22 ms·

The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

273 points by cthulhujr 8y ago

mercwear 8y ago
I did not know what to expect from ESPN, this was a really well written article.
- satsuma 8y ago
  espn's more long-form storytelling is top notch. check out their 30 for 30 documentary series, they're fantastic.
  - mercwear 8y ago
    Thanks for the heads up - I'll check them out!
piyh 8y ago
That was incredibly touching
- bdamm 8y ago
  The entire story thread was really well done. If anything it’s evidence of NASA’s soul as played out in the people who have built their lives around rocket operations.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
The story of the Challenger that day is one of the few things that can reliably squeeze a tear or two from me. Interestingly, I've never heard about this part of it, thanks.
- sidlls 8y ago
  Same here. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing, the smells and sounds, and how my teacher rushed to turn off the television we were all watching the launch on once it was clear what was happening. Kids crying, not understanding what was happening, the feel and look of the carpet, wall decorations, everything. It's the most vivid memory of childhood I have. I don't think I'll ever forget it. I couldn't even read through this story.
  - jedberg 8y ago
    I too remember all those details. I was in third grade, and the whole school was watching together in the auditorium. After the explosion, they just sort of shuffled us back to our classrooms.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    > how my teacher rushed to turn off the television we were all watching the launch on once it was clear what was happening It’s funny, this is what causes trauma... if you interrupt the stress reaction and try to make it go away, you hold onto it. If animals are allowed to go through their full stress cycle, they forget the trauma.
    - jacobush 8y ago
      To be fair, they might have feared what more was about to come through that tv set. Or the impending wrath from parents when little Billy can't sleep at night. Was such concerns (parents) a thing in the 80s already?
    - kjs3 8y ago
      Because humans behave like animals.
jedberg 8y ago
> You may not know it, but you carry some of his words with you in your own earthly exploration, printed in every U.S. passport. This whole article was fantastic, but this was the coolest part for me. To learn that his quote is on every passport. I've never read the quotes on my passport before, but now I have.
- mercwear 8y ago
  This was one of my favorite takeaways too
- rconti 8y ago
  As much as I hate the ESPN sports complex, everything I've seen from the ESPN documentaries has been fantastic.
  - awad 8y ago
    What about the ESPN sports complex do you dislike?
    - rconti 8y ago
      Primarily the feedback loop of cable companies "having to" carry ESPN/ESPN2/etc at vastly higher rates than any other network on television, resulting in the ability to bid up TV rights for all major sporting events. As long as the rights are expensive, the network will be expensive, and vice versa. I generally enjoy sports, but don't care about the endless commentary and talk shows that populate ESPN 24/7, nor do I like the fact that their properties drive up everyone's cable bill by $20-$30 per month, an order of magnitude more than any other network. It's one of the primary reasons I don't have pay TV; I wish I could allocate my pay TV dollars to the programming I find more valuable.
- giodamelio 8y ago
  Exactly. That was a chills down the the spine moment. I will definitely be taking a closer look at the quotes in my passport when I get home today.
runciblespoon 8y ago
"the solid rocket boosters ignited and somewhere in the right booster, a 0.280-inch-wide O-ring failed due to the cold." The 'solid rocket boosters' being constructed in segments because they had to be transported by rail from Utah. They had to be constructed in that state as part of the deal to get the politicians to vote in the finances.
- jedberg 8y ago
  I see what you're getting at, but the separate construction and transport was not the issue here. The O ring was a necessary pressure valve, but it failed because the cold made it brittle. The bigger issue here was the politics between Nasa and it's contractors. The contractors told them that the launch would be dangerous at the temperature, but they were ignored.
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    At such projects, everybody is constantly mumbling about what all could go wrong, its just legally relevant background noise- not actually "sticking" out warnings pointing at a particular point of failure.
    - kop316 8y ago
      I'm sorry, You completely mischaracterize what happened that morning. The contractor responsible for the solid rocket booster flat out said "do not fly this love morning". NASA actually went to his supervisor and for his supervisor to sign off on the flight (the particular contractor who refused to sign off said " that was the single smartest decision of his life"). The following is a link to his book, but I actually heard a presentation from him. https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Lies-Rings-Challenger-Disaster/dp/0813041937 https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Lies-Rings-Challenger-Disaster/...
  - robryk 8y ago
    > The O ring was a necessary pressure valve (...) Do I understand correctly that you're saying that the O-ring would be necessary even if the SRBs were constructed as a single long tube, instead of segments that are assembled together? If so, would you mind expanding on that? I was under the impression that the only reason the whole O-ring and caulking of the joints was necessary was the existence of the joints.
rmason 8y ago
I was visiting farmers reviewing plans for the next crop year. I'd just arrived and the farmer says do you mind if we watch the Challenger launch before starting? It's got that teacher going up in space. I told him that my high school government teacher had been one of the ten finalists so I took a pretty keen interest myself. I can remember the numbness I felt in his living room as we watched the Challenger explode. It's something once viewed that you can't unsee. Words fail you in trying to explain it. I had no idea at the time that there were five engineers who tried valiantly to stop the launch because of the cold weather and failed. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/28/464744781/30-years-after-disaster-challenger-engineer-still-blames-himself https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/28/464744781...
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  > The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers had tried to stop the launch. Their managers and NASA overruled them. That night, he told his wife, "It's going to blow up." This sent chills down my spine... the world just shouldn't be like this.
  - T-hawk 8y ago
    One important piece of data to correlate with that: how many times previously had engineers issued similar warnings for launches that then proceeded fine? Warning fatigue is a thing and reasonable to wonder whether that happened at all here.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Yeah, very true. I did wonder about that a bit, and also how dire the previous warnings were, if any. "It's going to blow up" sounds like something that a good engineer shouldn't be saying very often about successful flights.
    - londons_explore 8y ago
      In some working environments issuing a warning is enough to get you off the hook for something going wrong, so it might be that nearly every flight had a warning so the engineers were never responsible...
mncharity 8y ago
> The failure allowed heated, pressurized propellants to leak out onto the external fuel tank, causing catastrophic structural failure. Seventy-three seconds into its 10th flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart, killing all seven members of its crew. It was 11:39 a.m. Sigh. It's perhaps silly of me in an age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, but I'm saddened to see this line repeated yet again, 30 years on. Perhaps Malinowski is just echoing old reporting. But a journalist of her caliber seems likely to have run this by NASA. Which suggests NASA PR is still prioritizing spin over integrity, even all these years later. For those who haven't seen this line before, the template is "<explosion> <fast> <dead>". As in 'the explosion ripped apart the shuttle faster than the blink of an eye, killing the astronauts'. By such word-smithed sleigh-of-hand, NASA would leave readers with the impression that the crew was killed immediately, a quick non-lingering death, without flat-out lying. One thing we're sure of is that some of the seven were not killed in the breakup at 11:39. I don't recall whether Onizuka's air pack was one of those found, and found to be manually activated. Nor whether there ended up being any evidence of cabin depressurization. But my understanding is that now, as then, there's no reason to believe that some of the seven didn't survive until cabin ocean impact minutes later. > On the roof of the launch control tower, the families of the crew desperately searched the twin trails of smoke that twisted skyward for signs of the crew cabin. :/ Perhaps it doesn't matter. It's not that different a story. And there's the "little white lies are fine" interpretation of integrity. Why shouldn't popular history get a prettified version? And given how NASA is funded, embracing integrity might be quite unhealthy. And yet... I'd have been happier if Malinowski wrote this paragraph a bit differently.
- ddoolin 8y ago
  Or, given the overall tone of the piece, she didn't feel it necessary to go into those details. I'm sure there are plenty of other details that also went glossed over. Your own tone implies they're lying for a possibly nefarious reason -- what is it? If I'm right, it might be more accurate to point out how she failed to mention the engineer's warnings to NASA and other supervisors about the high risk of failure of the gasket(s), as that, to me, makes them look markedly worse than the astronauts surviving the breakup. I'm sure it's harrowing to have 2 and a half minutes to contemplate your inevitable death and try fruitlessly to stop it (and even for us to read about it) but I don't think it's nefarious to leave that bit out so much as some degree of respect to the families.
bawigga 8y ago
I went to Clear Lake from 2001-2004. Lot's of friends with relations to NASA and supporting industries. Sad I can't remember the soccer ball being on display. Any other Falcons out there remember seeing it?
retrogradeorbit 8y ago
Not just the soccer ball but the whole crew compartment. http://www.space-shuttle.com/challenger1.htm http://www.space-shuttle.com/challenger1.htm
ridgeguy 8y ago
On Challenger's last day, I had met very early that morning with a couple of angel investors who signed a funding commitment for my first company. Went home, watched Challenger explode. An hour later, angel investors called to say "never mind". Watching Challenger blow up hurt worse. Especially in following months when failure analysis showed it could have been avoided by launching within the allowable temperature window. Some days you really remember.
- joering2 8y ago
  They probably did you a favor by not being forced to deal with them down the road. Unless you were as an engineer directly on Challenger O-Rings, I don't see any reason why anyone would cancel their financial commitment toward a startup project, because of this obvious tragedy.
  - RyJones 8y ago
    I suspect the timing was a coincidence.
molteanu 8y ago
"This is the story of the soccer ball that survived". 200+ points. Horrible. Seems like HN is getting worse and worse.
- filleduchaos 8y ago
  What is worse and worse about this post?
  - molteanu 8y ago
    The subject of it.
    - sidlls 8y ago
      People who think of themselves as "hackers" ought to be keenly interested in the entire Shuttle program, especially failure cases, and perhaps even more strongly interested in the human elements related to them. These things were truly marvels of engineering (in both positive and negative respects). The kinds of thought that goes into these kinds of things, and so many other in the physical engineering world, make "hacking" look trite in many ways.

273 points by cthulhujr 8y ago

mercwear 8y ago

I did not know what to expect from ESPN, this was a really well written article.

satsuma 8y ago
espn's more long-form storytelling is top notch. check out their 30 for 30 documentary series, they're fantastic.
- mercwear 8y ago
  Thanks for the heads up - I'll check them out!

piyh 8y ago

That was incredibly touching

bdamm 8y ago
The entire story thread was really well done. If anything it’s evidence of NASA’s soul as played out in the people who have built their lives around rocket operations.

mixmastamyk 8y ago

The story of the Challenger that day is one of the few things that can reliably squeeze a tear or two from me. Interestingly, I've never heard about this part of it, thanks.

sidlls 8y ago
Same here. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing, the smells and sounds, and how my teacher rushed to turn off the television we were all watching the launch on once it was clear what was happening. Kids crying, not understanding what was happening, the feel and look of the carpet, wall decorations, everything. It's the most vivid memory of childhood I have. I don't think I'll ever forget it. I couldn't even read through this story.
- jedberg 8y ago
  I too remember all those details. I was in third grade, and the whole school was watching together in the auditorium. After the explosion, they just sort of shuffled us back to our classrooms.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  > how my teacher rushed to turn off the television we were all watching the launch on once it was clear what was happening It’s funny, this is what causes trauma... if you interrupt the stress reaction and try to make it go away, you hold onto it. If animals are allowed to go through their full stress cycle, they forget the trauma.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    To be fair, they might have feared what more was about to come through that tv set. Or the impending wrath from parents when little Billy can't sleep at night. Was such concerns (parents) a thing in the 80s already?
  - kjs3 8y ago
    Because humans behave like animals.

jedberg 8y ago

> You may not know it, but you carry some of his words with you in your own earthly exploration, printed in every U.S. passport. This whole article was fantastic, but this was the coolest part for me. To learn that his quote is on every passport. I've never read the quotes on my passport before, but now I have.

mercwear 8y ago
This was one of my favorite takeaways too
rconti 8y ago
As much as I hate the ESPN sports complex, everything I've seen from the ESPN documentaries has been fantastic.
- awad 8y ago
  What about the ESPN sports complex do you dislike?
  - rconti 8y ago
    Primarily the feedback loop of cable companies "having to" carry ESPN/ESPN2/etc at vastly higher rates than any other network on television, resulting in the ability to bid up TV rights for all major sporting events. As long as the rights are expensive, the network will be expensive, and vice versa. I generally enjoy sports, but don't care about the endless commentary and talk shows that populate ESPN 24/7, nor do I like the fact that their properties drive up everyone's cable bill by $20-$30 per month, an order of magnitude more than any other network. It's one of the primary reasons I don't have pay TV; I wish I could allocate my pay TV dollars to the programming I find more valuable.
giodamelio 8y ago
Exactly. That was a chills down the the spine moment. I will definitely be taking a closer look at the quotes in my passport when I get home today.

runciblespoon 8y ago

"the solid rocket boosters ignited and somewhere in the right booster, a 0.280-inch-wide O-ring failed due to the cold." The 'solid rocket boosters' being constructed in segments because they had to be transported by rail from Utah. They had to be constructed in that state as part of the deal to get the politicians to vote in the finances.

jedberg 8y ago
I see what you're getting at, but the separate construction and transport was not the issue here. The O ring was a necessary pressure valve, but it failed because the cold made it brittle. The bigger issue here was the politics between Nasa and it's contractors. The contractors told them that the launch would be dangerous at the temperature, but they were ignored.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  At such projects, everybody is constantly mumbling about what all could go wrong, its just legally relevant background noise- not actually "sticking" out warnings pointing at a particular point of failure.
  - kop316 8y ago
    I'm sorry, You completely mischaracterize what happened that morning. The contractor responsible for the solid rocket booster flat out said "do not fly this love morning". NASA actually went to his supervisor and for his supervisor to sign off on the flight (the particular contractor who refused to sign off said " that was the single smartest decision of his life"). The following is a link to his book, but I actually heard a presentation from him. https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Lies-Rings-Challenger-Disaster/dp/0813041937 https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Lies-Rings-Challenger-Disaster/...
- robryk 8y ago
  > The O ring was a necessary pressure valve (...) Do I understand correctly that you're saying that the O-ring would be necessary even if the SRBs were constructed as a single long tube, instead of segments that are assembled together? If so, would you mind expanding on that? I was under the impression that the only reason the whole O-ring and caulking of the joints was necessary was the existence of the joints.

rmason 8y ago

I was visiting farmers reviewing plans for the next crop year. I'd just arrived and the farmer says do you mind if we watch the Challenger launch before starting? It's got that teacher going up in space. I told him that my high school government teacher had been one of the ten finalists so I took a pretty keen interest myself. I can remember the numbness I felt in his living room as we watched the Challenger explode. It's something once viewed that you can't unsee. Words fail you in trying to explain it. I had no idea at the time that there were five engineers who tried valiantly to stop the launch because of the cold weather and failed. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/28/464744781/30-years-after-disaster-challenger-engineer-still-blames-himself https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/28/464744781...

mehrdadn 8y ago
> The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers had tried to stop the launch. Their managers and NASA overruled them. That night, he told his wife, "It's going to blow up." This sent chills down my spine... the world just shouldn't be like this.
- T-hawk 8y ago
  One important piece of data to correlate with that: how many times previously had engineers issued similar warnings for launches that then proceeded fine? Warning fatigue is a thing and reasonable to wonder whether that happened at all here.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Yeah, very true. I did wonder about that a bit, and also how dire the previous warnings were, if any. "It's going to blow up" sounds like something that a good engineer shouldn't be saying very often about successful flights.
  - londons_explore 8y ago
    In some working environments issuing a warning is enough to get you off the hook for something going wrong, so it might be that nearly every flight had a warning so the engineers were never responsible...

mncharity 8y ago

> The failure allowed heated, pressurized propellants to leak out onto the external fuel tank, causing catastrophic structural failure. Seventy-three seconds into its 10th flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart, killing all seven members of its crew. It was 11:39 a.m. Sigh. It's perhaps silly of me in an age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, but I'm saddened to see this line repeated yet again, 30 years on. Perhaps Malinowski is just echoing old reporting. But a journalist of her caliber seems likely to have run this by NASA. Which suggests NASA PR is still prioritizing spin over integrity, even all these years later. For those who haven't seen this line before, the template is "<explosion> <fast> <dead>". As in 'the explosion ripped apart the shuttle faster than the blink of an eye, killing the astronauts'. By such word-smithed sleigh-of-hand, NASA would leave readers with the impression that the crew was killed immediately, a quick non-lingering death, without flat-out lying. One thing we're sure of is that some of the seven were not killed in the breakup at 11:39. I don't recall whether Onizuka's air pack was one of those found, and found to be manually activated. Nor whether there ended up being any evidence of cabin depressurization. But my understanding is that now, as then, there's no reason to believe that some of the seven didn't survive until cabin ocean impact minutes later. > On the roof of the launch control tower, the families of the crew desperately searched the twin trails of smoke that twisted skyward for signs of the crew cabin. :/ Perhaps it doesn't matter. It's not that different a story. And there's the "little white lies are fine" interpretation of integrity. Why shouldn't popular history get a prettified version? And given how NASA is funded, embracing integrity might be quite unhealthy. And yet... I'd have been happier if Malinowski wrote this paragraph a bit differently.

ddoolin 8y ago
Or, given the overall tone of the piece, she didn't feel it necessary to go into those details. I'm sure there are plenty of other details that also went glossed over. Your own tone implies they're lying for a possibly nefarious reason -- what is it? If I'm right, it might be more accurate to point out how she failed to mention the engineer's warnings to NASA and other supervisors about the high risk of failure of the gasket(s), as that, to me, makes them look markedly worse than the astronauts surviving the breakup. I'm sure it's harrowing to have 2 and a half minutes to contemplate your inevitable death and try fruitlessly to stop it (and even for us to read about it) but I don't think it's nefarious to leave that bit out so much as some degree of respect to the families.

bawigga 8y ago

I went to Clear Lake from 2001-2004. Lot's of friends with relations to NASA and supporting industries. Sad I can't remember the soccer ball being on display. Any other Falcons out there remember seeing it?

retrogradeorbit 8y ago

Not just the soccer ball but the whole crew compartment. http://www.space-shuttle.com/challenger1.htm http://www.space-shuttle.com/challenger1.htm

ridgeguy 8y ago

On Challenger's last day, I had met very early that morning with a couple of angel investors who signed a funding commitment for my first company. Went home, watched Challenger explode. An hour later, angel investors called to say "never mind". Watching Challenger blow up hurt worse. Especially in following months when failure analysis showed it could have been avoided by launching within the allowable temperature window. Some days you really remember.

joering2 8y ago
They probably did you a favor by not being forced to deal with them down the road. Unless you were as an engineer directly on Challenger O-Rings, I don't see any reason why anyone would cancel their financial commitment toward a startup project, because of this obvious tragedy.
- RyJones 8y ago
  I suspect the timing was a coincidence.

molteanu 8y ago

"This is the story of the soccer ball that survived". 200+ points. Horrible. Seems like HN is getting worse and worse.

filleduchaos 8y ago
What is worse and worse about this post?
- molteanu 8y ago
  The subject of it.
  - sidlls 8y ago
    People who think of themselves as "hackers" ought to be keenly interested in the entire Shuttle program, especially failure cases, and perhaps even more strongly interested in the human elements related to them. These things were truly marvels of engineering (in both positive and negative respects). The kinds of thought that goes into these kinds of things, and so many other in the physical engineering world, make "hacking" look trite in many ways.