Billingsly]
And it got a lot of kids really excited
and suddenly made this space travel
incredibly relatable.
And it wasn't just an astronaut.
It was now… It one of us.
And it was…
You know, it was somebody's teacher.
[man] They're gonna send up
this first school teacher,
and it's gonna be a lot easier
for people to get into space.
It's gonna be a lot more routine.
[Peter] I had been a child actor
and had gained some notoriety
from A Christmas Story.
I was the spokesperson
for the Young Astronaut Program.
The sense that I personally might be able
to go one day was completely true.
There was a larger plan, when the
astronauts landed and Christa was back,
we were gonna do a national
press tour together.
And they said, "The next step for us
is gonna be a kid in space."
And I thought, "My gosh,
that's awesome, man, yes, sign me up."
[Christa] It's exciting students about
a way of life that's part of their future.
They've got to get ready for this.
Their grandchildren
are probably gonna be on space stations,
and students have to prepare
for that future.
And I think this will help them do that.
[Scobee Rogers]
Everyone identified with Christa.
She was not only representing
teachers beautifully,
but she was a mother.
[anchor] She'll now go through 114 hours
of intensive training.
That's, of course, a fraction
of what astronauts go through,
but enough so she can get along
as she takes the flight
and records her thoughts in a journal.
A flight into space for an ordinary
citizen, it's not a dream anymore.
It's going to happen, probably in 1986
and several times a year after that.
[Scobee Rogers]
Christa was taking all the civilians,
who would never have a opportunity
to fly in space like the astronauts…
She was taking us with her.
[anchor] Her six-year-old daughter
Caroline wasn't very happy about it.
I don't want her to go in space
because I just want her
to stay around my house.
Glitches and gremlins continue to plague
America's space shuttle program today,
as NASA's newest space plane,
Discovery, never got off the ground
because one of its computers
wouldn't work.
[anchor 2] Forty minutes
before scheduled liftoff,
tests showed trouble
with one of the five computers.
Only six of the previous 19 shuttle
flights have gone up on time.
[Harwood] When the shuttle program
was sold to Congress, it was being billed
as an "all things to all people"
space truck
that eventually would pay for itself.
They'd be charging commercial customers
to launch their satellites.
The DOD is gonna pay
to launch their missions.
NASA had promised Congress they were
gonna launch two a month, eventually.
But I think in 1985,
they had nine flights.
[anchor] This will be the 20th mission
since the program began in April, 1981.
NASA had originally estimated there would
be more than twice as many flights by now,
but the continuing delays make it clear
that the shuttle program
is not as routine and reliable
as its developers had hoped.
[Lucas] We had a lot of problems to solve,
some of which were not anticipated
because there are thousands of things,
on a vehicle such as the shuttle,
that, if they go wrong,
will cost you the flight.
[Crippen] The schedule called for us
to launch a lot of shuttles,
and we didn't always make the schedule.
So there was a lot of…
I don't want to use the word "pressure,"
but there was a lot of effort made
to keep flying 'em,
and flying 'em faster
than what we were doing.
[Harwood] The shuttle program was
one of the crowning achievements
of American technology,
but it simply was so complicated,
it could never pay for itself
or come anywhere close to that.
[Richard Truly] The dream of the shuttle,
to be cheap and fly often,
that spacecraft never has
existed and never will.
I was a test pilot and NASA manager.
The problem was there were people
early on in NASA
that was telling the public
that we were gonna fly, fly, fly,
and it was never gonna be.
[anchor] Critics say NASA's optimism
amounted to a deliberate distortion
of the budget figures in an attempt
to get Congress enmeshed in the program,
a technique known in Washington
as "buying in."
We really don't honestly
apologize for that
because most every airplane system
and space program system
that I've been involved with
in my 35 years…
You don't see all the detailed problems
in the beginning that you see later.
[Harwood] The pressure was on
when NASA decided to add
Senator Jake Garn to the shuttle crew.
This was one of the lawmakers
that's responsible for NASA's budget.
[moderator] Senator Jake Garn,
the payload specialist,
making his first flight into orbit,
our first congressional observer
on the space shuttle program.
[Covey] The space shuttle was
always dependent upon Congress,
so flying a senator would
bring additional attention
and support for the space shuttle program.
[announcer] This is a seven-person crew,
scheduled to make a five-day mission…
[Covey] Those things
coming together was important
and not lost on NASA that
that was required.
[announcer] …to an awaiting astronaut
van that will take them to the launch pad.
[Harwood] When NASA
added Senator Garn to that crew,
he bumped payload specialist Greg Jarvis,
who was originally supposed
to fly on that flight.
[Anchor] Astronaut Greg Jarvis
will be running experiments
to see if the amount
of liquid fuel in a satellite,
or the sloshing around of fuel,
makes satellites less stable.
And then Jarvis was assigned to a flight
and got bumped again
by Congressman Bill Nelson,
who was on a House committee
that dealt with NASA's budget,
and he ended up on Challenger's crew.
[woman] Greg had a real spark in his eye,
something I don't see in everybody's.
Greg and I got married and lived in Boston
for the first year of our marriage.
He got job offers from every one
of the companies that he applied to,
and he chose Hughes to work at.
The first day we got to California was
the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
I remember sitting in the car
when that came on the radio.
[announcer]
Armstrong is on the moon, Neil Armstrong.
-[Armstrong over radio, indistinct]
-[Jarvis] Greg just went bananas
when he heard
that we're actually walking on the moon,
and he was just… intrigued.
Greg was very passionate
about engineering,
but his specialty was
communication satellites…
that were going
to be launched from the shuttle,
and when the program
presented itself at Hughes,
that they could fly a payload specialist,
he was so ecstatic about that.
They narrowed it down to the final ten,
and so he called me at work.
And he just says, "I got number one."
And then I said, "Seriously?"
He says, "Yes."
He always thought of astronauts
as being perfect people.
Nothing wrong with them
psychologically or physically,
and he says, "Who would have ever thought
that a balding, 40-year-old engineer
would ever get a chance
to be in this situation?"
So he was just ecstatic.
Your first time you put on the blue
flight suit you say--
You kind of walk around,
"Maybe I'll let them walk in front of me,
and they won't see me."
But after a while, you think…
You do the things that they do.
You work around the orbiter.
You say,
"I know what I'm doing here. I belong."
[boosters firing]
[McDonald] January of 1985,
which was the coldest launch
we ever experienced at that time,
we saw this O-ring problem again.
[man on radio, indistinct]
[astronaut] Roger, sound.
Twelve minutes, 12 seconds,
confirm good solid rocket booster
separation.
[McDonald] When we retrieved
these boosters, and pulled them apart,
we not only had a burned O-ring in one
of the joints on each of the boosters,
but we had a huge
amount of very black soot
between those two O-rings
that went almost all the way around
this huge circumference of this booster.
That was very frightening
because this was the first time we'd seen
this field joint actually
had been compromised.
We couldn't understand why that happened.
We'd never seen this behavior
in one of these joints.
We went through all of our manufacturing
records and engineering records,
and we couldn't find anything
that would explain what was different
about this set of hardware,
other than the temperature
that it was launched at.
In fact, it was the three coldest days,
at that time, in Florida history.
My boss at the time was a fellow
by the name of Joe Kilminster,
and he recognized what I recognized.
These O-rings, they're very pliable,
but they become very brittle and stiff
as you get 'em very cold.
[Kilminster] We thought there might be
a correlation with temperature.
We started then looking at all the data.
There were launches that were done
at warmer temperatures,
and we were still seeing some degradation.
[McDonald] In fact, on one launch,
we saw it burned
a little bit of the secondary O-ring,
which was very, very concerning.
We couldn't show a real solid correlation.
That's why we put a task force together,
to have a concentrated effort
on how to evaluate the problem.
One of the design engineering supervisors
was the head of that task force,
and I was his assistant.
Bob Ebeling, who was my boss,
he kept close contact there,
and then we had a number of engineers,
and all were working together
to resolve the O-ring issue.
[Kilminster] At the time, the Marshall
Space Flight Center, our bosses,
were kept abreast on all of the work
that was going on.
[McDonald] Dr. Bill Lucas,
who was the Center Director
of the Marshall Space Flight Center,
and Larry Mulloy was the manager
of the Solid Rocket Booster Project.
We recognized early on that there was
a risk associated with the, uh… O-rings.
I thought we needed
to get further research.
We assembled a group of competent
engineers experienced in the field
and assigned them to evaluate
what caused the failure
and to recommend the correction.
We knew this was one
of the great challenges of the program.
-[Barbara] You ready?
-[Christa] Come on, put on your shoes.
-[both laughing]
-[Barbara] I know it.
[laughing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Barbara] When we first got
to the Johnson Space Center,
one of the first things we were
supposed to do after we got our badges
and all that stuff…
We were to go meet with the crew.
[man] Y'all beautiful.  I ain't kidding.
-Yeah, right.
-[laughter]
-[woman] Stay with me!
-[camera shutter snapping]
[Barbara] That was the first time
we were all together in a group.
[Christa laughing]
[Barbara] They were doing
a photo opportunity of-- of all of us.
And they were wonderful.
-The light didn't blink.
-It didn't go.
That's all right. You missed the world's
greatest picture.
[Barbara] One of the astronaut wives
took Christa and me around
to show us different apartments.
She took us to the Peachtree Apartments,
and we thought this was great
because it actually had little patches
of green grass with some trees.
And there happened to be two apartments
that were right next door to each other.
We went out to get our groceries
and pots and pans,
and then we came back
to our apartments.
And I took my time, thinking,
"Okay, now, where's this gonna go?
I gotta set this up just perfectly."
I was probably two hours into it,
and there's a knock at the door.
And it's Christa, and in her hands,
she has a homemade apple pie
that she just made
for her friend living next door.
That's what Christa was like.
We have good video. We're ready
for your lesson. Go ahead, Christa.
Okay. [chuckles]
Hi, this is Christa McAuliffe,
broadcasting live from the Challenger.
["Space Age Love Song"
by A Flock of Seagulls plays]
This is the lesson that's going to
deal with, "Why are we in space?
Why does the shuttle fly?"
-Whoops.
-[clatters]
Ugh, this zero gravity environment,
it's just awful.
[Barbara] Christa was gonna do
two live lessons from space.
One was called, "Where We've Been,
Where We're Going, and Why,"
about how the shuttle helped build
the International Space Station.
[man] Hey, are you gonna take it apart
and put it together in front of cameras?
While I'm talking about it, I figured
I would be putting parts of it together,
and you're much better giving comparisons
to kids or examples.
When Christa moved to Houston,
she was always a big letter writer,
so I would get letters from her.
She would share with us what she was
going through, the type of training.
She said she was gonna go fly in a jet.
[indistinct chatter]
I saw your eyes ♪
And you made me smile ♪
[camera shutter clicks]
For a little while ♪
I was falling in love… ♪
[Lisa] It was just a learning experience.
To learn how it all came together
was pretty cool.
[music continues]
She went on the…
What they called "the Vomit Comet."
[both cheering]
[Barbara] She was really happy
that she didn't vomit on it.
That was kind of a good test
that she passed right there.
[chattering and laughing]
[Lisa] I was thrilled for her.
She felt it was a very supportive team.
It was kind of like one big classroom
to her. She was very happy.
[music ends]
And a good time was had by all.
[laughing] We had a wonderful time.
What are we doing today?
I thought we were doing TV stuff.
What we do in this class is we cover
some of the comm equipment here,
and just kind of briefly
tell 'em how everything interfaces.
So this thing, just always remember,
don't bend this.
You can adjust it, you know.
[Smith-Wolcott] My husband, Mike,
was the pilot of Challenger.
When Mike asked me to marry him,
he said, "I'm going to be a pilot,
and then I'd like to be an astronaut.
Are you going to have a problem
with that?"
And I, you know, "No, sounds good to me."
And so, off we went.
When I married Mike, I was 21 years old.
He was 22.
It seems young, but it really was fine.
We were on a mission
of simply enjoying life.
Mike was a man with a plan.
He applied for test pilot school
in order to be an astronaut.
So he applied to the program,
and I got this phone call one day.
And the man on the other end, "This
is George Abbey calling from NASA."
And I said, "Wait a minute." And then
Mike gets the phone, and George said,
"You've been selected
for the 1980 group of astronauts.
So, are you willing to come?"
And Mike said, "Let me call you back."
George said it was the first time anybody
ever said, "Let me call you back."
So Mike said, "What do you think?"
And I said,
"Do whatever you think is best for you."
He said, "Well, it would make me
have more time with the family,
and it's very exciting."
I said, "So you're saying yes?"
And he said, "So I think
it would be a great opportunity."
[man] If the nav bay fire light comes on,
you want to discharge the fire
on ascent and entry.
Just discharge the fire bottle
right away.
The aft bays also have fire ports.
A fire port is a red hole,
the suppressant used is Halon 1301,
just to get the extra Halon in there.
[Harwood] Going into January of 1986,
NASA was clearly having trouble
meeting the schedule.
There were 16 flights planned in 1986,
and there were nine the previous year.
The folks involved in the shuttle program
knew that was
a really tough hill to climb,
but they had promised it to Congress,
and they were hell-bent
on trying to pull it off.
[McDonald] Meanwhile,
the task force was working on changes
in the solid rocket booster
that would hopefully solve
this O-ring joint problem.
The company's first priority was
making shuttle segments for flight.
[Russell] It was frustrating
that even though we understood
that we could have
a catastrophic failure,
NASA wanted to have
increased number of launches.
And so every launch
became nerve-racking to me.
It was something that…
My stomach churned a bit,
and I'd clench my fists
and genuinely have white knuckles
because I didn't know
how those O-rings would perform.
Bob Ebeling was my boss.
He and I talked often, and I expressed
frustration of how things were going.
And he understood and was definitely
engaged in wanting to solve the problem.
[typewriter clacking]
[McDonald]
I received a memo written by Bob Ebeling.
"Help!
The seal task force is constantly being
delayed by every possible means.
This is a red flag."
[Kilminster] After I read that memo,
I felt that we would try to do
whatever we could
in order to help on the task force.
However, per our contracts, we were
supposed to adhere to our schedule,
and that's what we were using
as our road map.
But we made sure that NASA
knew about this,
all the way up to and including
NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The same solid rocket booster engineers,
who had given me
the information initially,
began giving me documents.
There had been an instance
where the first O-ring in a flight
had been eaten through,
and the second O-ring had been eroded.
And that was the potential catastrophe.
Because anytime there's a failure
in a redundant feature,
NASA had a requirement
that the shuttle could not be flown.
You had to stop and fix it,
but it was gonna take a couple of years.
[Lucas] My engineers knew
that the joint should be redesigned,
and that was in the process.
[Mulloy] The judgment at the time was
it was not risky enough not to fly,
so I issued a waiver
that we would fly as is.
[Cook] The waiver means
that you know there's a problem,
you don't have time to fix it…
And so, they processed that document
in order to be able to continue to fly.
The schedule was so demanding
that nobody was willing
to ground the fleet to fix the problem.
[Mulloy]
We were under tremendous pressure,
both schedule and technical.
If you don't keep your schedule,
you don't keep your budget,
so I put the pressure on myself,
just as a matter of pride.
What are you most excited about?
Seeing the Earth from that perspective
of that small planet…
You know, it's such a big place here,
but being able to look at it
from a new perspective.
And I hope I can bring that wonder
and that excitement back to the students.
-Maybe just a little bit of fright too?
-Not yet.
[announcer]
Minus ten, we're go for main engine start.
[Christa] Maybe when I'm strapped in
and those rockets are going off
underneath me, there will be.
But space flight today really seems safe.
[announcer] Five, four, three, two, one.
We have ignition and liftoff.
Liftoff of Challenger
and the Spacelab D-1 mission.
[chuckling] Ah!
[Cook] When I asked the engineers
what would happen
if the O-ring seals failed,
they said the shuttle would blow up.
I felt a professional
and personal obligation
to put that in writing
and give that to my supervisor.
"Flight safety has been
and is still being compromised
by potential failure of the seals,
and it is acknowledged
that failure during launch
would certainly be catastrophic."
Oh, my God! Look at it.
[announcer]
Velocity, 2,000 feet per second.
[Christa] Oh, it's beautiful.
[announcer] All three main engines
are running smoothly now,
-at 65% aerated thrust…
-Just like that so I'll shoot it sideways.
[Covey] The engineers said to me
they held their breath
with every shuttle launch.
[announcer]
Challenger, Houston, go with throttle up.
[camera shutter snaps]
[closing theme music playing]