Lost in space | 21 March 2013

On 28 January 1986 the Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after launch, killing all seven crew. What made it worse was that one of the victims, Christa McAuliffe, was a teacher, so of course all the children in her class were watching it live on TV. I remember it well. For the first few seconds after the shuttle blew up, you weren’t quite sure whether or not what you’d just seen was meant to happen: perhaps all those swirls of white vapour were jettisoned boosters or something. Then, you heard the gasps and groans from the crowds standing at the launch site and finally you knew. Up until 9/11 I think it was the most shocking event most of us had ever witnessed on TV.

What I hadn’t been properly aware of, till The Challenger (BBC2, Monday), was the back story. The disaster, it turns out, could easily have been avoided if Nasa had followed the advice of its own engineers. One of the parts on the shuttle — a rubber seal for an O-ring — was vulnerable to cold weather. And on that particular day, the shuttle was launched at a temperature well below the recommended minimum.

But this was more than a routine health and safety oversight. Really, it was manslaughter. Nasa recklessly launched that shuttle because it needed the money. It wanted to demonstrate to the US Treasury that, despite having ostensibly fulfilled its purpose once the moon landings were over, it had a vital new role to play in providing space shuttles as a delivery system for spy and telecommunications satellites.