> January 28, 1986...
My husband and I watched the launch on TV - it was flawless, until it suddenly flared and broke apart. I still can't stand to watch it.
I was majoring in physics at UC Berkeley at the time. I went to class. We had a blackboard in Le Conte Hall near the library where we'd write up notes and equations. I erased it and instead wrote up the announcement of the Challenger explosion and current analysis of failure for the grads and undergrads. "There were no survivors", I wrote, obviously. People added to it other analysis over the course of a few weeks as new information came in. We felt very strongly about the Challenger in the Berkeley physics department - as if we'd let the crew down somehow.
We were proud that Feynman, a CalTech physicist, wouldn't let the investigation bury the findings and lie to the American people but instead was stubborn and smart. His duty was to the truth. He didn't buy the malarkey of "testing" O-rings over months. He just got some ice water, dropped one in, and shattered it - He showed any person could understand the problem. He dug and badgered and revealed to the world that the odds of catastrophic failure weren't one in a million or one in ten thousand but actually more like 1:100 - 1:500. The shuttle was such a complex system, how could we expect it not to fail eventually?
Did we listen? Yes and no. We fixed the O-rings. We tightened up procedures. But we didn't fix the fundamental problem - complexity - and plan for simpler "Shuttle 2" follow-on designs. It cost too much. We tossed budget scraps to the X-38 project and then, when it really began to deliver, killed it. We cut the funding for safety. We demanded "better, faster, cheaper" from an aging and problematic infrastructure, when we replace our cars every 2 years and our computers, cells, and PDAs yearly.
We ignored the odds.
I hope the American people don't fall into despair or cynicism, but instead experience the full responsibility and loss of Columbia that is our due. It will be painful, but that's the only way we'll have the courage as a people to really "fix it".
Lynne Jolitz.