
The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion - cthulhujr
http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/23902766/nasa-astronaut-ellison-onizuka-soccer-ball-survived-challenger-explosion
======
rmason
I was visiting farmers reviewing plans for the next crop year. I'd just
arrived and the farmer says do you mind if we watch the Challenger launch
before starting? It's got that teacher going up in space. I told him that my
high school government teacher had been one of the ten finalists so I took a
pretty keen interest myself.

I can remember the numbness I felt in his living room as we watched the
Challenger explode. It's something once viewed that you can't unsee. Words
fail you in trying to explain it.

I had no idea at the time that there were five engineers who tried valiantly
to stop the launch because of the cold weather and failed.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/01/28/464744781...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/01/28/464744781/30-years-after-disaster-challenger-engineer-still-
blames-himself)

~~~
mehrdadn
> The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers had tried to
> stop the launch. Their managers and NASA overruled them. That night, he told
> his wife, "It's going to blow up."

This sent chills down my spine... the world just shouldn't be like this.

~~~
T-hawk
One important piece of data to correlate with that: how many times previously
had engineers issued similar warnings for launches that then proceeded fine?

Warning fatigue is a thing and reasonable to wonder whether that happened at
all here.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It was a specific warning about the vulnerability of the O-ring seals in low
temperatures (precisely the mechanism of failure that doomed the Challenger).
It was an unusual, specific, and high profile warning which was effectively
overruled by NASA management. The guidance was to avoid launching in such low
temperatures, the response was: "My God, Thiokol. When do you want me to
launch? Next April?" That from Lawrence Mulloy at NASA MSFC. This is a pretty
clearcut case and nothing like "warning fatigue".

~~~
nashashmi
Maybe it wasn't warning fatigue then. It might be overthinking fatigue. I
guess missions have gotten delayed before for so many reasons and this time
they just got tired of "doing it again."

~~~
InclinedPlane
This is a well studied problem, it wasn't overthinking, it was "go fever",
specifically in the form of "Normalization of Deviance" [1].

Morton-Thiokol and NASA set criteria for safety margins on the Shuttle system.
And the Shuttle kept on violating those safety margins again and again.
Instead of grounding the fleet or studying the problem further or attempting
to ameliorate the problem the safety margins were loosened, deviance was
normalized, unsafe operations were normalized. And those who called out the
legitimate safety problems with the Shuttle were harassed and derided because
their views differed from the orthodoxy (that a Shuttle loss was a 1 in
100,000 probability) and got in the way of their goals (the high flight rate
of dozens of launches per year that were necessary for the Shuttle system to
meet its promises).

Later analysis of the Shuttle system [2] has indicated several other potential
key failure modes that could have caused a loss of vehicle and crew,
especially during the early flights. Not just the SRBs and the thermal
protection system (the weaknesses which doomed Challenger and Columbia) but
other systems such as the APUs, SSMEs, flight software, etc. led to a risk of
catastrophic loss as high as 1 in 10 during the first several years of
flights, 1 in 20 around the Challenger disaster period, 1 in 50 during the
return to flight period after Challenger, and about 1.1-1.3% during the post-
Columbia period.

1:
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_and_the_normalization_of_deviance)

2:
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201100...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110004917.pdf)

~~~
Gibbon1
> that a Shuttle loss was a 1 in 100,000 probability

I'm not sure how anyone could say that with a straight face.

Serious events happen with commercial aircraft at a rate of about 1 in 1M.
Figure that a rocket is inherently 100X more dangerous. And that the lack of
repetitive experience with rockets bumps the risk another 1:100. Meaning you
build a lot of aircraft and fly them all the time you get good at knowing
where the design holes are. Also consider that each serious failure when
mitigated improves the odds of the rest of the fleet. You don't get that when
you're only flying a dozen flights a year.

Est risk: 1X10-6 X 100 X 100 gives 1% chance of loss.

Notable the Apollo program flew 15 flights 3 had serious failures[1][2] and 1
near loss event (Apollo 13). For consideration the Saturn V was a well tested
conservative design which the Shuttle was not.

[1] Apollo 6 and 13 had early engine shut downs due to failures of the S-II
engines.

[2] Apollo 12 lightning strike took out the command module computer.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The '80s in particular were a time of greater trust in government and greater
mass conformity in popular culture. The media by and large did not challenge
these absurd estimates, nor did schools, nor did, largely, the public. At the
time NASA was near the peak of its reputation. It had achieved the moon
landing, it was the middle of the Cold War were NASA's achievements were an
important battleground, and so on. Overall the tendency was to simply defer to
NASA's judgment.

There was also a bit of self-delusion going on. The Shuttle system was, by
design, the backbone of spaceflight (manned and unmanned) in the US at the
time. On the one hand you could believe that the Shuttle system was a modern
miracle, fully capable of achieving (or nearly so) its design promises of
cheap and ubiquitous spaceflight, ushering in a new space age, including the
launch and assembly of a next generation space station in the near future, and
possibly including the realization of manned missions to Mars within the next
decade or two. The competing view, that the Shuttle was a risky launch system
that could never achieve its design promises even within an order of
magnitude, was a vastly depressing (though in retrospect realistic) one.
Holding that view meant that we would have to go back to the drawing board and
spend maybe another decade building a new launch system that would reset us
back to the way things were in the 1960s, and then we'd have to slowly crawl
our way toward incremental progress. That was a very difficult truth to
accept, ironically more difficult the more you were invested in space
exploration.

Sometimes reality is a tough pill to swallow.

~~~
Gibbon1
> There was also a bit of self-delusion going on.

What I think is interesting is how you could judge the success of the Apollo
missions. One one hand they succeeded if your willing to ignore the Apollo 1
fire. But as I referenced the four critical failures. I think sober hindsight
paints a picture of luck on the ragged edge.

One thing though I I think one needs to be aware of how risk gets amortized
over time. Airliners are in heavy service and so the catastrophes due to
design and operation holes is atomized over a lot of flights, where the
shuttle never really was ever anything more than a few prototypes. Consider
Boeing's first three 787's. Boeing planned to sell those but they've been
written off. One can guess why.

------
jedberg
> You may not know it, but you carry some of his words with you in your own
> earthly exploration, printed in every U.S. passport.

This whole article was fantastic, but this was the coolest part for me. To
learn that his quote is on every passport. I've never read the quotes on my
passport before, but now I have.

~~~
blahedo
I agree. It's on the biometric passports but not the previous generation, on
p28 (and is abbreviated from the full quote printed in the article):

"Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new
worlds ... to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation."
\--Ellison S. Onizuka

The background on that page is a palm tree and a silhouette that might be
Diamond Head, but the facing page is a space scene (not to scale) with an
earthrise over the moon and a satellite.

~~~
jedberg
> but the facing page is a space scene (not to scale)

Sorry, but that made me laugh. Now I kinda want to see it to scale. :)

------
runciblespoon
"the solid rocket boosters ignited and somewhere in the right booster, a
0.280-inch-wide O-ring failed due to the cold."

The 'solid rocket boosters' being constructed in segments because they had to
be transported by rail from Utah. They had to be constructed in that state as
part of the deal to get the politicians to vote in the finances.

~~~
jedberg
I see what you're getting at, but the separate construction and transport was
not the issue here. The O ring was a necessary pressure valve, but it failed
because the cold made it brittle.

The bigger issue here was the politics between Nasa and it's contractors. The
contractors told them that the launch would be dangerous at the temperature,
but they were ignored.

~~~
robryk
> The O ring was a necessary pressure valve (...)

Do I understand correctly that you're saying that the O-ring would be
necessary even if the SRBs were constructed as a single long tube, instead of
segments that are assembled together?

If so, would you mind expanding on that? I was under the impression that the
only reason the whole O-ring and caulking of the joints was necessary was the
existence of the joints.

~~~
jedberg
I'm not a rocket scientist so I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the O ring
would be required no matter how it was constructed.

~~~
0xffff2
Why do you think that? As the person you replied to said, the only reason the
O-ring is there at all is to seal the joint between the sections. If the
join't didn't exist, there would be no reason at all for there to be a rubber
ring embedded in the structure.

~~~
jedberg
Because that spot on the SRB is a flex joint to allow some movement of the
nozzle as the engine fires. The joint isn't there because of transportation or
other reasons.

~~~
askvictor
I'm no rocket scientist either, but happened to be reading in depth about SRBs
in general and Challenger in particular, and my understanding is: the joint in
question was a field joint, to be assembled in the field, as opposed to
factory joints which were assembled in the factory. The construction of these
joints were different (asbestos insulation vs O-rings). The differing design
is due to transportation and logistics.

------
mixmastamyk
The story of the Challenger that day is one of the few things that can
reliably squeeze a tear or two from me. Interestingly, I've never heard about
this part of it, thanks.

~~~
sidlls
Same here. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing, the smells and
sounds, and how my teacher rushed to turn off the television we were all
watching the launch on once it was clear what was happening. Kids crying, not
understanding what was happening, the feel and look of the carpet, wall
decorations, everything. It's the most vivid memory of childhood I have. I
don't think I'll ever forget it.

I couldn't even read through this story.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> how my teacher rushed to turn off the television we were all watching the
> launch on once it was clear what was happening

It’s funny, this is what causes trauma... if you interrupt the stress reaction
and try to make it go away, you hold onto it. If animals are allowed to go
through their full stress cycle, they forget the trauma.

~~~
jacobush
To be fair, they might have feared what more was about to come through that tv
set. Or the impending wrath from parents when little Billy can't sleep at
night. Was such concerns (parents) a thing in the 80s already?

------
ridgeguy
On Challenger's last day, I had met very early that morning with a couple of
angel investors who signed a funding commitment for my first company. Went
home, watched Challenger explode. An hour later, angel investors called to say
"never mind".

Watching Challenger blow up hurt worse. Especially in following months when
failure analysis showed it could have been avoided by launching within the
allowable temperature window.

Some days you really remember.

~~~
joering2
They probably did you a favor by not being forced to deal with them down the
road.

Unless you were as an engineer directly on Challenger O-Rings, I don't see any
reason why anyone would cancel their financial commitment toward a startup
project, because of this obvious tragedy.

~~~
RyJones
I suspect the timing was a coincidence.

------
mercwear
I did not know what to expect from ESPN, this was a really well written
article.

~~~
satsuma
espn's more long-form storytelling is top notch. check out their 30 for 30
documentary series, they're fantastic.

~~~
mercwear
Thanks for the heads up - I'll check them out!

------
retrogradeorbit
Not just the soccer ball but the whole crew compartment.

[http://www.space-shuttle.com/challenger1.htm](http://www.space-
shuttle.com/challenger1.htm)

------
bawigga
I went to Clear Lake from 2001-2004. Lot's of friends with relations to NASA
and supporting industries. Sad I can't remember the soccer ball being on
display.

Any other Falcons out there remember seeing it?

------
piyh
That was incredibly touching

~~~
bdamm
The entire story thread was really well done. If anything it’s evidence of
NASA’s soul as played out in the people who have built their lives around
rocket operations.

------
mncharity
> The failure allowed heated, pressurized propellants to leak out onto the
> external fuel tank, causing catastrophic structural failure. Seventy-three
> seconds into its 10th flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart,
> killing all seven members of its crew. It was 11:39 a.m.

Sigh. It's perhaps silly of me in an age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, but I'm
saddened to see this line repeated yet again, 30 years on. Perhaps Malinowski
is just echoing old reporting. But a journalist of her caliber seems likely to
have run this by NASA. Which suggests NASA PR is still prioritizing spin over
integrity, even all these years later.

For those who haven't seen this line before, the template is "<explosion>
<fast> <dead>". As in 'the explosion ripped apart the shuttle faster than the
blink of an eye, killing the astronauts'. By such word-smithed sleigh-of-hand,
NASA would leave readers with the impression that the crew was killed
immediately, a quick non-lingering death, without flat-out lying.

One thing we're sure of is that some of the seven were _not_ killed in the
breakup at 11:39. I don't recall whether Onizuka's air pack was one of those
found, and found to be manually activated. Nor whether there ended up being
any evidence of cabin depressurization. But my understanding is that now, as
then, there's no reason to believe that some of the seven didn't survive until
cabin ocean impact minutes later.

> On the roof of the launch control tower, the families of the crew
> desperately searched the twin trails of smoke that twisted skyward for signs
> of the crew cabin.

:/ Perhaps it doesn't matter. It's not _that_ different a story. And there's
the "little white lies are fine" interpretation of integrity. Why _shouldn 't_
popular history get a prettified version? And given how NASA is funded,
embracing integrity might be quite unhealthy. And yet... I'd have been happier
if Malinowski wrote this paragraph a bit differently.

~~~
ddoolin
Or, given the overall tone of the piece, she didn't feel it necessary to go
into those details. I'm sure there are plenty of other details that also went
glossed over. Your own tone implies they're lying for a possibly nefarious
reason -- what is it? If I'm right, it might be more accurate to point out how
she failed to mention the engineer's warnings to NASA and other supervisors
about the high risk of failure of the gasket(s), as that, to me, makes them
look markedly worse than the astronauts surviving the breakup.

I'm sure it's harrowing to have 2 and a half minutes to contemplate your
inevitable death and try fruitlessly to stop it (and even for us to read about
it) but I don't think it's nefarious to leave that bit out so much as some
degree of respect to the families.

~~~
mncharity
> your own tone implies they're lying for a possibly nefarious reason

Nefarious? Flagrantly wicked, abominable, impious? No, just PR spin - long-
term repeated misrepresentation. Unremarkable in politics. Much less accepted
in engineering. The question of "to what standards should NASA PR be held?",
is indeed a root issue. For NTSB, it would be shocking. For DHS, unsurprising.
NASA struggles to survive in a niche much more like DHS than NTSB. But the
question repeatedly asked over the years, both within and without, is whether
NASA PR weighs political concerns too heavily - to a degree sometimes simply
unnecessary - and engineering/science-style honesty too lightly.

> she didn't feel it necessary to go into those details

My focus is not on the piece in isolation. Though one might object to the
piece in isolation reinforcing a widespread misconception. But my sadness
stemmed from context. From yet again seeing the same, not "trope"... "spin"? -
descriptive devices that have repeatedly been used to mislead people.

"Seventy-three seconds [...] broke apart, killing all seven members of its
crew. It was 11:39 a.m." Other versions have had timestamps down to hundredths
of a second, as if that somehow mattered. Comments like 'too fast for even the
computers to notice', or 'if you blinked, you'd have missed it'. Crew deaths
from ocean impact have little more connection with T+74 disassembly, than with
T+58 plume. Crew experience has little connection with computer and ground
observer experience. But NASA PR repeatedly used these same tricks of phrasing
to establish and reinforce a misconception. I was just sad to see them yet
again, so many years later.

> failed to mention the engineer's warnings

My focus isn't on what is absent, but on what is present - this familiar
structure of misdirection.

> as some degree of respect to the families

It's been thirty years. Is the cost-benefit tradeoff really still in favor of
continuing to use this same misleading description?

But here's a more upbeat interpretation: Perhaps the author simply modeled the
paragraph on one decades old - it is "pretty" \- and didn't run it by anyone.
So maybe we're just seeing an unfortunate blast from the NASA PR past, rather
than anything contemporary.

------
molteanu
"This is the story of the soccer ball that survived". 200+ points. Horrible.
Seems like HN is getting worse and worse.

~~~
filleduchaos
What is worse and worse about this post?

~~~
molteanu
The subject of it.

~~~
sidlls
People who think of themselves as "hackers" ought to be keenly interested in
the entire Shuttle program, especially failure cases, and perhaps even more
strongly interested in the human elements related to them.

These things were truly marvels of engineering (in both positive and negative
respects). The kinds of thought that goes into these kinds of things, and so
many other in the physical engineering world, make "hacking" look trite in
many ways.

