Term Papers on Challenger

Term Paper Title	Challenger
# of Words	1114
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.46

Challenger

On January 26, 1986, one of
the greatest disasters of our time occurred.  When Challenger was destroyed
many questions were asked about the safety of space missions.  Many questions
were asked about the credibility of the engineers who designed the air craft.
It is now know that crucial information about the faulty O-rings was know
to many if not all of the engineers. These engineers had many moral decisions
they had to face when the problem was first noticed, which was as early as
November 1981.
When a shuttle is launched their are two booster rockets attached
to the side of it that disconnect when the shuttle gets into orbit.  The rockets
that were on the Challenger were manufactured by Morton-Thiokol, an engineering
company.  This company then sends the rockets to the launch site where they
are assembled.  Where the different pieces of the rocket fit together, there
is a set of O-rings that make a seal around the booster.  Around the O-rings
their is a putty substance that holds the O-rings in place. In November of
1981, after the flight of the second shuttle mission, the joints where examined,
and the O-rings were eroded.
The joints were still sealing effectively but
the O-ring material was decaying because of hot gasses that went through the
putty.  At this point Roger Boisjoly an engineer for Morton-Thiokol started
researching different types of putty to reduce the corrosion on the O-rings.
After testing the O-rings in the laboratory it was found that they did not
return to their original size after being compressed at low temperatures.
Thiokol  designed a set of billets that would hold the joint more firmly in
place.  These billets were not ready on the day of the Challenger disaster
because they took too long to manufacture, and NASA did not want to delay the
project.
The next tests took place in June of 1985 at Morton-Thiokol in
Utah.  The primary seal on flight 51B which flew on April 29, 1985, was eroded;
"eroded in 3 places over a 1.3 inch length up to a maximum depth of.171 inches.
It was postulated that this primary seal had never sealed during the full
two minute flight."i  It's at this point that Boisjoly knew he had to go to
his superiors about the problem.  In August of 1985 Morton-Thiokol formed a
task force of engineers to solve the problem of the O-rings.   This task force
only consisted of 5 engineers who could not solve the problem.  NASA wanted
Thiokol to down play the problem because they were under a lot of pressure
due to competition.
The night before the scheduled launch of Challenger,
a teleconference was held between engineers and management from the Kennedy
Space Center, Marshal Space Flight Center in Alabama and Morton-Thiokol in
Utah.ii  Boisjoly, and Ernie Thompson another engineer from Thiokol knew this
was their last chance to stop the flight from taking off.  Robert Lund, Thiokol's
Engineering Vice President showed that 53 degrees "was the only low temperature
data Thiokol had for the effects of cold on the operational boosters."iiiBut
they had no data that did prove that it was unsafe to launch at lower temperatures.
Boisjoly and Thompson were unsuccessful in "blowing the whistle."  The next
day the Challenger took of from the Kennedy space Center; "a rush of cotton-candy
like smoke washed over the cockpit windows, possibly accomp...

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