Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

Throughout the narrative, Higginbotham underscores NASA’s understanding that space travel is, and likely always will be, very risky. NASA must seek to minimize risks by operating only within a limit deemed “acceptable risk.” However, this book is an account of how an institution can lose sight of the seriousness of these risks, especially by refusing to heed warnings or address failings once they occur. Higginbotham thus seeks to demonstrate the high costs a failure to learn from past errors brings. 

Higginbotham demonstrates that a failure to learn from past errors was present for decades before the Challenger disaster took place, creating a longstanding, dangerous pattern within NASA. He opens the narrative with the deaths of three astronauts on a test flight of Apollo 1 in 1967. The factors that caused the fire—a faulty hatch latch and excessive flammable materials within the vessel—were identified prior to the test flight. A rush to complete the exercise, however, resulted in operating with these known risk factors rather than taking the time to correct them. While the loss of life did force NASA to remedy some of these pressing issues, the larger lesson about heeding warnings went largely unacknowledged. 

Higginbotham then details how the Challenger disaster was also a case of refusing to learn from past lessons. He repeatedly stresses how engineers like Roger Boisjoly realized that the damage sustained by the O-rings in previous flights, and the inability of the O-rings to function properly in cold temperatures, posed significant risks of a shuttle exploding during launch. Boisjoly repeatedly warned NASA of his findings, only to be stonewalled or dismissed when trying to persuade them of the severity of the situation. The close calls represented by the O-ring evidence of previous flights were not taken seriously; NASA instead insisted that the absence of prior disaster suggested that future disasters were unlikely, rather than realizing that the prior flights had had lucky escapes. 

Even after the Challenger disaster, NASA continued its pattern of refusing to learn from its errors. Higginbotham emphasizes how both NASA and the Thiokol executives sought to avoid blame during the official investigation of the Challenger disaster, with NASA proving evasive and Thiokol even seeking to punish Boisjoly and McDonald for their honesty during the hearings. Higginbotham therefore suggests that both NASA and Thiokol remained more concerned with their public image and avoiding punishment than learning from the tragedy that had just occurred. 

The loss of the flight crew aboard the 2003 Columbia shuttle reinforces Higginbotham’s argument that any positive changes in NASA were short- lived: The ultimate cause of the Columbia disaster—damage to the heat shield tiles—was a threat that NASA had been aware of since the shuttle design began in the 1970s. Though some individuals made requests to check for damage, this was not prioritized. Failure to keep past mistakes in mind, then, once again proved costly.