Nangijala

From Wikipedia:

Cecil Houston, the manager of the KSC office of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, set up a three-way conference call with Morton Thiokol in Utah and the KSC in Florida on the evening of January 27 to discuss the safety of the launch.

Morton Thiokol engineers expressed their concerns about the effect of low temperatures on the resilience of the rubber O-rings. As the colder temperatures lowered the elasticity of the rubber O-rings, the engineers feared that the O-rings would not be extruded to form a seal at the time of launch. The engineers argued that they did not have enough data to determine whether the O-rings would seal at temperatures colder than 53 °F (12 °C), the coldest launch of the Space Shuttle to date.  During this discussion, Lawrence Mulloy, the NASA SRB project manager, said that he did not accept the analysis behind this decision, and demanded to know if Morton Thiokol expected him to wait until April for warmer temperatures.  Morton Thiokol employees Robert Lund, the Vice President of Engineering, and Joe Kilminster, the Vice President of the Space Booster Programs, recommended against launching until the temperature was above 53 °F (12 °C).

When the teleconference prepared to hold a recess to allow for private discussion amongst Morton Thiokol management, Allan J. McDonald, Morton Thiokol's Director of the Space Shuttle SRM Project who was sitting at the KSC end of the call,  reminded his colleagues in Utah to examine the interaction between delays in the primary O-rings sealing relative to the ability of the secondary O-rings to provide redundant backup, believing this would add enough to the engineering analysis to get Mulloy to stop accusing the engineers of using inconclusive evidence to try and delay the launch.  When the call resumed, Morton Thiokol leadership had changed their opinion and stated that the evidence presented on the failure of the O-rings was inconclusive and that there was a substantial margin in the event of a failure or erosion. They stated that their decision was to proceed with the launch.

When McDonald told Mulloy that, as the onsite representative at KSC he would not sign off on the decision, Mulloy demanded that Morton Thiokol provide a signed recommendation to launch; Kilminster confirmed that he would sign it and fax it from Utah immediately, and the teleconference ended.  Mulloy called Arnold Aldrich, the NASA Mission Management Team Leader, to discuss the launch decision and weather concerns, but did not mention the O-ring discussion; the two agreed to proceed with the launch.

Dunno about you, but it sounds a lot like NASA, especially Lawrence Mulloy, practically twisted Morton Thiokol's arms until one of them (Joe Kilminster) relented and signed off on the launch. Mulloy even lied by omission at the end there to get his way. I wonder how he could sleep at night after this stunt.

The issue was that they knew there were issues with the shuttle and had been warned by several engineers about launching in the cold weather they were having at the time, but NASA ignored them and sent the Challenger on its way anyways. It's been awhile so I forget the details of exactly what it was that was wrong, but I think it ~~was the metal in some screws~~ that wasn't able to deal with the differences in temperatures and the engineers said shit would go wrong if they didn't replace them and nobody listened. It was a very preventable disaster that only happened due to laziness and impatience on NASA's part.

• it was the rubber in the O-ring seals that couldn't handle the differences in temperature.

Yeah, I think you are. Good that you see it yourself.

Just me not catching my phone autocorrecting cars to Cara for some reason. I'll fix it, 2 sec.

The mere thought of my boyfriend having to bike 90km to work on the highway is equal parts funny and terrifying, lol.

You got it from both sides, you poor thing haha.

I think it is so funny that people seem to forget that Gen X set the stage for internet culture when most millennials were teens and preteens.

Absolutely love that millennials are once again taking all the blame for actions that the whiny generation also partook in and indeed cultivated with glee before behavioral regulations online became a thing. When that happened, millennials were also being blamed for being too soft.

We rarely eat red meat in our household, but we do have a car. They fucked our local public transportation system so badly we ended up not having a choice 🤷‍♀️

Just came from another discussion about cars killing the same number of people as guns do in Chicago, so by that logic: cars are good for the environment too.

Throwing insults is not a discussion, by the way.

denying that fear is exactly the kind of car-induced sociopathy that I’m talking about.

Lol.

Claiming that people driving cars are sociopathic is a bizarre claim. Claiming that cars are worse than the concept of a mass shooting is insane. I reiterate: I hope you never find yourself in a mass shooting. Seeing a car drive by on the road cannot make you remotely as scared as being trapped in a building, knowing someone is shooting, but not knowing where they are, how many there are nor how close they are to getting you or your loved ones.

You cannot compare driving cars in a city to that. That is insane.

I do not understand your mindset, but I very much do hope you will never know what it is like to be trapped in a mass shooting.

You are definitely speaking form a position of privilege.