Special Report: Challenger, Countdown to Disaster

Some of the debris is still out there, buried in the sand or sunk in the sea or floating far off the Carolinas, carried away by the Gulf Stream.

Much of what has been reclaimed lies loosely sorted on warehouse floors. The shards are mangled puzzle pieces that will never quite fit back together.

America sent seven of its own toward space on the frosty morning of Jan. 28. They exploded before the nation’s eyes, that instant becoming one of the haunting images of the century.

Blame has been pointed to a finger of flame that seared a hole through the space shuttle Challenger’s right solid rocket booster. But the experts remain perplexed. After 24 successful shuttle missions, why the calamity this time?

It may be months, if ever, before the precise error is pinned down. But the broader causes will be in more than an engineer’s miscalculation or a manufacturer’s defect or a ground crew shortcut. The complete story involves critical choices made over 25 years.

Some of those decisions are entwined with the fiber of legends--curiosity, bravado and heroism. But there also are more mundane textures to the weave. Challenger was the product of a chain of compromises: Choices were made to save dollars and that led to changes in design and that led to concessions in safety.

Since that terrible blast of fire in the Florida sky, 22 Times reporters have conducted hundreds of interviews with many of those most involved with the shuttle. They have examined thousands of pages of scientific, engineering and government documents.

The conclusion from this effort is that the last two decades--distinguished as they were by brilliant successes in space--also have been a countdown to disaster. As surely as America has reached for the stars, it has stumbled toward a cataclysm. As surely as the space program has thrilled the nation, it has invited the pressure of impossible goals.

Challenger perished 73 seconds into flight, and this long minute may become the most important warning in the history of space.

In the last few years, inspections have been curtailed, a bow to the pressures of money and time. Workers have complained of prolonged stress and repetition of tasks. The weather has been a habitual demon.

“Imperfect people don’t create perfect machines,” said John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists. “The explosion reminds us that we don’t have some sort of special relationship with space.”

Yet the heavens had never seemed closer than before the launch of Challenger mission 51L--or more a part of everyday life. The shuttle carried with it not only astronauts and scientists but Sharon Christa McAuliffe, a Concord, N.H., social studies teacher.

By her own description, she was the first “ordinary person” to go up. She called it the ultimate field trip, and she had prepared two lessons to teach from space.

One of them was titled, “Where We’re Going, Where We’ve Been.”

It is the lesson of forever.

The full report, “Challenger: Countdown to Disaster,” appears in Part 1-A.