Remembering the Challenger explosion, 40 years later

0:00Support for Here and Now Any Time comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering engineering. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. They'd sort of begun to believe in their own mythos. So that by 1986, you know, the engineers involved in the program had begun to accept too much risk. It's been 40 years since millions of Americans watched the space shuttle Challenger explode on live TV. What went wrong with the launch? And what's the legacy of Challenger today?

0:55It's Friday, January 30th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:04On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. Today on the show, we're looking back on what happened and remembering a major moment in modern American history. We'll hear from people who knew Krista McAuliffe, who was supposed to be the first teacher in space, about her legacy 40 years later. She became bigger than she was, but I think that would be her point. We have to find the extraordinary in the everyday. Before we get to that, though, the Challenger disaster occupies an important place in the country's collective memory. It was an era when space shuttle launches had become routine, but still carried with them a sense of national pride.

1:54Then tragedy struck. The nation mourned the seven crew members, Dick Scobie, Michael Smith, Judith Resnick, Ronald McNair, Allison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Krista McAuliffe, who was supposed to be the first teacher and the first private citizen in space. The shuttle program was immediately grounded after the disaster. NASA and a special commission appointed by President Ronald Reagan investigated what went wrong and discovered engineers who'd raised concerns about the launch had been overruled. Adam Higginbotham wrote the book Challenger, the true story of heroism and disaster on the edge of space.

2:36He spoke to Scott Tong. The space shuttle exploded just over a minute after taking off on a frigid morning in Florida. How did the families of the astronauts, how did the country experience the horror of that day? Well, I think to begin with, you know, like most of those of us who watched it on TV, which was with a sense of disbelief, some members of the families and many of the people sitting in the launch control center at the moment the shuttle disintegrated couldn't actually believe that what was happening in front of them was happening. So inconceivable did it seem that, you know, an accident of this scale could be taking place in front of them.

3:18Yeah, there was this shock, and as you write, in the immediate aftermath, a few hours, there was confusion, relative silence coming out of NASA. And that evening, President Ronald Reagan addressed the country, and let's hear some of that. The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us for the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye. and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God. Those famous words, of course, come from the poem High Flight by John Gillespie McGee.

4:00And soon after, the Reagan administration formed an independent commission to investigate. And at the outset, Adam, was there a leading theory as to what happened? Well, not one that was publicly revealed. And in the moments after the accident happened, you know, the impression that everybody was allowed to form was that this was a kind of one in a million accident. And it was only as the days and the weeks went by that the nature of NASA's internal investigation began to leak out. Internally, they knew very quickly that it was most likely to have been caused by a fault with the solid rocket boosters.

4:44And that is indeed what proved to be the cause of the accident. Yeah. And these external rockets had to be put together in Florida, so the separate pieces had to be sealed. And in the end, it was these seals, these gigantic rubber O-rings, that the NASA contractor, the engineers there, had said, we're looking at the data from the previous space shuttle trips. They can be compromised, especially in the cold weather. It was so cold that day. As you write, the engineers who were warning about this, they were overruled by their bosses? Is that effectively what happened? That's exactly what happened.

5:27They were overruled because initially they had gone to their bosses at the contractor that manufactured the rockets. And they had explained to them that they had this real fear that in cold weather, especially, these SEALs would fail and the result of that failure would be the destruction of the shuttle and the deaths of the crew. Everybody in the company agreed unanimously that they had to delay the launch taking place. Their bosses gave a recommendation to NASA in writing that the launch should not go ahead. But when they did this, and once the engineers there presented their data in this late night phone call the night before the launch eventually took place, the middle managers at NASA made it clear that they didn't want to accept this recommendation.

6:15They didn't explicitly say so, but they pushed back so hard against the data they were presented with and put such pressure on the contractors that the executives there, fearing upsetting what was effectively their most important client, then turned around and changed their launch recommendation from no-go to go over the recommendations of their own engineers. Yeah. And Adam, these budget business realities are part of a broader picture you paint in this book. NASA was facing budget pressure at the time. There were other issues in the country that many Americans, many in Congress said, oh, we should put our money there instead of for the space shuttle.

7:06So the program, the Spatial Order Program, needed to keep itself in the public eye, attracting public support. And that is where Krista McAuliffe comes in. She, of course, was a teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, first private citizen picked to go into space. Let's listen to her on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, July of 1985. It's really something. What is this scheduled for? I mean, do they have a target date for you, as they say, to blast off? Yeah, it is January 22nd, but with the missions being bumped up a little bit with the problems that they've had, I would assume that it's probably beginning of February now.

7:41Are you in any way frightened of something like that? I mean, that's a normal question because just the other day it was kind of ahead of frightening a lift, and one of the engines went out. Yes. I really haven't thought of it in those terms because I see the shuttle program as a very safe program. Adam, can you talk more about the challenges NASA was facing at the time, the public perception challenges, the budget challenges? You know, the shuttle program began under circumstances where, for the first time in its history, NASA was really faced with doing what they wanted to do, but with a limited budget.

8:19Because they were coming out of the moon program, the Apollo program, where, you know, the goal of setting men down on the surface of the moon by the end of the 1960s was so nationally important that they just had a blank check. But by the time the shuttle program got started, you know, there was neither the money nor really the political will to go out and spend another fortune putting a space shuttle into orbit. And part of the way that they justified the program in the first place was by saying that it was going to make space travel routine. and part of the problem with the shuttle program was that the vehicle that they created was incredibly complex but it did really succeed in the eyes of the public all too well in making space flight seem routine and quotidian to the extent that it first launched in 1981 but by 1985, the year before the Challenger accident it had began launching so frequently that people got bored of it So once public interest in the shuttle program began to wane, they started trying to figure out a way in which they could get people interested in it again.

9:36And that's one of the reasons they came up with what they called the spaceflight participant program, which led to the idea of sending a citizen, a teacher, in the case of Kristen McCall, into space. Stepping back, you know, after spectacular disasters, we often ask this question about culture and organization. 9-11, the tsunami in Japan, I reported there, Enron, the financial crisis. What did you learn about NASA, its organizational culture, which may have contributed or been at the center of what happened here? One of the reasons the Challenger accident was so shocking and seemed so unbelievable was that NASA had begun to seem to the public, and certainly I, watching as a teenager at the time, felt this way too, that it was this almost faultless organization doing the impossible on a regular basis.

10:32That conviction had also begun to take root inside NASA itself. You know, they'd become both complacent as an organization, but also they'd sort of begun to believe in their own mythos. and that meant that they gradually expanded what they regarded as a level of acceptable risk and that's really what began to eat away at you know what had once been extremely tight safety regime so that by 1986 you know the engineers involved in the program at all levels really had begun to accept too much risk as being something that they could live with yeah we've been talking to Adam Higginbotham, author of the book Challenger, the true story of disaster and heroism on the edge of space.

11:23Adam, thank you very much. Thank you.

11:31Coming up next, we dig further into the story of Krista McAuliffe, the teacher whom we heard a minute ago telling Johnny Carson she thought the shuttle program was safe. She died at 37 years old without ever reaching space. But as Robin Young explores after the break, she leaves a legacy of hope for many in her native New Hampshire.

12:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from SelectQuote. For over 40 years, SelectQuote has been one of the most trusted brokers in insurance. Their mission is simple, to find you the right insurance policy for your unique needs. They shop, you save. In as little as 15 minutes, SelectQuote's licensed agents will compare policies from trusted top-rated insurance companies to find you the best fit for your health, your lifestyle, and your budget. And they work for you for free. Get the right life insurance for you and save more than 50 % at selectquote.com slash anytime. That's 50 % off at selectquote.com slash anytime.

12:40If you saw it, you can't forget it. The Challenger space shuttle carried the first teacher. There'd been a nationwide competition. By launch day, we felt we knew the winner, Krista McAuliffe. 25 million schoolchildren across the country watched live. Her class in New Hampshire watched, surrounded by media, live. And then 73 seconds in, what happened? Plumes of white smoke? Something's wrong. Mission control was silent. Then we heard this. We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded. Right there on our TVs and for those watching at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Krista McAuliffe and six others were gone.

13:22New Hampshire Public Radio has been remembering her life for the multi-part series produced by Patrick McNameeking. Patrick, pretty somber assignment, but I'm thinking I don't think you were even born. So you've been learning about all this, right? Right. Yeah, it's actually been a real pleasure to get to understand. You know, it's a strange word to use, but it's been really wonderful to get to understand people's experience and memories of her and how she impacted so many people for someone who wasn't alive during that event. Right. Well, let's start with Roger Wood, who's a radio news reporter from WOKQ Radio in New Hampshire.

13:55He was there. You know, he thought everything was going well. Then he went into the media room. What did he say? Yeah, he says he saw reporters crying. He saw people were just stunned and shocked. And what's interesting is that a lot of the media, what I learned is that at that point in time, you know, the Challenger or shuttle launches were kind of run of the mill and there wasn't a lot of media covering it. So most of the media in the room was from New England and New Hampshire. So it was very personal for a lot of the people who were there. I mean, just about everyone had interviewed her. You know, we all had.

14:28But this crying was happening across the country. Look, let's back up. You spoke with one of McAuliffe's former students. This is Rick St. Hilaire, who reminds us of who Kristen McAuliffe was. And she was truly special, enthusiastic about everything she taught. Let's listen. You know, she was one of those great teachers that really just passed on not just knowledge, but it's the kind of appreciation for learning. And you don't even know that you're learning. You know, when you hear from somebody who's so, so enthused about what it is that they're doing. She was the ultimate student, which made her the ultimate teacher.

15:04So, Patrick, Rick there was a senior. McAuliffe had been his advisor. He was like 17, 18. This was 40 years ago. He's older now. But does he remember what it was like? It's one of those moments for most people, like the JFK assassination. Does he remember, you know, seeing it or knowing about it? Yeah, he says that most of the students were in the auditorium watching, and he had to do some other business in the school. So he was in the principal's office, and there was a tiny black and white TV. And so that's where he saw it. And Rick was someone who had always been interested in space and the space program and really knew the ins and outs of launches.

15:44And he says that immediately as he saw the plumes of white smoke, he knew something was wrong. But that wasn't the case for everyone there watching as well. They had their noisemakers to cheer and congratulate, and they were excited. And he knew immediately that something was wrong. Well, and we remember that Cruz spent days dragging all sorts of cable and everything into this one school. It was supposed to be such a pivotal place so that people could be watching and Cruz could be there. Another girl, Andrea Rice, you spoke with, a senior also at Concord High, watching the cafeteria. Let's listen.

16:20What I remember most about that day is turning around the moment of the explosion and seeing all the teachers in the back and seeing their faces and just having like this real epiphany that they weren't just teachers, that they were human beings. and that was their friend. And that was their people. That was their family. And that, I think, broke me almost more.

17:05Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mehrotra Institute at Boston University. On the show, host Kurt Nickish asks the thorny questions necessary for this moment about the role business plays in society. Questions like, why are executives paid so much? Why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And of course, is business broken? Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts.

17:40Patrick, you also spoke with Krista McCullough's former colleagues. Phil Brown first met her in 1985. They were both competing to be the first teacher in space. He was a science teacher at another high school near hers. Here he is reflecting on the night she died and the vow he made to himself. Right then and there, I said, I am going to do something to honor the memory of this woman so that we as teachers and our students that we try to guide and mold into good human beings and good citizens will be able to have a successful future on this planet. And I did. Patrick, what did Phil Brown do? So his daughter was born on the day the launch was supposed to take place.

18:38And he was holding her, watching just the repeat on the news. And that's when he was having this reflection. And so right off the bat, he named his daughter's middle name, Krista. And then going forward, he had been a contender to be the teacher on board the Challenger. And he started reaching out to NASA. So he went to an education for teachers at the Goddard Space Center and learned about, that was where he learned about climate change. And he learned about satellite imaging that was being used to track how forestation and plant life on Earth was reacting to climate change and pollution at the time.

19:20And so he started reaching out to all sorts of people to see if he could collaborate with them and create some sort of educational curriculum. And he met, there was a professor, a botanist who had worked with JPL and had an experiment that was supposed to be on the Challenger who was coming to UNH. And the two collaborated to use satellite imaging data, and they developed a curriculum where students could go out with magnifying glasses and rulers and collect data on the white pine and use that data to corroborate the information that was being picked up by the satellite. And so all these students got to collect data and store it at NASA, and he was really able to inspire lots of kids with this curriculum and have their work really matter.

20:13You know, kids as young as first grade being able to collect data for NASA. Terrific. Well, we know Krista McAuliffe also taught a self-designed history course called The American Woman. That was unusual to a class focused on women's history in the 80s. Lori Gordon McKenzie started teaching the course a year after Krista McAuliffe died, you know, picking it up, and called her a pioneer. She became bigger than she was, but then I think that would be her point. We have to find the extraordinary in the everyday. Well, Patrick McNamee King, again, producing this series for New Hampshire Public Radio, and again, this is all before you were born, ancient history.

20:55How are you feeling about what you learned? I mean, I feel deeply inspired. Like, as you said, I was not alive at this time. But what I learned is that McAuliffe taught through the diaries and journals of people, everyday people in history whose perspective would otherwise be lost. And as I learned this, it just felt deeply resonant to be, you know, driving around New Hampshire, talking to people who have this memory in this deeply impactful way and whose lives were changed by this. And to be recording and sharing this back into the community, it just, I felt very connected to her mission of understanding history through the lives of everyday people.

21:45Well, and you remind us that one of the things we lost was a very important diary. We're going to leave you with the sounds of Krista McAuliffe talking about what it was she would have done if she'd been on that trip. Let's listen. When I was thinking about doing a project for the space shuttle, I felt that doing a diary or a journal and keeping these notes would help personalize the space program. The students and the teachers and others who I would speak to would have somebody else's viewpoint other than an astronaut's to look through. Ah, what a loss. Patrick McNameeking, again producer and host at New Hampshire Public Radio, on the 40th anniversary of the Challenger explosion that took the life of teacher Krista McAuliffe and six astronauts.

22:32A huge loss. Patrick, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Robin.

22:43That's it for us today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Sam Rapelson and Julia Corcoran. Our editors were Todd Munt and Michael Scotto. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And Here and Now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend, and here and now, anytime, we'll be back with you on Monday.