America’s space shuttle disaster
CHALLENGER A true story of heroism and disaster on the edge of space
ADAM HIGGINBOTHAM 576pp. Viking. £25.
JANUARY 28, 1986, proved to be a horrendous day for Nasa, and by extension for the rest of the world. That morning the space shuttle Challenger, STS-51L, departed Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, then broke up during launch when one of two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) ignited the main liquid fuel tank. The resulting explosion occurred 73 seconds into the flight, causing the deaths of all those on board – at that point the worst accident in the history of spaceflight.
Seven crew members – Francis R. Scobee, mission commander, Michael J. Smith, pilot, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory B. Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe – died in the catastrophe. Its impacts were felt deeply, because the Challenger’s crew members represented a cross section of the American population in terms of race, gender, geography, background and religion. The explosion became one of the most momentous events of the 1980s; billions around the world saw it happen on TV.
Moreover, for many young space enthusiasts the Challenger mission had taken on extra significance because a member of its crew was a teacher who was to conduct a class and several student experiments in orbit. The “Teacher in Space” program – with the young and energetic Christa McAuliffe, a career teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, at its centre – had been years in the making, and Nasa had touted it as an important step forward in education for young people. The mission’s abrupt end distressed millions of schoolchildren who watched Challenger’s launch live.
The events of January 28 frame a compelling discussion in this far-ranging book about Nasa’s human spaceflight efforts since the heroic days of the Moon race in the 1960s. Challenger’s author, Adam Higginbotham, is a celebrated British investigative reporter who has written for many high-profile periodicals and is the author of the superb Midnight in Chernobyl: The untold story of the world’s greatest nuclear disaster (2019). Here he offers the best book about the dramatic and tragic events of the Challenger accident since Diane Vaughan’s study The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky technology, culture, and deviance at Nasa (1996). While Vaughan used sociological and communication theory to develop an explanation of the disaster, Higginbotham’s important book focuses on the dramatis personae in an account that contributes to a broader story of risk in high-technology enterprises.
Throughout Challenger Higginbotham is at his best in characterizations of the key actors. He elegantly portrays Nasa stalwarts such as
