The pressure to increase the shuttle’s flight rate tended to
make shuttle managers to ignore or paper over technical problems with the space
shuttle system. For instance, NASA and contractor engineers knew about the out
gassing problem with the solid rocket boosters for months before the Challenger
disaster. A seal on the SRB tended to become brittle in cold weather, causing
super heated gasses to escape.
Nevertheless, on a cold, January day in 1986, the Challenger
lifted off and 73 seconds into the flight was destroyed with her crew when the
super heated gasses from the SRB ignited the hydrogen filled external tank. The
destruction of the Challenger and her crew was especially traumatic due to the presence
of teacher in space Christa McAuliffe.
McAuliffe was to be a first in a whole series of citizens in space. There would
have been a journalist in space, an artist in space, and so on.
The Challenger Disaster caused a great deal of introspection
at NASA. The space agency spent two and a half years recovering, redesigning
the SRBs and taking other measures to improve the safety and reliability of the
space shuttle fleet.
There were other effects of the disaster. The citizen in
space program was tacitly cancelled, though Christa McAuliffe’s backup, Barbara
Morgan, was eventually made an official NASA astronaut, though she has yet to
get a flight assignment. President Reagan signed a directive removing military
and commercial payloads from the shuttle manifest, an admission that the
shuttle would never be the sole answer to access to space. A new space shuttle
orbiter, the Endeavour, named after another of Captain Cook’s ships, was built
and entered service in May, 1992.