Challenger: Two Teachers To Remember

The Challenger disaster of 25 years ago is front center again in media around the country.  The story of Christa McAuliffe, public school teacher, especially, still resonates country-wide. 

Young and attractive, Christa was eager to bring the lessons of space into her classroom. She reminds us of those special teachers in our own lives who  made a difference, perhaps by striking just the right chord one day, or by helping us over an extended rough patch when comprehension came hard.

The tales told by those of us whom Christa inspired to grab the brass ring that slipped from her hands on that long ago day of abrupt tragedy have been especially heartening to read a quarter century later..

What we perhaps have forgotten, and ought to recall, is that a second Challenger failure, more  fiasco than  tragedy, unfolded in slow motion in the months that followed. A necessary official inquiry turned into a slippery game of dodge the blame.

Diplomat William P. Rogers, a former, forgettable Secretary of State under Richard Nixon was nominated by President Reagan to head the inquiry commission. Institutional preservation soon replaced finding out what happened as its undeclared goal.

Fortunately, the process was jolted back on track by an electric moment, one that was played out on national television for all who cared enough to tune in and to learn from yet another inspiring teacher who was also the maverick member every such commission needs..

His name was Richard Feynman. What he did one day, during a televised commission hearing, was show us how effective it is to think like the scientist he was. Specifically, he dipped a segment of o-ring taken from a model of a critical connection on Challenger’s solid rocker booster into a glass of ice water. It lost resiliency just like the whole part had done in the uncommonly freezing temperatures at Canaveral on launch morning, causing it to catastrophically fail in flight.

While short of the name recognition of his fellow teacher, Christa, Feynman was not unknown. A Nobel Laureate in 1965 for work in theoretical physics, an alumnus of Los Alomos’ Manhattan project, beloved professor at Cal Tech, theoretical pioneer in nanotechnology, contributor to the theory of parallel computing, samba style drummer, raconteur, man-about-town, accomplished artist specializing in nudes and author of two successful memoirs and numerous professional books and articles, he was actually hard to miss.

He was even harder to steer. Slipping the leash Chairman Rogers attempted to rein him with, Feynman soon found an appalling disconnect between NASA’S engineers and technicians and its top managers over known past o-ring problems. A similar cultural void existed between engineers and suits at NASA’s contractor, Morton-Thiokol. Risk analysis was more akin to a game of Russian roulette than the application of probability theory.

When his findings were denied a hearing in the commission’s final report, Feynman first refused to sign it, wrote his own and insisted that it be included as written as an appendix before he would sign on. Therein he said: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

It would be nice to report that NASA had humbly and thoroughly learned its lesson, but we all know Columbia broke apart 17 years later on reentry, scattering craft and crew the length of Texas, when a known and discounted problem with loose foam pieces turned critical.

Feynman died in 1988, age 69, two years after Challenger. It took two rare forms of cancer a long time to bring him down; both were trying when he accepted a place on the Challenger commission. His last words were typical: “I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.”

Perhaps we could bring a scientist’s perspective and methods to the divisive problems of our day. We could approach them calmly and analytically instead of wrangling over ancient ideologies that are inadequate for making sense of our modern political economy. The infighting may be sporting, but all it accomplishes is to prompt the media to entertain us with endless articles of the “lets you and him fight” variety. Again, Nature is not fooled.