On Jan. 27, 1986, the former engineer for shuttle contractor Morton Thiokol had joined four colleagues in trying to keep Challenger grounded. They argued for hours that the launch the next morning would be the coldest ever. Freezing temperatures, their data showed, stiffened rubber O-rings that keep burning rocket fuel from leaking out of the joints in the shuttle’s boosters. But NASA officials rejected that data, and Thiokol executives overruled Ebeling and the other engineers. “It’s going to blow up,” a distraught and defeated Ebeling told his wife, Darlene, when he arrived home that night. And it did, 73 seconds after liftoff. Seven astronauts died. Cold weather and an O-ring failure were blamed, and Ebeling carried three decades of guilt. —NPR
Your Letters Helped Challenger Shuttle Engineer Shed 30 Years Of Guilt
How to Disagree Academically: Using Graham's "Disagreement Hierarchy" to organize a colleg...
A.I. 'Completes' Keith Haring's Intentionally Unfinished Painting
Seton Hill students Emily Vohs, Elizabeth Burns, Jake Carnahan-Curcio and Carolyn Jerz in ...
“The Cowherd Who Became a Poet,” by James Baldwin. (Read by Dennis Jerz)
Dr. David von Schlichten honors the spectrum of motivations (not always financial) feature...
NASA reconnects with Voyager 1 (after months of confusion)
Pingback: Remembering the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster (1986) | Jerz's Literacy Weblog (est. 1999)