February 1, 2025 • 52 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show Space Shuttle Challenger disaster thirty eight
years ago this week, I remember where I was. Do
you for people my age and I'm fifty four. That
was kind of our John F. Kennedy assassination moment where
we remember where we were, at least I do. We
(00:22):
will all remember that day. It was a shattering of
a sense of innocence, especially because that particular mission had
accomplished its goal of getting young people reinspired by the
(00:43):
Space Shuttle, by space travel. You know, it had become commonplace.
It had become kind of boring, right, We'd been to
the Moon, We've done all these things. So they they
bring in this school teacher, Krista mccauliffe. And I loved
about to tea, and my teachers loved teaching, and they
loved Christa mccalliffe. So we all knew the story. So
(01:07):
if there's no other name you knew on that mission,
it was Krista mccalliffe. She was a common school teacher.
She was going into space. This was awesome. It was
a pr campaign that worked, and as you know, all
seven crew members perished. Gregory Jarvis, the captain, engineer and astronaut,
(01:32):
Christa mccauliffe of course, Ronald McNair who was a physicist
and astronaut, Ellison on Azuka, engineer and astronaut. They were
all Americans, by the way. Judith Resnik who was a colonel,
engineer and astronaut, Dick Goby who was a colonel, pilot
and astronaut. Was he the head of the mission? I
(01:53):
think he was the kind of the commanding officer I
remember correctly. And Michael J. Smith was a pilot, captain
and astronaut. This is a little documentary about the disaster
from a group called Free Documentaries. And by the way,
let me while I have your attention for a moment.
(02:15):
People send me stuff all the time of a subject
they care about, and I don't care if it's YouTube, rumble,
whatever your format is. However you want to do it.
If you have an interest in something, make little documentaries
about it, share that with other people. That's how knowledge
is shared. It's a beautiful thing. If you don't have
(02:37):
the video side of it, because I'm not a video guy,
just talk into a microphone and create a podcast. Share it.
It doesn't matter if ten million people listen to it
or you get rich listening to it. It's cathartic to
share the information you have. It's enjoyable, it's rewarding. Don't
worry how many people end up listening to it. That's
(02:59):
not the goal, this idea of going viral. Hemy People
send me stuff all the time. It's often wonderful. Yeah,
so I just thought it saying, all right, here's your documentary.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Dark.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
On a cold January day in nineteen eighty six, the
Space Shuttle Challenger blew apart high above Kennedy Space Center
on Cape Canaveron just seventy three seconds after launch. A
rubber seal called an O ring had failed, and a
plume of fire leaked out of the solid fuel booster,
(03:38):
igniting the gigantic fuel tank. With millions of people tuned
in live on TV, Americans watched in disbelief as a
sinister white plume streaked across the sky and seven astronauts,
including New Hampshire High school teacher Christa McAuliffe, plummeted helplessly
(04:01):
twenty thousand meters to their deaths. America was plunged into
uncertainty and grief, and questioned NASA's ability to manage the
immensely complex space program effectively.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
He said, I would not recommend that we launched below
fifty three degrees fahrenheit, and that was primarily based on
the experience we'd had one year earlier. That concerned us,
and frankly, I was shocked because I felt that that
was a slam dunk. They would accept that and just
postpone the launch. They immediately started questioning the basis for
(04:39):
making such a recommendation based on the material presented.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
The single message that came out in a direct quote
to me from one of the most senior administrators in NASA,
when I said, we're going to lose one of these shuttles.
And I said that three months before. Challenger said to me,
our job is to launch on time every time. And
(05:07):
it was one of those hairs on the back of
the neck moment when I realized they're not listening.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
When a chastened NASA emerged from the tragedy, Shuttle flights resumed.
The Shuttle pushed the frontiers of technology to the utter limits,
and this incredibly complex machine continued flying for another quarter
of a century, with astronauts from around the world aboard.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
A quasi capito.
Speaker 7 (05:36):
I almost thought I'm the weekly I was the one
who had to perform at the level needed to be
up to the standard of the others. My work was
as important as the others. I had to trust the others,
the astronauts who were with me, but also those setting
up the launch, those who followed the operations, and at
the same time they had to trust me. Jokingly, I
(06:01):
don't care if the Shuttle blows up, as long as
it's not my fault.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Past a small group of brave engineers, analysts and astronauts
risked their careers so that the managerial errors behind the
Challenger disaster never happened again. It took two years before
the problem was fixed and the next Shuttle launched. One
(06:43):
of the last Space Shuttle missions is about to launch.
This complex machine has completed one hundred and thirty five missions.
Italy's first astronaut, Paolo Nespoli, flew on the Shuttle Mission
one hundred and twenty in twenty oh seven. Like all
but two missions, it was a successful flight where nothing
(07:07):
went wrong, although he was trained to be prepared for anything. Literally,
the tiniest error could mean catastrophe.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
No equal make with Bajo as.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
Crew, we had serious problems. Our training was very tough,
very serious. For example, at the time of launch, there
were a number of malfunctions that could happen, and according
to how they interacted between each other, a simple and
a stupid thing could have a knock on effect and
lead to the destruction of the vehicle. As a member
(07:44):
of the crew, you had to understand all these things,
and there was this kind of game. Let's call it
a game between the instructors who wanted to kill you
and you who responded successfully to all these provocations.
Speaker 6 (07:58):
Sponduchess to.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
January nineteen eighty six. Space Shuttle Challenger was originally set
to launch from Kennedy Space Center on January the twenty second,
nineteen eighty six, but bad weather led to delays. The
launch slipped from January twenty third, then twenty fourth, and
then twenty fifth. Another weather delay and a technical problem
(08:28):
with one of the door hatchers pushed the launch back
another two days. On January the twenty eighth, the weather
was still colder than usual for launching the shuttle. Alan
MacDonald represented the Utah based builder of the solid fuel
rocket boosters, Morton thayercar on site.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
I can remember walking out of the launch control center
to my car after that and aedber felt win so
strong and sand was blowing into my contact lenses and
it actually stopped me at times, and I have to
lean forward. I got to my car go to my
friend's house, and I wasn't there very long and I
got a phone call. The phone call was a fellow
(09:13):
the name of Bob Ebbling that worked for me, and
he said, Ali says, we've just been notified that some
meteorologist in Orlando said, you know the strong winds that
canceled their launch today, that there's a real coal front
behind that, and by tomorrow morning it may be down
as close as eighteen degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Is cold.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
I said, good grief. I'm really worried about where these
O rings seals are operated at all at those kind
of temperatures.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Back in Utah, the engineers were so worried about the
effect of the cold on the O rings that they
asked McDonald to get more detailed weather reports from NASA.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
I said, fine, I'll get that information for you. But
when I get it, but here's what I want you
to do. I want you to provide that to the engineers.
I want them to put together a presentation of what
we know and don't know what our concerns are, and
at the end of that presentation, I want you to
make sure that the Vice present Engineering comes on and
(10:18):
makes a recommendation, what is the lowest temperature it is
safe to launch? We have to do that.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Alan MacDonald got all the parties on board for a
teleconference between engineers in Utah, those in Marshall Space Center
in Huntsville, Alabama, at NASA management at Cape Canaveral. More
than a dozen engineers faxed their charts and made a
clear and unanimous recommendation the shuttle should not be launched
(10:46):
if the temperature was below fifty three degrees fahrenheit or
eleven point six degrees celsius, due to concerns about how
the O rings would perform.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
At the end of their presentation, the Vice President of Engineering,
Fellow and MS Bob Lonn got on the network and said,
based on what his engineers has have presented here this evening,
because they had to fax all those charts to both
Huntsville and also to the Cape, he said, I would
not recommend that we launch below fifty three degrees fahrenheit,
(11:20):
and that was primarily based on the experience we'd had
one year earlier. That concerned us, and frankly, I was
shocked because I felt that that was a slam dunk.
They would accept that and just postpone the launch. They
immediately started questioning the basis for making such a recommendation
(11:40):
based on the material presented.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Then the unthinkable happened. Several top executives vetoed the engineer's
recommendation in an offline caucus, giving NASA the green light
to launch Challenger at a temperature that was just thirty
eight degrees fahrenheit degrees celsius. A few engineers protested, but
(12:04):
were over ruined, due in part to concerns about losing
lucrative government contracts if the launch schedule were to fall
further behind. NASA wanted the recommendation facts to them in writing,
Allan refused.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
I did the smartest thing I ever did in my life.
I told NASA I would not sign that recommendation. I
feel we're taking risks that we should not take. It'll
have to come from the plant if it comes from anybody,
but not me.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
The o rings were not the only concern. Alan told
those gathered at the teleconference that high winds were gusting
up to seventy knots, and there was ice everywhere. All
the while, NASA officials were pressing for the facts from
Morton Thiokol.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
At that point in time, they said, well, you've brought
up all these concerns that aren't really should be your concerns,
but we'll pass them on in an advisory capacity. Only
where is the facts from your boss?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
The next day, the ice teams were busy knocking icicles
off the Shuttle and using an infrared pirometer gun to
get temperature readings that were entered into NASA logbooks. A
later review of those logs showed the temperature near the
failed solid rocket booster was below twenty eight degrees or
minus two degrees celsius, much colder than the ambient air
(13:37):
temperature of thirty one degrees fahrenheit, just below freezing point.
It was shaded from the sun and exposed to westerly winds.
In the meantime, the astronauts were preparing for launch, a
complicated process with strict protocols to follow. Paulo Nespoli flew
(14:01):
on the Shuttle in twenty oh seven.
Speaker 6 (14:03):
Qual Kiora Prima Delanchocho.
Speaker 7 (14:07):
A few hours before the launch, five or six hours
before launch, it's time to get dressed. We launch or
launch with what is called a launch and entry suit,
which is a pressurized suit that allows the crew to
stay alive in case of loss of pressure inside the shuttle.
So it began to be complicated with gloves, a helmet.
(14:28):
To speak, you needed to use a communications system, which
means that if seven people all speak at the same time,
it becomes incomprehensible. So you need discipline in terms of
who speaks what they say. So we put on the
suit in the quarantine area. There are protocols to check
the resistance to pressure of the suit, and from there
(14:51):
you go to the launch trick using a special vehicle
Italici Coveico.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
When I walked in a I heard the radio say
it was twenty two degrees fahrenheit. I was carrying my
briefcase in my headset because I was in the adjacent
contractors support area of the launch control center, and it
went up to my console computer console that monitors all
the data that comes from the solid rocket boosters, but
(15:18):
also has an inset of NASA select video of the launch,
but it also has several other options for cameras to
look at on the launch pat So I started looking
at these cameras and I saw this ice all over
the place. Well, then I launched this thing today, obviously.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
But the comforting facts had arrived from Morton Thire goal
bosses recommending NASA to proceed with the launch. The countdown
was on. There was no turning back.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I was worried that it was cold, and I really
felt that if the boosters would fail because of that
ish shoe not seating in the joint because it was
too cold, that that would all happen in the first
six or seven tenths of a second, and we would
see it leak, sprung, and that the whole thing would
(16:13):
probably explode by the time it cleared the tower.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
At eleven thirty eight, the shuttle lifted.
Speaker 7 (16:23):
Off nine eight seven six.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
We have main engines starts four three two one and lift.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
Off Hellotthony twenty and fifty seven feet per second, altitude
four point three nautical mile, downrange distance three mile.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
The relief at the successful and lift off of the
Challenger Space Shuttle in January nineteen eighty six was short lived.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
However, it cleared the tower, I breathed a great sigh
of relief. And it wasn't until seventy three seconds later
that this big explosion occurred.
Speaker 8 (17:06):
Trottling up three intres and now one hundred and four
percent of Challenger goh and throttle up.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
And everyone in there was shocked, including me that I
knew that wasn't survivable. And I could hear people sobbing
actually in the background because I had my headset on,
and all I could hear from the network was rtls
rtls from the capcom, which meant returned the launch site
turned to launch site.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
The seven Challenger astronauts, Commander Dick Scoby, pilot Michael Smith,
mission specialists Judy Resnik, Ellison Anizuka, Ronald McNair, and payload
specialists Krista mcaulith and Gregory Jarvis would never return to
the launch site. For two hours, mission control was in
(17:57):
top secret lockdown as NASA scrambled to set up a
failure team to find out what had gone wrong. At
fourteen thousand meters above the launch platform.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
The Vice President Bush called and said that he was
getting on a plane and he was going to come
and talk to everyone in the control room that evening,
and he did, and he basically said that you know,
it's a horrible, tragic accident. We need to get to
the bottom of it, figure out what happens so it
(18:30):
doesn't happen again. But this is not going to stop
the stay Shuttle program. We're going to get back to
safe flight as soon as we can, and this is
the team that's going to have to do it.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
The tragedy was that a whole structure was set up
in the United States whereby children sat and were assembled
before their television screens right across the United States to
watch the launch of Challenger. And Christo mccauliffe, that teacher
in space who was scheduled to carry out lessons from
(19:04):
orbit while she was in space.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
And I want to say something to the school children
of America who were watching the live coverage of the
shuttles takeoff. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes
painful things like this happen. It's all part of the
process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking
a chance in expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong
(19:28):
to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
The next day, the failure team gathered at Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Though he hoped it was
something else, MacDonald suspected O ring failure. The convincing and
critical piece of data was a few seconds of film
showing a puff of black smoke in the right booster
(19:53):
in one of the aft section field joints.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
My heart abouts sank and I'll never forget calling home
that evening, telling my wife that canceled plans. I wasn't
going to be there and how long it was going
to be. And I knew I needed to do that.
(20:17):
But my three year old daughter answered the telephone, Megan,
and her says, Daddy, when are you coming home? And
I says pretty soon, Megan, pretty soon. She says, Daddy,
when is a space shuttle going to go up? I
couldn't answer because she knew Daddy always came home after
the space shuddle went up. And I said pretty soon, Megan,
(20:42):
pretty soon.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
But how did NASA get to this low point in
its history after the glory years of Apollo, and why
did it take so many risks with the shuttle. NASA
scientists were already studying plans to build a reusable space
shuttle at the time. The planning for the Apollo Moon
mission was in full swing. The goal was to drastically
(21:07):
lower the cost of spaceflight. A program to build it
was formerly launched on January the fifth, nineteen seventy two,
by President Nixon.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
When the Shuttle was initially approved by Congress, NASA wanted
as many users to get on board to justify it,
and the Air Force was a big, powerful lobby in
any space project, and so NASA went to the Air
Force and said, you can use the Shuttle. We can
replace all your conventional ballistic rockets for launching your military payloads,
(21:38):
your spy satellites, your military weather satellites, or navigation satellites,
and so on. The Air Force signed into this and said,
we can do amazing things if we have this enormous
vehicle that can fly to any landing site across the
United States on any orbit that it comes back from.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
In the four decades of the United States Space Shuttle program,
three hundred and fifty five men and women flew on
five space shuttles in one hundred and thirty five missions.
They launched cutting edge satellites, sent spacecraft to explore Venus, Jupiter,
and other far reaches of outer space, and contributed to
(22:21):
building the International Space Station. Paulon Nespulli flew on the
Shuttle in twenty o seven to deliver the Harmony Utility Hub,
the station's permanent living headquarters for astronauts.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
Lushtl Aeron vehicle Istra the Shuttle.
Speaker 7 (22:40):
Was an extremely complex vehicle. As an engineer, as I
began studying the Shuttle systems to become mission specialist, I
thought to myself, goodness, this is an extremely advanced vehicle.
It was designed in the nineteen seventies, that it is
extremely complex. It looks as though it was designed and
to be complex. They couldn't design something simple. They designed
(23:03):
it to use the full range of the engineer's imagination,
using all their capacity.
Speaker 9 (23:08):
But at the end of the day, they didn't realize
that they built such a complex machine with such complex
interactions between systems, that they were impossible to manage.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Regis building the Shuttle proved more complex and expensive than expected.
The US Air Force, now NASA's main client, required a
winged aircraft that a pilot could maneuver, protected by heat
absorbent tiles that did not have to be replaced for
every mission. To launch satellites. The Air Force also demanded
(23:44):
a huge cargo bay. The end result was a space
plane that weighed more than twenty thousand metric tons. The
three main engines located after the cargo bay, were fueled
by a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Each
produced two hundred thousand kilos of thrust. They were ginbond
(24:07):
to control pitch, u're and roll.
Speaker 7 (24:11):
The liquid fuel engines were soft engines. In fact, they
were ignited six or seven seconds before launch because they
had to gain pressure. There were these turbine turbopumps that
went and when these started, you'd feel the shuttle alive.
It moved and inside the cabin you'd feel this movement
because the engines had enough power to move the shuttle,
(24:34):
but not to lift it off. At T zero the
moment of launch, explosive bolts were ignited that kept the
shuttle attached to the launch platform. They were ignited the madilla.
The solid fuel boosters were ignited that are incredibly powerful
with such thrust that they give all their power in
(24:55):
a millisecond, and at that moment you feel a train
hit your back and suddenly you are thrown upwards.
Speaker 6 (25:02):
Sintivi utreno Gitarivava soulas Kila in Provisamente tibutaa vesolalto.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
The largest solid propellant motors ever built and the first
to ever be used on a manned spacecraft, with a
power pack that kicked the shuttle into space. Each booster
was made of eleven individual weld free steel segments joined
together with steel pins. Once assembled, each booster measured thirty
(25:33):
five meters long and three and a half metres in diameter.
The more than four hundred and fifty thousand kilos of
propellant inside burned at a temperature of three thousand, two
hundred degrees celsius and generated a lift off thrust of
one point two million kilos. The boosters burned for two
(25:54):
minutes in parallel with the main engines during the initial ascent,
pushing the shuttle out of the atmosphere, but then, at
about thirty nine thousand meters above the Earth, the boosters
separated from the external tank and fell into the Atlantic
Ocean and the huge parachutes to be recovered and returned
(26:14):
for reuse.
Speaker 7 (26:17):
Equivalent, the equivalent of the energy contained in a shuttle
is equivalent to a small atom bob, so much so
that they cleared that area for kilometers and kilometers around
the launch pad, because if anything happens, everything is raised
to the ground. Where are you sitting on the atom
bomb that is about to explode in a controlled fashion,
(26:40):
shooting all this energy downwards and pushing launching the shuttle
into space.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
The external tank weighed thirty five thousand kilos and contained
seven hundred and twenty five thousand kilos of liquid oxygen
and one hundred and two thousand kilos of liquid hydrogen.
It is the only part of the shuttle not reused
after each flight. Thrusters were located in the nose and
tail segments, while orbiter maneuver pods, located in blisters on
(27:11):
either side of the vertical tail surface, provided power to
get the shuttle to rendezvous and onto the re entry path.
There was space for seven to eight crew members, the
most ever to travel in space, housed in the pressurized
nose section that combined oxygen and nitrogen to create a
(27:35):
shirt sleeve environment for the two week average duration of
the mission. As NASA entered the digital era, avionics changed radically,
with computers managing data from dozens of sensors in the
fuselage and wings. The NASA Space Shuttle program was well
(28:02):
under way by the nineteen seventies and bringing thousands of
jobs to communities across the country. Tenders went out, and
the winning contractor for the solid fuel boosters of the
Shuttle was Morton Thiacore, based just north of the small
town of Ogden, Utah. Much of the research and development
(28:23):
behind the United states most advanced weapons and satellite delivery
systems and rocket research was happening here in the remote
sage covered hills along Highway eighty three near the salt
encrusted edges of the Great Salt Lake. Today, near the
sprawling former Morton Thiacal production site, a road sign points
(28:46):
visitors to a rocket garden outside the plant. For twenty
six years, portions of the Shuttle's solid fuel rockets were researched,
developed and constructed here under the oversight of Alan McDonald well.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
The Shuttle boosters were so large that we had to
make them into segments and send the pieces as a
segment to the Cape in Florida on a railcar. And
there's only a couple of lines that you can get
to the Kennedy without hitting bridges. Because they're about the
largest thing you can put on a train. They're over
(29:26):
twelve feet in diameter each the sections, and there's four
of them you have to put together and you just
kind of stack them up like bearcans on the mobile
launch platform. They're sent down by rail and when they
are received down there and ready for assembly on the
mobile lunch platform, because they're stacking. On top of that,
(29:47):
there's a joint that is made to assemble the entire
rocket booster. But in that joint we have to make
sure that the gases can escape.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
These enormous shock waves that go through the booster cause
it to expand and then to pounce back, so they
bow out and then bounce and you cannot see this.
It's fractional, but it's very meaningful inside those giants. They
realized that they could be flexing and movement inside those
giants that would cause gas to escape in the between
(30:25):
the sections in the field giants that the propellant was burning.
So a t ignition, you get this great convulsion of
a great enormous button. It would literally push like pushing
your elbows out on balloons. It would cause it, and
then the balloons pushed back. So the sheer strength of
the steel casing caused it to hold up and stabilize
(30:47):
at that point, but in the critical area where the
gas is shooting through the gap, you need to have
two O rings that go right around the giant to
seal it launch.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
The joint had to withstand pressures of more than sixty
three kilos per square centimeter and temperatures of more than
five hundred and thirty degrees celsius. The O ring provided
the pressure resistance, while a zinc chromate putty applied to
the interior of the joint provided the temperature resistance.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
And it's what we call a tang in clevis joint,
much like a tongue in group in a hardword floor.
And because of that, we have to put something to
seal the gases in. And the way we do that
we have two O ring seals, much like you have
washers in your hose or in your sink to prevent
(31:44):
the water from leaking. This prevents the gases from getting out.
And the reason there's two of them is that this
was considered such a critical function.
Speaker 6 (31:53):
We had to.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Provide redundancy wherever it was possible to do that in
case one of them failed, the other one that acted
as a backup to prevent failure. Because it was well
known that any gas leak out of one of these
joints would be catastrophic.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
The O rings that sealed the joints were made of
a vulcanized rubber substance called viton, but from the very
beginning of the Shuttle program, engineers were concerned about the
performance of the O rings and their ability to seal
properly in cold temperatures.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
The Viton O ring is a fluorocarbon rubber, and one
of its primary characteristics why it was selected for this
type of an application, is that it is very tough.
It was really worried that these huge segments the weigh
over three hundred thousand pounds each and they're pulled together,
that if they were not quite lined up properly, it
(32:48):
may cut the O ring during the assembly, and we
found that this material was by far the best to
resist that from ever happening. So it was auber material,
but it was a fairly hard rubber material.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
It was vital that the seal remain efficient for the
whole of the flight, but temperature could change the behavior
of this basic material, which worried engineers early on.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
One of the characteristics of any rubber material is is
that since we're using them in a compressed state, or
squeezing them into these joints in a compressed state. And
we do that because we knew that that joint opened
a little bit when it pressurized. There was enough compression
in the old ring squeezed in there that when it
(33:36):
did open, it would maintain contact with the other surface
as it was opened. Now, the characteristic of doing that
is called resiliency of material. It's kind of like a
wet sponge. You take a wet sponge and you put
your finger on it and you start to release it.
You'll know your finger stays right with a sponge. But
(33:58):
you take that sponge and throw it into the fret
and take it out and push your finger on it,
it leaves a dad and it won't recover until it
finally warms up.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Engineers analyzing the Shuttle and its boosters upon each return
from space had noticed erosion of some O rings and
menacing black soot around the O rings, a phenomenon they
called blow by because it meant hot gases were leaking
and blowing by the joint.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
In that final year full year of Shuttle, five of
the seven Shuttle flights demonstrated blowthroughs on these boosters. We'd
never have known this if those boosters hadn't been recovered
and inspected in detail for post flight analysis. But the engineers,
to a man, said, we are playing with dice, and
(34:51):
we're running across a freeway blindfold in Russia, and we're
going to lose some cruis.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
It actually was noted a problem with the joints way
back into the second flight of the Shadowless two, where
in disassembly of one of the field joints they noted
some erosion on the O ring, which meant that gas
got down there to burn it, and the way the
joint was designed, we actually had material ahead of the
(35:19):
joint in that gap. It was really a zinc chromate
puddy loaded with asbestos to pry to thermally isolate the ring,
so we'd never see gas.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
A launch during a record cold snap in January nineteen
eighty five gave engineers a scare.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Just a year before the Challenger launch in January nineteen
eighty five, when we recovered these boosters, we always pull
them apart and examine these joints, and this was the
first time we noticed that we actually had this condition
of blowby in the field joint that we observe. In fact,
we saw it in a joint one joint in each
(36:04):
booster the left hand rights. There was two joints very
similar that indicated that some gas actually got past the
first dole ring but stopped for the second one. That
that happened because at that time, that was the coldest
launch we had ever experienced, and we determined that the
O ring temperature was about fifty three degrees fahrenheit on
(36:26):
that particular launch.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Then in April of nineteen eighty five, NASA executed two
launches in the same month for the first time ever,
again engineers saw that O rings had burned and eroded.
It was an alarming trend.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Because we were lucky in that we had seen this
behavior in the nozzle joint, not the field joint. Because
had we seen something similar in the field joint, we
all felt very uncomfortable that it would e leaked all
the way out and caused a catastrophic failure. So we
formed an owring Seal task force right after observing this
(37:10):
nozzle problem to look at all the ceiling mechanisms, every
one of them in the SOD rocket booster and see
what we'd recommend to do.
Speaker 7 (37:21):
They often ask me if I ever felt in danger,
if I was afraid of getting aboard this atom bomb
that was about to explode, given the accidents that had
happened in the past, And my answer is absolutely not,
And I don't think I'm an exceptional. No one who
worked on the Shuttle felt in danger. On the one hand,
(37:43):
because we had been trained by NASA that took us
every place where every part was built, allowed us to
speak with every technician, and we realized that the system
was incredibly strong, incredibly careful. Things were done with great care,
and as far as I'm concerned, I almost came to
feel that I was the weak link.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
As NASA prepared to launch at top secret payload from
the Shuttle for the Air Force in the summer of
nineteen eighty five, the team redesigned the rocket boosters to
make them lighter and reduce the risk of o ring failure,
and made a proposal to NASA to fund the same
changes to all rocket boosters used on the shuttles, but
(38:27):
NASA rejected it. Seven of the nine Shuttle flights in
the year prior to the Challenger explosion had shown warning
signs that concerned engineers enough to write the memo to NASA,
but their proposals were rejected. Few in NASA management wanted
(38:49):
to slow the ambitious launch schedule. On the twenty eighth
of January nineteen eighty six, one of the many complex
systems failed, with catastrophic consequences for the crew and for NASA.
(39:10):
Seventy three seconds into the flight, just when the shuttle
was vibrating and flexing at its maximum, the flame broke
through the seal and blew a huge hole in the
external tank. Aided by wind shear, The disintegrating external tank
caused the shuttle to veer from its altitude, increasing the
aerodynamic forces that ripped the shuttle apart. The boosters were
(39:35):
thrown off and the crew capsule catapulted toward the sea
based on emergency oxygen supplies used on board and other
manual switches turned on and off during their descent. The
crew were likely alive and perhaps conscious for over two
minutes until their craft tore apart upon hitting the Atlantic
(39:59):
Ocean at time three hundred and thirty kilometers per hour.
Alan McDonald was on the failure team that sought to
understand what went wrong.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Where I was in the failure team at NASA, and
I found the data that indicator was had a problem
with cold temperatures in the very joint that fail That
kind of fit this puzzle. And the next question is, well,
but even then, it doesn't explain why I didn't blow
up when I would expect it to blow up between
(40:32):
six and seven tenths of a second. And so I
asked immediately at that point in time, as anybody ever
looked at the cameras of liftoff, not flight. And so
they called down to the cape and the guy told
me they'll pull one of those, and they pulled it.
I says, make sure it's looking exactly where you see
(40:52):
this fire coming out in flight. So I said, go
find the one that's closest, and they did, and about
ten minutes later they came back to say, oh my god,
we a puff of smoke.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
But if the O ring failure was to blame, why
did the shuttle not explode immediately as engineers had predicted.
They would later discover that after the O rings vaporized,
the hot gas of the burning aluminium oxide hit the
cold steel and solidified right where the O rings had burned,
creating a fragile ceramic seal, which held right up until
(41:27):
the order to throttle up.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
The winds aloft were so high that as the bracing
strut that held the booster to the side of the
tank became weaker, it tore the booster around on a
pivoting arc and pushed the nose of the booster into
the top of the two tanks. The oxygen tank already
(41:51):
the flame coming through from one of the punctured segments
that had overwhelmed the o rings was operating like a
blow torch to open up the side of the very
thin aluminium hydrogen tank. But when the booster pivoted and
pushed in the nose into the oxygen tank, that caused
(42:12):
a Roman Candle effect, which was a great convulsive It
wasn't an actual explosion, not like a bomb going off.
There was a great convulsive release of energy which punched
the boosters off from the side of the tank and
ripped apart components of the orbiter. The strongest part is
(42:32):
the pressurized compartment, and that pressurized compartment remained intact.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
McDonald and engineers poured over the log books from the
ice teams, but NASA managers said that the instruments had
not been properly calibrated and increased all the temperatures they
submitted to the Presidential Commission. Something was a miss.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Well, there's no doubt in my mind it was a
cover up. They covered up the low temperature data. They
had tremendous pressures on their launch schedule, both from a
political standpoint to support their out your budget and immediate
ones to do what they already had on their plate,
which was nearly impossible, and I think because of that,
(43:24):
they did as much as they could to try to
cloud this issue and make it sound more difficult and
technical and hard to understand that it really should have been.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
As NASA officials from Marshall Space Center were preparing their
presentation for the Commission, Allan raised objections and eventually put
together a separate presentation of his own.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
As part of the Failure Team. I started mentioning and
questioning some of their conclusions and data, especially the cold
tempture stuff, and that they were still looking at things
that I thought were not only impossible ridiculous. I said,
if you look at the films until that can't possibly be,
like lightning strikes and all kinds of funny things and
(44:07):
so I raised my hand and said, well, I made
an assessment. I'd be willing to present something, and even
stated that I really believe that a major contributor was
whatever caused this cold temperature on this one joint, and
that's why that joint failed in the other five did not.
And I'm not a big believer of coincidences. And you
(44:29):
could have heard a pin drop. There wasn't a single
person supported me. There wasn't a single person that challenged me,
or a single person that offered another possible scenario what
caused it.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
A presidential commission, the Rodgers Commission, was tasked with investigating
how the disaster happened. Just weeks into the commission's inquiry,
there were suspicions that NASA officials and contractors were not
telling the wh truth. Commission member and famed theoretical physicist
(45:05):
Richard Feynman turned their focus to the resiliency of the
O rings.
Speaker 10 (45:11):
Well, I took the stuff that I got out of
your seal, and I put it in ice water, and
I discovered that when you put some pressure on it
for a while and then undo it, it doesn't stretch back.
Speaker 6 (45:23):
It stays the same dimension.
Speaker 10 (45:25):
In other words, for a few seconds, at least in
more seconds than that, there's no resilience in this particular
material when it's at a temperature of thirty two degrees.
I believe that has some significance for our problem.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
At multiple hearings, McDonald raised his hand and told the
commission exactly what had transpired about how the decision not
to launch got changed.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
Can I remember? Neil Armstrong says, yeah, I think we
need to hear from miss McDonald this meeting. To be
here in the first place, he says, he has more
to talk about. And I told him about all that
transpired after it changed, and I'll never forget. I could
hardly keep composed. I had done it. Doctor Sally right
(46:18):
got up out of the bench, come running over to me,
give me a big hug, and said, God, I'm glad
somebody finally leveled with this commission. That took a hell
of a lot of guts.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Upon return to work, however, McDonald found he had been
moved out of his prestigious engineering job, and so.
Speaker 4 (46:37):
What's my job? And he said, well, we're forming this
new group on program planning, and your job's going to
be head of scheduling. I said, scheduling. What the hell
does schedule? I'll build anything. Oh we build, isn't what
we have now? Yes, well that's for you to figure out.
It was clearly a non job, hoping I would quit.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
With time on his hands, Alan went to conferences in
the field. At one event, one of the generals, who
was head of Air Force Space Command was surprised to
see him and found out what had happened.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
He said, you ought to be spending all of your
time figuring out why the Shuttle failed the way it did.
I said, I'm not doing that anymore. You are You
mean anymore? You remember the failure team?
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Are you?
Speaker 4 (47:21):
I said I was. But I got taken off. You
got taken off. When the hell did that happen? I said,
I think it was exactly one day after I testified
before you people. He said, you're kidding me. I says, no,
I'm not. He said, well, that's bullshit. We'll fix that problem.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Alan MacDonald went on to join a super task force
aimed at redesigning the Shuttle to restore it to safe flight.
The Shuttle flew more than one hundred successful flights after
the redesign. The failure to stop the Challenger launch has
become a case study for the dangers of groupthink, desensitization
(48:03):
to risk, and the danger of putting cost cutting and
scheduled deadlines over safety.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
People that have to make good decision managers, and they're
sometimes very tough decisions to make, should never feel comfortable
that they've made the best decision unless they have used
every tool in their toolkit, and the biggest tool they
have in the toolkit is the brain power the people
(48:30):
they work with and work for them. And if they
don't create an atmosphere where those people feel very comfortable
to tell them issues or concerns that they may have,
they've lost the most valuable data they can to make
these tough decisions.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
The failure of NASA to redesign or fix engineering problems
when they were first raised led to a rationalization of
grave risk as acceptable, especially when lawn schedules and cost
cutting measures were bearing down.
Speaker 5 (49:04):
That we were charging a fraction of what it was costing,
and that was driving the upward momentum of launching every
time on time, and that was the structural political beginning
of the inevitable reduction of safety criteria. That's when we
(49:28):
began to eat away at the edges of safety and risk.
Aversion became risk acceptability, and there were technical lessons and
signs that were coming from even the very second Shuttle
mission that we could lose a crew on those boosters.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Managers have to be receptive to the concerns of engineers,
who must be clear and courageous about reporting them. The
pressure on the workforce to save money, time and contracts
ultimately cost seven astronauts lives and hastened the demise of
America's Space Shuttle, which was retired in twenty eleven. It
(50:21):
remains to be seen if the US can overcome aerospace
design challengers and political feuding to put women and men
back into space from US soil once again, never forgetting
the crucial engineering lessons learned from the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
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(51:00):
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(51:24):
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(51:47):
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The Michael Berry Show Space Shuttle Challenger disaster thirty eight
years ago this week, I remember where I was. Do
you for people my age and I'm fifty four. That
was kind of our John F. Kennedy assassination moment where
we remember where we were, at least I do. We
(00:22):
will all remember that day. It was a shattering of
a sense of innocence, especially because that particular mission had
accomplished its goal of getting young people reinspired by the
(00:43):
Space Shuttle, by space travel. You know, it had become commonplace.
It had become kind of boring, right, We'd been to
the Moon, We've done all these things. So they they
bring in this school teacher, Krista mccauliffe. And I loved
about to tea, and my teachers loved teaching, and they
loved Christa mccalliffe. So we all knew the story. So
(01:07):
if there's no other name you knew on that mission,
it was Krista mccalliffe. She was a common school teacher.
She was going into space. This was awesome. It was
a pr campaign that worked, and as you know, all
seven crew members perished. Gregory Jarvis, the captain, engineer and astronaut,
(01:32):
Christa mccauliffe of course, Ronald McNair who was a physicist
and astronaut, Ellison on Azuka, engineer and astronaut. They were
all Americans, by the way. Judith Resnik who was a colonel,
engineer and astronaut, Dick Goby who was a colonel, pilot
and astronaut. Was he the head of the mission? I
(01:53):
think he was the kind of the commanding officer I
remember correctly. And Michael J. Smith was a pilot, captain
and astronaut. This is a little documentary about the disaster
from a group called Free Documentaries. And by the way,
let me while I have your attention for a moment.
(02:15):
People send me stuff all the time of a subject
they care about, and I don't care if it's YouTube, rumble,
whatever your format is. However you want to do it.
If you have an interest in something, make little documentaries
about it, share that with other people. That's how knowledge
is shared. It's a beautiful thing. If you don't have
(02:37):
the video side of it, because I'm not a video guy,
just talk into a microphone and create a podcast. Share it.
It doesn't matter if ten million people listen to it
or you get rich listening to it. It's cathartic to
share the information you have. It's enjoyable, it's rewarding. Don't
worry how many people end up listening to it. That's
(02:59):
not the goal, this idea of going viral. Hemy People
send me stuff all the time. It's often wonderful. Yeah,
so I just thought it saying, all right, here's your documentary.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Dark.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
On a cold January day in nineteen eighty six, the
Space Shuttle Challenger blew apart high above Kennedy Space Center
on Cape Canaveron just seventy three seconds after launch. A
rubber seal called an O ring had failed, and a
plume of fire leaked out of the solid fuel booster,
(03:38):
igniting the gigantic fuel tank. With millions of people tuned
in live on TV, Americans watched in disbelief as a
sinister white plume streaked across the sky and seven astronauts,
including New Hampshire High school teacher Christa McAuliffe, plummeted helplessly
(04:01):
twenty thousand meters to their deaths. America was plunged into
uncertainty and grief, and questioned NASA's ability to manage the
immensely complex space program effectively.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
He said, I would not recommend that we launched below
fifty three degrees fahrenheit, and that was primarily based on
the experience we'd had one year earlier. That concerned us,
and frankly, I was shocked because I felt that that
was a slam dunk. They would accept that and just
postpone the launch. They immediately started questioning the basis for
(04:39):
making such a recommendation based on the material presented.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
The single message that came out in a direct quote
to me from one of the most senior administrators in NASA,
when I said, we're going to lose one of these shuttles.
And I said that three months before. Challenger said to me,
our job is to launch on time every time. And
(05:07):
it was one of those hairs on the back of
the neck moment when I realized they're not listening.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
When a chastened NASA emerged from the tragedy, Shuttle flights resumed.
The Shuttle pushed the frontiers of technology to the utter limits,
and this incredibly complex machine continued flying for another quarter
of a century, with astronauts from around the world aboard.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
A quasi capito.
Speaker 7 (05:36):
I almost thought I'm the weekly I was the one
who had to perform at the level needed to be
up to the standard of the others. My work was
as important as the others. I had to trust the others,
the astronauts who were with me, but also those setting
up the launch, those who followed the operations, and at
the same time they had to trust me. Jokingly, I
(06:01):
don't care if the Shuttle blows up, as long as
it's not my fault.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Past a small group of brave engineers, analysts and astronauts
risked their careers so that the managerial errors behind the
Challenger disaster never happened again. It took two years before
the problem was fixed and the next Shuttle launched. One
(06:43):
of the last Space Shuttle missions is about to launch.
This complex machine has completed one hundred and thirty five missions.
Italy's first astronaut, Paolo Nespoli, flew on the Shuttle Mission
one hundred and twenty in twenty oh seven. Like all
but two missions, it was a successful flight where nothing
(07:07):
went wrong, although he was trained to be prepared for anything. Literally,
the tiniest error could mean catastrophe.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
No equal make with Bajo as.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
Crew, we had serious problems. Our training was very tough,
very serious. For example, at the time of launch, there
were a number of malfunctions that could happen, and according
to how they interacted between each other, a simple and
a stupid thing could have a knock on effect and
lead to the destruction of the vehicle. As a member
(07:44):
of the crew, you had to understand all these things,
and there was this kind of game. Let's call it
a game between the instructors who wanted to kill you
and you who responded successfully to all these provocations.
Speaker 6 (07:58):
Sponduchess to.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
January nineteen eighty six. Space Shuttle Challenger was originally set
to launch from Kennedy Space Center on January the twenty second,
nineteen eighty six, but bad weather led to delays. The
launch slipped from January twenty third, then twenty fourth, and
then twenty fifth. Another weather delay and a technical problem
(08:28):
with one of the door hatchers pushed the launch back
another two days. On January the twenty eighth, the weather
was still colder than usual for launching the shuttle. Alan
MacDonald represented the Utah based builder of the solid fuel
rocket boosters, Morton thayercar on site.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
I can remember walking out of the launch control center
to my car after that and aedber felt win so
strong and sand was blowing into my contact lenses and
it actually stopped me at times, and I have to
lean forward. I got to my car go to my
friend's house, and I wasn't there very long and I
got a phone call. The phone call was a fellow
(09:13):
the name of Bob Ebbling that worked for me, and
he said, Ali says, we've just been notified that some
meteorologist in Orlando said, you know the strong winds that
canceled their launch today, that there's a real coal front
behind that, and by tomorrow morning it may be down
as close as eighteen degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Is cold.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
I said, good grief. I'm really worried about where these
O rings seals are operated at all at those kind
of temperatures.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Back in Utah, the engineers were so worried about the
effect of the cold on the O rings that they
asked McDonald to get more detailed weather reports from NASA.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
I said, fine, I'll get that information for you. But
when I get it, but here's what I want you
to do. I want you to provide that to the engineers.
I want them to put together a presentation of what
we know and don't know what our concerns are, and
at the end of that presentation, I want you to
make sure that the Vice present Engineering comes on and
(10:18):
makes a recommendation, what is the lowest temperature it is
safe to launch? We have to do that.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Alan MacDonald got all the parties on board for a
teleconference between engineers in Utah, those in Marshall Space Center
in Huntsville, Alabama, at NASA management at Cape Canaveral. More
than a dozen engineers faxed their charts and made a
clear and unanimous recommendation the shuttle should not be launched
(10:46):
if the temperature was below fifty three degrees fahrenheit or
eleven point six degrees celsius, due to concerns about how
the O rings would perform.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
At the end of their presentation, the Vice President of Engineering,
Fellow and MS Bob Lonn got on the network and said,
based on what his engineers has have presented here this evening,
because they had to fax all those charts to both
Huntsville and also to the Cape, he said, I would
not recommend that we launch below fifty three degrees fahrenheit,
(11:20):
and that was primarily based on the experience we'd had
one year earlier. That concerned us, and frankly, I was
shocked because I felt that that was a slam dunk.
They would accept that and just postpone the launch. They
immediately started questioning the basis for making such a recommendation
(11:40):
based on the material presented.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Then the unthinkable happened. Several top executives vetoed the engineer's
recommendation in an offline caucus, giving NASA the green light
to launch Challenger at a temperature that was just thirty
eight degrees fahrenheit degrees celsius. A few engineers protested, but
(12:04):
were over ruined, due in part to concerns about losing
lucrative government contracts if the launch schedule were to fall
further behind. NASA wanted the recommendation facts to them in writing,
Allan refused.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
I did the smartest thing I ever did in my life.
I told NASA I would not sign that recommendation. I
feel we're taking risks that we should not take. It'll
have to come from the plant if it comes from anybody,
but not me.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
The o rings were not the only concern. Alan told
those gathered at the teleconference that high winds were gusting
up to seventy knots, and there was ice everywhere. All
the while, NASA officials were pressing for the facts from
Morton Thiokol.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
At that point in time, they said, well, you've brought
up all these concerns that aren't really should be your concerns,
but we'll pass them on in an advisory capacity. Only
where is the facts from your boss?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
The next day, the ice teams were busy knocking icicles
off the Shuttle and using an infrared pirometer gun to
get temperature readings that were entered into NASA logbooks. A
later review of those logs showed the temperature near the
failed solid rocket booster was below twenty eight degrees or
minus two degrees celsius, much colder than the ambient air
(13:37):
temperature of thirty one degrees fahrenheit, just below freezing point.
It was shaded from the sun and exposed to westerly winds.
In the meantime, the astronauts were preparing for launch, a
complicated process with strict protocols to follow. Paulo Nespoli flew
(14:01):
on the Shuttle in twenty oh seven.
Speaker 6 (14:03):
Qual Kiora Prima Delanchocho.
Speaker 7 (14:07):
A few hours before the launch, five or six hours
before launch, it's time to get dressed. We launch or
launch with what is called a launch and entry suit,
which is a pressurized suit that allows the crew to
stay alive in case of loss of pressure inside the shuttle.
So it began to be complicated with gloves, a helmet.
(14:28):
To speak, you needed to use a communications system, which
means that if seven people all speak at the same time,
it becomes incomprehensible. So you need discipline in terms of
who speaks what they say. So we put on the
suit in the quarantine area. There are protocols to check
the resistance to pressure of the suit, and from there
(14:51):
you go to the launch trick using a special vehicle
Italici Coveico.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
When I walked in a I heard the radio say
it was twenty two degrees fahrenheit. I was carrying my
briefcase in my headset because I was in the adjacent
contractors support area of the launch control center, and it
went up to my console computer console that monitors all
the data that comes from the solid rocket boosters, but
(15:18):
also has an inset of NASA select video of the launch,
but it also has several other options for cameras to
look at on the launch pat So I started looking
at these cameras and I saw this ice all over
the place. Well, then I launched this thing today, obviously.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
But the comforting facts had arrived from Morton Thire goal
bosses recommending NASA to proceed with the launch. The countdown
was on. There was no turning back.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I was worried that it was cold, and I really
felt that if the boosters would fail because of that
ish shoe not seating in the joint because it was
too cold, that that would all happen in the first
six or seven tenths of a second, and we would
see it leak, sprung, and that the whole thing would
(16:13):
probably explode by the time it cleared the tower.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
At eleven thirty eight, the shuttle lifted.
Speaker 7 (16:23):
Off nine eight seven six.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
We have main engines starts four three two one and lift.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
Off Hellotthony twenty and fifty seven feet per second, altitude
four point three nautical mile, downrange distance three mile.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
The relief at the successful and lift off of the
Challenger Space Shuttle in January nineteen eighty six was short lived.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
However, it cleared the tower, I breathed a great sigh
of relief. And it wasn't until seventy three seconds later
that this big explosion occurred.
Speaker 8 (17:06):
Trottling up three intres and now one hundred and four
percent of Challenger goh and throttle up.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
And everyone in there was shocked, including me that I
knew that wasn't survivable. And I could hear people sobbing
actually in the background because I had my headset on,
and all I could hear from the network was rtls
rtls from the capcom, which meant returned the launch site
turned to launch site.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
The seven Challenger astronauts, Commander Dick Scoby, pilot Michael Smith,
mission specialists Judy Resnik, Ellison Anizuka, Ronald McNair, and payload
specialists Krista mcaulith and Gregory Jarvis would never return to
the launch site. For two hours, mission control was in
(17:57):
top secret lockdown as NASA scrambled to set up a
failure team to find out what had gone wrong. At
fourteen thousand meters above the launch platform.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
The Vice President Bush called and said that he was
getting on a plane and he was going to come
and talk to everyone in the control room that evening,
and he did, and he basically said that you know,
it's a horrible, tragic accident. We need to get to
the bottom of it, figure out what happens so it
(18:30):
doesn't happen again. But this is not going to stop
the stay Shuttle program. We're going to get back to
safe flight as soon as we can, and this is
the team that's going to have to do it.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
The tragedy was that a whole structure was set up
in the United States whereby children sat and were assembled
before their television screens right across the United States to
watch the launch of Challenger. And Christo mccauliffe, that teacher
in space who was scheduled to carry out lessons from
(19:04):
orbit while she was in space.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
And I want to say something to the school children
of America who were watching the live coverage of the
shuttles takeoff. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes
painful things like this happen. It's all part of the
process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking
a chance in expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong
(19:28):
to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
The next day, the failure team gathered at Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Though he hoped it was
something else, MacDonald suspected O ring failure. The convincing and
critical piece of data was a few seconds of film
showing a puff of black smoke in the right booster
(19:53):
in one of the aft section field joints.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
My heart abouts sank and I'll never forget calling home
that evening, telling my wife that canceled plans. I wasn't
going to be there and how long it was going
to be. And I knew I needed to do that.
(20:17):
But my three year old daughter answered the telephone, Megan,
and her says, Daddy, when are you coming home? And
I says pretty soon, Megan, pretty soon. She says, Daddy,
when is a space shuttle going to go up? I
couldn't answer because she knew Daddy always came home after
the space shuddle went up. And I said pretty soon, Megan,
(20:42):
pretty soon.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
But how did NASA get to this low point in
its history after the glory years of Apollo, and why
did it take so many risks with the shuttle. NASA
scientists were already studying plans to build a reusable space
shuttle at the time. The planning for the Apollo Moon
mission was in full swing. The goal was to drastically
(21:07):
lower the cost of spaceflight. A program to build it
was formerly launched on January the fifth, nineteen seventy two,
by President Nixon.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
When the Shuttle was initially approved by Congress, NASA wanted
as many users to get on board to justify it,
and the Air Force was a big, powerful lobby in
any space project, and so NASA went to the Air
Force and said, you can use the Shuttle. We can
replace all your conventional ballistic rockets for launching your military payloads,
(21:38):
your spy satellites, your military weather satellites, or navigation satellites,
and so on. The Air Force signed into this and said,
we can do amazing things if we have this enormous
vehicle that can fly to any landing site across the
United States on any orbit that it comes back from.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
In the four decades of the United States Space Shuttle program,
three hundred and fifty five men and women flew on
five space shuttles in one hundred and thirty five missions.
They launched cutting edge satellites, sent spacecraft to explore Venus, Jupiter,
and other far reaches of outer space, and contributed to
(22:21):
building the International Space Station. Paulon Nespulli flew on the
Shuttle in twenty o seven to deliver the Harmony Utility Hub,
the station's permanent living headquarters for astronauts.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
Lushtl Aeron vehicle Istra the Shuttle.
Speaker 7 (22:40):
Was an extremely complex vehicle. As an engineer, as I
began studying the Shuttle systems to become mission specialist, I
thought to myself, goodness, this is an extremely advanced vehicle.
It was designed in the nineteen seventies, that it is
extremely complex. It looks as though it was designed and
to be complex. They couldn't design something simple. They designed
(23:03):
it to use the full range of the engineer's imagination,
using all their capacity.
Speaker 9 (23:08):
But at the end of the day, they didn't realize
that they built such a complex machine with such complex
interactions between systems, that they were impossible to manage.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Regis building the Shuttle proved more complex and expensive than expected.
The US Air Force, now NASA's main client, required a
winged aircraft that a pilot could maneuver, protected by heat
absorbent tiles that did not have to be replaced for
every mission. To launch satellites. The Air Force also demanded
(23:44):
a huge cargo bay. The end result was a space
plane that weighed more than twenty thousand metric tons. The
three main engines located after the cargo bay, were fueled
by a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Each
produced two hundred thousand kilos of thrust. They were ginbond
(24:07):
to control pitch, u're and roll.
Speaker 7 (24:11):
The liquid fuel engines were soft engines. In fact, they
were ignited six or seven seconds before launch because they
had to gain pressure. There were these turbine turbopumps that
went and when these started, you'd feel the shuttle alive.
It moved and inside the cabin you'd feel this movement
because the engines had enough power to move the shuttle,
(24:34):
but not to lift it off. At T zero the
moment of launch, explosive bolts were ignited that kept the
shuttle attached to the launch platform. They were ignited the madilla.
The solid fuel boosters were ignited that are incredibly powerful
with such thrust that they give all their power in
(24:55):
a millisecond, and at that moment you feel a train
hit your back and suddenly you are thrown upwards.
Speaker 6 (25:02):
Sintivi utreno Gitarivava soulas Kila in Provisamente tibutaa vesolalto.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
The largest solid propellant motors ever built and the first
to ever be used on a manned spacecraft, with a
power pack that kicked the shuttle into space. Each booster
was made of eleven individual weld free steel segments joined
together with steel pins. Once assembled, each booster measured thirty
(25:33):
five meters long and three and a half metres in diameter.
The more than four hundred and fifty thousand kilos of
propellant inside burned at a temperature of three thousand, two
hundred degrees celsius and generated a lift off thrust of
one point two million kilos. The boosters burned for two
(25:54):
minutes in parallel with the main engines during the initial ascent,
pushing the shuttle out of the atmosphere, but then, at
about thirty nine thousand meters above the Earth, the boosters
separated from the external tank and fell into the Atlantic
Ocean and the huge parachutes to be recovered and returned
(26:14):
for reuse.
Speaker 7 (26:17):
Equivalent, the equivalent of the energy contained in a shuttle
is equivalent to a small atom bob, so much so
that they cleared that area for kilometers and kilometers around
the launch pad, because if anything happens, everything is raised
to the ground. Where are you sitting on the atom
bomb that is about to explode in a controlled fashion,
(26:40):
shooting all this energy downwards and pushing launching the shuttle
into space.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
The external tank weighed thirty five thousand kilos and contained
seven hundred and twenty five thousand kilos of liquid oxygen
and one hundred and two thousand kilos of liquid hydrogen.
It is the only part of the shuttle not reused
after each flight. Thrusters were located in the nose and
tail segments, while orbiter maneuver pods, located in blisters on
(27:11):
either side of the vertical tail surface, provided power to
get the shuttle to rendezvous and onto the re entry path.
There was space for seven to eight crew members, the
most ever to travel in space, housed in the pressurized
nose section that combined oxygen and nitrogen to create a
(27:35):
shirt sleeve environment for the two week average duration of
the mission. As NASA entered the digital era, avionics changed radically,
with computers managing data from dozens of sensors in the
fuselage and wings. The NASA Space Shuttle program was well
(28:02):
under way by the nineteen seventies and bringing thousands of
jobs to communities across the country. Tenders went out, and
the winning contractor for the solid fuel boosters of the
Shuttle was Morton Thiacore, based just north of the small
town of Ogden, Utah. Much of the research and development
(28:23):
behind the United states most advanced weapons and satellite delivery
systems and rocket research was happening here in the remote
sage covered hills along Highway eighty three near the salt
encrusted edges of the Great Salt Lake. Today, near the
sprawling former Morton Thiacal production site, a road sign points
(28:46):
visitors to a rocket garden outside the plant. For twenty
six years, portions of the Shuttle's solid fuel rockets were researched,
developed and constructed here under the oversight of Alan McDonald well.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
The Shuttle boosters were so large that we had to
make them into segments and send the pieces as a
segment to the Cape in Florida on a railcar. And
there's only a couple of lines that you can get
to the Kennedy without hitting bridges. Because they're about the
largest thing you can put on a train. They're over
(29:26):
twelve feet in diameter each the sections, and there's four
of them you have to put together and you just
kind of stack them up like bearcans on the mobile
launch platform. They're sent down by rail and when they
are received down there and ready for assembly on the
mobile lunch platform, because they're stacking. On top of that,
(29:47):
there's a joint that is made to assemble the entire
rocket booster. But in that joint we have to make
sure that the gases can escape.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
These enormous shock waves that go through the booster cause
it to expand and then to pounce back, so they
bow out and then bounce and you cannot see this.
It's fractional, but it's very meaningful inside those giants. They
realized that they could be flexing and movement inside those
giants that would cause gas to escape in the between
(30:25):
the sections in the field giants that the propellant was burning.
So a t ignition, you get this great convulsion of
a great enormous button. It would literally push like pushing
your elbows out on balloons. It would cause it, and
then the balloons pushed back. So the sheer strength of
the steel casing caused it to hold up and stabilize
(30:47):
at that point, but in the critical area where the
gas is shooting through the gap, you need to have
two O rings that go right around the giant to
seal it launch.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
The joint had to withstand pressures of more than sixty
three kilos per square centimeter and temperatures of more than
five hundred and thirty degrees celsius. The O ring provided
the pressure resistance, while a zinc chromate putty applied to
the interior of the joint provided the temperature resistance.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
And it's what we call a tang in clevis joint,
much like a tongue in group in a hardword floor.
And because of that, we have to put something to
seal the gases in. And the way we do that
we have two O ring seals, much like you have
washers in your hose or in your sink to prevent
(31:44):
the water from leaking. This prevents the gases from getting out.
And the reason there's two of them is that this
was considered such a critical function.
Speaker 6 (31:53):
We had to.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Provide redundancy wherever it was possible to do that in
case one of them failed, the other one that acted
as a backup to prevent failure. Because it was well
known that any gas leak out of one of these
joints would be catastrophic.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
The O rings that sealed the joints were made of
a vulcanized rubber substance called viton, but from the very
beginning of the Shuttle program, engineers were concerned about the
performance of the O rings and their ability to seal
properly in cold temperatures.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
The Viton O ring is a fluorocarbon rubber, and one
of its primary characteristics why it was selected for this
type of an application, is that it is very tough.
It was really worried that these huge segments the weigh
over three hundred thousand pounds each and they're pulled together,
that if they were not quite lined up properly, it
(32:48):
may cut the O ring during the assembly, and we
found that this material was by far the best to
resist that from ever happening. So it was auber material,
but it was a fairly hard rubber material.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
It was vital that the seal remain efficient for the
whole of the flight, but temperature could change the behavior
of this basic material, which worried engineers early on.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
One of the characteristics of any rubber material is is
that since we're using them in a compressed state, or
squeezing them into these joints in a compressed state. And
we do that because we knew that that joint opened
a little bit when it pressurized. There was enough compression
in the old ring squeezed in there that when it
(33:36):
did open, it would maintain contact with the other surface
as it was opened. Now, the characteristic of doing that
is called resiliency of material. It's kind of like a
wet sponge. You take a wet sponge and you put
your finger on it and you start to release it.
You'll know your finger stays right with a sponge. But
(33:58):
you take that sponge and throw it into the fret
and take it out and push your finger on it,
it leaves a dad and it won't recover until it
finally warms up.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Engineers analyzing the Shuttle and its boosters upon each return
from space had noticed erosion of some O rings and
menacing black soot around the O rings, a phenomenon they
called blow by because it meant hot gases were leaking
and blowing by the joint.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
In that final year full year of Shuttle, five of
the seven Shuttle flights demonstrated blowthroughs on these boosters. We'd
never have known this if those boosters hadn't been recovered
and inspected in detail for post flight analysis. But the engineers,
to a man, said, we are playing with dice, and
(34:51):
we're running across a freeway blindfold in Russia, and we're
going to lose some cruis.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
It actually was noted a problem with the joints way
back into the second flight of the Shadowless two, where
in disassembly of one of the field joints they noted
some erosion on the O ring, which meant that gas
got down there to burn it, and the way the
joint was designed, we actually had material ahead of the
(35:19):
joint in that gap. It was really a zinc chromate
puddy loaded with asbestos to pry to thermally isolate the ring,
so we'd never see gas.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
A launch during a record cold snap in January nineteen
eighty five gave engineers a scare.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Just a year before the Challenger launch in January nineteen
eighty five, when we recovered these boosters, we always pull
them apart and examine these joints, and this was the
first time we noticed that we actually had this condition
of blowby in the field joint that we observe. In fact,
we saw it in a joint one joint in each
(36:04):
booster the left hand rights. There was two joints very
similar that indicated that some gas actually got past the
first dole ring but stopped for the second one. That
that happened because at that time, that was the coldest
launch we had ever experienced, and we determined that the
O ring temperature was about fifty three degrees fahrenheit on
(36:26):
that particular launch.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Then in April of nineteen eighty five, NASA executed two
launches in the same month for the first time ever,
again engineers saw that O rings had burned and eroded.
It was an alarming trend.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Because we were lucky in that we had seen this
behavior in the nozzle joint, not the field joint. Because
had we seen something similar in the field joint, we
all felt very uncomfortable that it would e leaked all
the way out and caused a catastrophic failure. So we
formed an owring Seal task force right after observing this
(37:10):
nozzle problem to look at all the ceiling mechanisms, every
one of them in the SOD rocket booster and see
what we'd recommend to do.
Speaker 7 (37:21):
They often ask me if I ever felt in danger,
if I was afraid of getting aboard this atom bomb
that was about to explode, given the accidents that had
happened in the past, And my answer is absolutely not,
And I don't think I'm an exceptional. No one who
worked on the Shuttle felt in danger. On the one hand,
(37:43):
because we had been trained by NASA that took us
every place where every part was built, allowed us to
speak with every technician, and we realized that the system
was incredibly strong, incredibly careful. Things were done with great care,
and as far as I'm concerned, I almost came to
feel that I was the weak link.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
As NASA prepared to launch at top secret payload from
the Shuttle for the Air Force in the summer of
nineteen eighty five, the team redesigned the rocket boosters to
make them lighter and reduce the risk of o ring failure,
and made a proposal to NASA to fund the same
changes to all rocket boosters used on the shuttles, but
(38:27):
NASA rejected it. Seven of the nine Shuttle flights in
the year prior to the Challenger explosion had shown warning
signs that concerned engineers enough to write the memo to NASA,
but their proposals were rejected. Few in NASA management wanted
(38:49):
to slow the ambitious launch schedule. On the twenty eighth
of January nineteen eighty six, one of the many complex
systems failed, with catastrophic consequences for the crew and for NASA.
(39:10):
Seventy three seconds into the flight, just when the shuttle
was vibrating and flexing at its maximum, the flame broke
through the seal and blew a huge hole in the
external tank. Aided by wind shear, The disintegrating external tank
caused the shuttle to veer from its altitude, increasing the
aerodynamic forces that ripped the shuttle apart. The boosters were
(39:35):
thrown off and the crew capsule catapulted toward the sea
based on emergency oxygen supplies used on board and other
manual switches turned on and off during their descent. The
crew were likely alive and perhaps conscious for over two
minutes until their craft tore apart upon hitting the Atlantic
(39:59):
Ocean at time three hundred and thirty kilometers per hour.
Alan McDonald was on the failure team that sought to
understand what went wrong.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Where I was in the failure team at NASA, and
I found the data that indicator was had a problem
with cold temperatures in the very joint that fail That
kind of fit this puzzle. And the next question is, well,
but even then, it doesn't explain why I didn't blow
up when I would expect it to blow up between
(40:32):
six and seven tenths of a second. And so I
asked immediately at that point in time, as anybody ever
looked at the cameras of liftoff, not flight. And so
they called down to the cape and the guy told
me they'll pull one of those, and they pulled it.
I says, make sure it's looking exactly where you see
(40:52):
this fire coming out in flight. So I said, go
find the one that's closest, and they did, and about
ten minutes later they came back to say, oh my god,
we a puff of smoke.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
But if the O ring failure was to blame, why
did the shuttle not explode immediately as engineers had predicted.
They would later discover that after the O rings vaporized,
the hot gas of the burning aluminium oxide hit the
cold steel and solidified right where the O rings had burned,
creating a fragile ceramic seal, which held right up until
(41:27):
the order to throttle up.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
The winds aloft were so high that as the bracing
strut that held the booster to the side of the
tank became weaker, it tore the booster around on a
pivoting arc and pushed the nose of the booster into
the top of the two tanks. The oxygen tank already
(41:51):
the flame coming through from one of the punctured segments
that had overwhelmed the o rings was operating like a
blow torch to open up the side of the very
thin aluminium hydrogen tank. But when the booster pivoted and
pushed in the nose into the oxygen tank, that caused
(42:12):
a Roman Candle effect, which was a great convulsive It
wasn't an actual explosion, not like a bomb going off.
There was a great convulsive release of energy which punched
the boosters off from the side of the tank and
ripped apart components of the orbiter. The strongest part is
(42:32):
the pressurized compartment, and that pressurized compartment remained intact.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
McDonald and engineers poured over the log books from the
ice teams, but NASA managers said that the instruments had
not been properly calibrated and increased all the temperatures they
submitted to the Presidential Commission. Something was a miss.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Well, there's no doubt in my mind it was a
cover up. They covered up the low temperature data. They
had tremendous pressures on their launch schedule, both from a
political standpoint to support their out your budget and immediate
ones to do what they already had on their plate,
which was nearly impossible, and I think because of that,
(43:24):
they did as much as they could to try to
cloud this issue and make it sound more difficult and
technical and hard to understand that it really should have been.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
As NASA officials from Marshall Space Center were preparing their
presentation for the Commission, Allan raised objections and eventually put
together a separate presentation of his own.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
As part of the Failure Team. I started mentioning and
questioning some of their conclusions and data, especially the cold
tempture stuff, and that they were still looking at things
that I thought were not only impossible ridiculous. I said,
if you look at the films until that can't possibly be,
like lightning strikes and all kinds of funny things and
(44:07):
so I raised my hand and said, well, I made
an assessment. I'd be willing to present something, and even
stated that I really believe that a major contributor was
whatever caused this cold temperature on this one joint, and
that's why that joint failed in the other five did not.
And I'm not a big believer of coincidences. And you
(44:29):
could have heard a pin drop. There wasn't a single
person supported me. There wasn't a single person that challenged me,
or a single person that offered another possible scenario what
caused it.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
A presidential commission, the Rodgers Commission, was tasked with investigating
how the disaster happened. Just weeks into the commission's inquiry,
there were suspicions that NASA officials and contractors were not
telling the wh truth. Commission member and famed theoretical physicist
(45:05):
Richard Feynman turned their focus to the resiliency of the
O rings.
Speaker 10 (45:11):
Well, I took the stuff that I got out of
your seal, and I put it in ice water, and
I discovered that when you put some pressure on it
for a while and then undo it, it doesn't stretch back.
Speaker 6 (45:23):
It stays the same dimension.
Speaker 10 (45:25):
In other words, for a few seconds, at least in
more seconds than that, there's no resilience in this particular
material when it's at a temperature of thirty two degrees.
I believe that has some significance for our problem.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
At multiple hearings, McDonald raised his hand and told the
commission exactly what had transpired about how the decision not
to launch got changed.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
Can I remember? Neil Armstrong says, yeah, I think we
need to hear from miss McDonald this meeting. To be
here in the first place, he says, he has more
to talk about. And I told him about all that
transpired after it changed, and I'll never forget. I could
hardly keep composed. I had done it. Doctor Sally right
(46:18):
got up out of the bench, come running over to me,
give me a big hug, and said, God, I'm glad
somebody finally leveled with this commission. That took a hell
of a lot of guts.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Upon return to work, however, McDonald found he had been
moved out of his prestigious engineering job, and so.
Speaker 4 (46:37):
What's my job? And he said, well, we're forming this
new group on program planning, and your job's going to
be head of scheduling. I said, scheduling. What the hell
does schedule? I'll build anything. Oh we build, isn't what
we have now? Yes, well that's for you to figure out.
It was clearly a non job, hoping I would quit.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
With time on his hands, Alan went to conferences in
the field. At one event, one of the generals, who
was head of Air Force Space Command was surprised to
see him and found out what had happened.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
He said, you ought to be spending all of your
time figuring out why the Shuttle failed the way it did.
I said, I'm not doing that anymore. You are You
mean anymore? You remember the failure team?
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Are you?
Speaker 4 (47:21):
I said I was. But I got taken off. You
got taken off. When the hell did that happen? I said,
I think it was exactly one day after I testified
before you people. He said, you're kidding me. I says, no,
I'm not. He said, well, that's bullshit. We'll fix that problem.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Alan MacDonald went on to join a super task force
aimed at redesigning the Shuttle to restore it to safe flight.
The Shuttle flew more than one hundred successful flights after
the redesign. The failure to stop the Challenger launch has
become a case study for the dangers of groupthink, desensitization
(48:03):
to risk, and the danger of putting cost cutting and
scheduled deadlines over safety.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
People that have to make good decision managers, and they're
sometimes very tough decisions to make, should never feel comfortable
that they've made the best decision unless they have used
every tool in their toolkit, and the biggest tool they
have in the toolkit is the brain power the people
(48:30):
they work with and work for them. And if they
don't create an atmosphere where those people feel very comfortable
to tell them issues or concerns that they may have,
they've lost the most valuable data they can to make
these tough decisions.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
The failure of NASA to redesign or fix engineering problems
when they were first raised led to a rationalization of
grave risk as acceptable, especially when lawn schedules and cost
cutting measures were bearing down.
Speaker 5 (49:04):
That we were charging a fraction of what it was costing,
and that was driving the upward momentum of launching every
time on time, and that was the structural political beginning
of the inevitable reduction of safety criteria. That's when we
(49:28):
began to eat away at the edges of safety and risk.
Aversion became risk acceptability, and there were technical lessons and
signs that were coming from even the very second Shuttle
mission that we could lose a crew on those boosters.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Managers have to be receptive to the concerns of engineers,
who must be clear and courageous about reporting them. The
pressure on the workforce to save money, time and contracts
ultimately cost seven astronauts lives and hastened the demise of
America's Space Shuttle, which was retired in twenty eleven. It
(50:21):
remains to be seen if the US can overcome aerospace
design challengers and political feuding to put women and men
back into space from US soil once again, never forgetting
the crucial engineering lessons learned from the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
If you like the Michael Berry Show in podcast, please
tell one friend in If you're so inclined, write a
nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions, an interest
in being a corporate sponsor and partner can be communicated
directly to the show at our email address, Michael at
(51:00):
Michael Berryshow dot com, or simply by clicking on our
website Michael Berryshow dot com The Michael Berry Show and
Podcast is produced by Ramon Roeblis, The King of Ding.
Executive producer is Chad Knakanishi. Jim Mudd is the creative director.
(51:24):
Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery and Shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean.
Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our
assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated and often incorporated
into our production. Where possible, we give credit, where not,
(51:47):
we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the
memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis, be a simple
man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God bless America. Finally,
if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, call Camp
Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven PTSD and
(52:12):
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com