Last week, Bob Ebeling died, which provides us with one last chance to learn the lessons of the Challenger disaster. Mr. Ebeling was an engineer at a Utah company called Morton Thiokol which was the designer of the rocket that was supposed to send the Challenger space shuttle into space. As we all know, instead of doing its job, the rocket blew up killing all seven crew members. The rocket blew up because the “o-rings,” which were supposed to seal the joints between the booster rocket’s segments, failed as a result of the cold snap that had hit Florida before the launch.
You might ask why there were o-rings on the rocket if they were subject to a danger that they would fail with such catastrophic results. There was an extensive investigation of the Challenger disaster, so we know quite well what happened. NASA had three companies competing to build the shuttle rocket. Two of them designed rockets without o-rings. Most people agreed that it was the preferred design. However, the junior Senator from Utah at that time was a ranking Republican on the Senator aerospace committee. Needless to say he got contributions from Thiokol and its senior officers. Plus he wanted to bring jobs to his constituents so they would keep him in his job. So the Senator push NASA into accepting the inferior rocket design.
Poor Mr. Ebeling, knowing that it was very likely that the Challenger rocket would blow up at launch, along with some other engineers, tried to talk NASA into postponing the launch. Unfortunately, the NASA managers and those at Thiokol overruled the engineers. Whatever all these managers said afterwards, their motivations for not postponing the flight are easy to guess. Thiokol’s senior people were not going to announce to the world that their rocket design had a major flaw. It would be a big public embarrassment, cost the company unknown millions of dollars and reduce the bonuses of senior officers. Their incomes were better protected by launching and crossing their fingers than by dealing with the problem and facing a certainly expensive public explanation. The NASA managers also didn’t want to be publicly embarrassed for having picking a flawed rocket design over 2 good ones. Afterall, they could lose their jobs in a firestorm of public anger. So for them, as well, it was better to launch and cross their fingers than to create a certain problem by admitting the concern about the rocket design flaw.
In all this, the engineers were worried about the seven people on the rocket. For the managers at Thiokol, the junior Senator from Utah and the NASA managers, however much they may have not wanted anyone to die, there were the much bigger concerns of making money, protecting bonuses, and keeping their jobs. In comparison, a school teacher from New Hampshire and her six companions were small potatoes. And, of course, the public’s investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in a flawed rocket design never bothered any of the decision-makers. The members of the 1% and their lackeys at NASA focused on what mattered to them, and the public and Christa McAuliffe paid the price, as the 99% still does every day in so many ways.
Ronald Reagan’s speech-writers wrote a nice speech for him at the time of the disaster, which he delivered well. But neither he nor anyone in his administration was interested in actually changing the conditions and the mind-set that cause the disaster.