Challenger: The Final Flight

I rarely cry over any television program or film, but this one did me in. I was 13 years old when the Challenger tragedy occurred, and my school had each class watch it live on TV. I will never forget the feeling of watching this happen real time, when my classmates and I were so thrilled and excited about an everyday school teacher going into space. It gave us all hope that we could do anything we wanted to do if we wanted it badly enough. Then, the unthinkable happened. They actually canceled school the next day to allow our young minds and hearts to come to terms with what we saw.

Like the tragedy of the Titanic, this is a bold reminder that mankind is NOT infallible and is inherently fragile. We may *advance* beyond our wildest dreams, but whenever human involvement is part of the equation, the worst can happen.

My heart goes out to the families and friends of these seven brave crewmembers and all of the others who have perished in other disasters. I had forgotten that they were able to retrieve the bodies of the Challenger crew. Hopefully that provided some sense of peace for those who continue to mourn their loss

RIP: Michael J. Smith Francis R. (Dick) Scobee Ronald E. McNair Ellison S. Onizuka Sharon Christa McAuliffe Gregory Jarvis Judith A. Resnik

You are true American HEROES and I will never forget you and your sacrifice.

Many born in the 90's have no recollection of a time when space exploration failed. This documentary looks at the successes of NASA in terms of inclusion during the 1970's and 80's. Then looked at how NASA got greedy and tried to do too many things at once, 7 great people were sacrificed in this greediness in January of 1986.

The facts that are known about this inexcusable disaster are all over the net. If you are interested in the technical aspects of the accident read the Rogers Commission report.

This is the story of the Challenger disaster from the viewpoint of a lot of people that were there at the time. I found those views compelling and with all of that background information, by the fourth episode I felt like I was back in 1985. It was like I was right there, with all of those people.

Not exactly on topic but a bit of trivia: I worked for Morton Thiokol when the Challenger accident happened. There was a mandatory employee meeting the day after the disaster. We were all required to sign non-disclosure agreements. We were told that if we were caught saying ANYTHING, even the word Challenger, to ANYONE (even co-workers), we would be fired immediately.

Full disclosure: I am a space enthusiast. I would have loved to go to space. And I vehemently support the US manned space program.

However... I have lived through all three major US space catastrophes, where we managed to kill (as of today) 17 astronauts in spacecraft (albeit three of those on the ground), and the sad truth about each of those tragedies is that they occurred because of people who put "schedules" and/or "money", ahead of crew safety. My "impression" is that, at the moment, we seem as though we might be over that hurdle (in our space program), but if for no other reason, this four-part documentary should serve as a cautionary tale, as it clearly shows how seemingly intelligent people, can make extremely dumb (or selfish) decisions, with total disregard for human life. It also clearly shows how, when incidents like these occur, you absolutely need to bring in a bevy of _independent_ outsiders to oversee the inevitable investigations that follow, because the guilty parties (be they individuals, or corporations) will go out of their way to try to gloss over their culpability, in having caused failures on this scale.

The focus of this documentary is different than a lot a previous efforts that cover this tragedy. It does go into a lot of detail about the root cause of the accident, how it was already a known (and very concerning) problem, and how/why managers within the contractor (Morton Thiokol) and NASA ranks choose to rationalize away the risks, simply to try to keep the shuttle program "on schedule". But this documentary spends just as much time talking about the seven people who lost their lives, and numerous family members and friends of the astronauts participated in new interviews, to give a more thorough understanding of who these people were, and what their lives were before the tragedy, and could have been, had their lives not ended so unnecessarily.

Also, there are interviews with people who risked the livelihoods to come forward during the Rogers Commission investigation, to provide information that no one else was providing, which clearly detailed the root cause of the accident, and the culpability of the people who decided to ignore the warnings of "impending doom". And, as with the family members, there are also new interviews (somewhat surprisingly) with the key (living) Thiokol and NASA employees who participated in the (flawed) recommendation to launch Challenger, even though their own engineers were vehemently opposed to doing so.

Anyway, this is an important slice of US Space Program history, and the series gives a solid understanding of how/why this tragedy occurred, as well as an "up close and personal" look at the people involved. I highly recommend it.

I have spent much of my adult life avoiding thinking about this tragedy. It is a case study on how an organization can become wicked and its members essentially the epitome of evil.

For me it was just horribly sad to watch this and there is a prevalent sense of horror as events move toward the inevitable ending.

What made it worth watching for me was to learn about Feynman's role. I knew the outline of it but not the specifics. It's quite amazing.

What astonishes me is there are these awful, old, gross NASA administrators who are still totally unrepentant, although they are clearly and obviously to blame for what happened.