The O Ring Challenger

This raised a more pressing question.

The o ring challenger.

But nasa was under pressure to keep to its ambitious flight schedule and the risk was deemed acceptable. Morton thiokol discovered that both o rings booster sealers had malfunctioned which led to the fuel tank blowing up. The final crew of the space shuttle challenger via wikipedia. It found that the challenger accident was caused by a failure in the o rings sealing a joint on the right solid rocket booster which allowed pressurized hot gases and eventually flame to blow by the o ring and make contact with the adjacent external tank causing structural failure.

The failure of the o rings was attributed to a faulty design whose performance could be too easily compromised by factors including the low ambient temperature on the day of launch. The crew members cabin remained in tact but fell to the atlantic ocean at approximately 200 miles per hour. In challenger s case the o ring got so cold it hadn t expanded properly and allowed the leak. The challenger itself didn t technically explode but rather disintegrated from the result of the o ring malfunction.

Nasa s own pre launch estimates were that there was a 1 in 100 000 chance of shuttle failure for any given launch and poor statistical reasoning was a key. An investigation found some workers had warned nasa about the danger of launching challenger because the o rings grew brittle in cold weather. This had failed due to the low temperature 31 f 0 5 c at launch time a risk that several engineers noted but that nasa management dismissed.