Challenger: The Warning NASA Overruled

The night before Challenger launched, the engineers who built its boosters told NASA not to fly below 53°F. It launched at 36°F. On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger (STS-51L) broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew. This video follows the Rogers Commission report from the first O-ring erosion in 1981, through Roger Boisjoly's 1985 memo and the waived launch constraint, to the January 27 teleconference where Morton Thiokol reversed its no-launch recommendation, and finally to Richard Feynman's finding that managers put the odds of failure at 1 in 100,000 while engineers said 1 in 100. Chapters: 00:00 Seventy-three seconds 00:37 The joint that was already failing 01:59 The memo nobody acted on 03:20 The night before: the 53-degree teleconference 04:41 Launch day, second by second 06:05 What the Rogers Commission found 07:18 What changed, and what did not Sources & credits: Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (June 6, 1986), Vol. 1 ch. 3–6, 8 and Vol. 2 App. F (Feynman): nasa.gov/history/rogersrep NASA STS-51L and STS-26 mission pages; NASA History "30 Years Ago: STS-26 Returns Shuttle to Flight"; NASA/NTRS "Reusable Solid Rocket Motor — Accomplishments, Lessons" (20120001536). Footage: NASA STI Program, "Challenger Launch and Breakup" (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons). Photos: NASA Image and Video Library and NASA GPN archive (51l-s-156, 51L-10147, 51L-10162, 51L-S-002, S85-39943, S85-40031, S85-42474, S85-44253, S85-46260, S86-25192, S86-25199, S86-25254, S86-28888, S86-28889, S86-29994, S86-30363, S86-30503, S88-47522, s88-41541, s26-s-032, GPN-2000-001348, GPN-2000-001496, GPN-2004-00002, GPN-2004-00004, GPN-2004-00010, GPN-2004-00011, GPN-2004-00013, GPN-2000-001423, GPN-2000-001426, Rogers Commission members at KSC, Challenger on the crawler-transporter); Rogers Commission report figures. All public domain, U.S. Government works. Music: "Flow My Tears" — A Person Unknown, YouTube Audio Library. All visuals are archival public-domain footage and photographs used to illustrate the narration. NASA does not endorse this channel. Narration voice is AI-generated (text-to-speech). #Challenger #SpaceShuttle #EngineeringDisasters #NASA #RogersCommission