Books read: "Challenger" by Adam Higginbotham

How flawed decision making led to loss of lives

Apr 21, 2025

From time to time I come across a non-fiction, or a documentary which I encourage every engineer to read or watch, and every manager to go through it thoroughly twice. It was the case with Netflix’s Downfall. The Case Against Boeing. Now, I am under a similar impression having read Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger. A True History of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space.1

The cover of "Challenger" paperback — A copy of *Challenger* on my desk

This is a story about the space shuttle, but above all, a story about people involved in the program.

Firstly, about the crew of the fatal flight in January 1986. Five trained astronauts: Francis R. Scobee, Ellison Onizuka, Michael J. Smith, Judith Resnik and Ronald McNair. An engineer Gregory Jarvis, and a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, “a common American in space”, whose presence added enormously to the public interest of this particular launch. How long was their way to the Space Shuttle program, what steps of education and training they endured, what were their hopes and expectations from being a part of the most prestigious space exploration endeavour.

Secondly, about the engineers and managers in National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and in Morton Thiokol company which manufactured the solid rocket boosters, which failure led to the catastrophe. About teams who prepared the launch and flight controllers who took over once the engines had started.

Finally, the book gives an overview of the bereaved families of the deceased astronauts, as well as further fate of the most prominent actors of the drama.

Perhaps this point of view, a picture of many individuals and the technology in the background, makes the book so compelling. A list of names and their functions on the first pages of the book is a handy reference, helping to keep track of who is who.

While people rather than the spacecraft itself are the subject, decision making rather than technical procedures form the core action of the book. There are engineers and several levels of managers; even with the list of names mentioned above, the hierarchy of directors is not easy to follow.

As the story goes on, the reader witnesses, how clear and unambiguous messages and reports dissolve as they pass official channels. It seems as if the two directions of communication were carried in two different languages: a language of technical issues up the ladder, and a language of deadlines and schedules from the top to the bottom.

Sounds familiar to any engineer working for a corporation?

The book dismisses any too far-stretched blaming on the brink of conspiracy theories. There is no evidence of pressure from the White House to launch without delay so that the President Ronald Reagan could participate in live satellite connection with the Teacher in Space during his State of the Union address that day. But the chain of misguided decisions, many of them taken under pressure from NASA directors, led to allowing a launch which should have been postponed.

At one point, there was hope for rational reversal. Listening to opinions about the minimal ambient temperature to launch safely, Director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project demanded:

“This has to be an engineering decision, not a program management decision.”2

His voice drowned out in a deluge of contrary attitudes.

Because of many previous delays or cancellations, the pressure from NASA to launch on schedule was so intense, that Morton Thiokol, NASA’s subcontractor, capitulated, weakening its stance against.

The morning on 28 January 1986 was one of the coldest in Florida’s history. Frozen gaskets between rocket segments lost their required elasticity. A flame penetrated through the joints. The main tank of hydrogen fuel exploded. The whole crew died.

After the disaster, engineers redesigned the defective rocket joints. They added several layers of safety precautions to the crew capsule. A couple of years later, space shuttles returned to the orbit. Over a hundred of successful missions took place, until in 2003, Columbia, a veteran spacecraft, suffered a damage of insulation and disintegrated during re-entry, killing again a crew of seven.

The last space shuttle flew in 2011.

That is what I’d like to share about the book, strongly recommending reading it.

Let me add a thought I consider the main takeaway.

On Christmas 2021, NASA launched James Webb Space Telescope into space. The design and manufacturing took around twenty years, and ended seven years (!) behind the schedule.

But when the machinery unfolded in space, it passed successfully over three hundred “points of single failure”—procedures which had to be completed without a fault.3 To paraphrase reported (but not actually real) words of Flight Director Gene Kranz during the Apollo 13 mission: “Failure was not an option.”

You don’t impose deadlines on prototypes.
A design takes as much time as it needs.

When engineers estimate that an atypical design will take two years, start negotiating four years with the investor.

I strongly believe that these days, in the age of rapid climate change, the humanity must shift away from the paradigm of “more and faster”, in a similar way as the GDP is no longer a viable measure of a nation’s wellbeing and progress. The business culture of racing with administratively imposed deadlines must go.

One may argue that we need fast methods of construction, for example in house building. Yes, we do, but to achieve effectiveness at the construction site, you should not try to save on the design phase!

Let me conclude with the words of Richard Feynman, appointed to the Rogers Commission (investigating the Challenger catastrophe) as an expert on physics:

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”4

How pertinent are these words today! Not only in rocket science.

If you have any thoughts on the above, please leave a comment. Your remarks may improve my future writing.

Books read: "Challenger" by Adam Higginbotham

How flawed decision making led to loss of lives

Discussion about this post