Conspiracy Theory Challenger crash anniversary

[Dugdale2Dwyer]

http://gawker.com/thirty-years-ago-the-challenger-crew-plunged-alive-and-1755727930
Interesting story, am always reminded of the Capricorn One movie, big cover up from NASA, happened in real life, why didn't the space shuttle have a parachute?

 

[Zidane98]

The reusable solid rocket boosters had parachutes. The orbiter itself has a parachute for use on landing. In any case the orbiter was destroyed by the explosion and parachutes would unlikely have helped.

 

[Moonwatcher]

My understanding was the crew cabin was in tact and the crew would have survived until impact with the ocean. Quite sad really but I remember as a 4 yo watching at the time how inspiring it was for those heroes to effectively say that discovery and exploration is worth risking your life for.

 

[Zidane98]

Such a needless accident when the Thyiokol engineers vetoed the launch because of cold temperatures but were overruled.

 

[BustedWing]

I tend to think there is actual evidence that they survived the explosion and free fall in the capsule, then died on impact. I also tend to think that NASA tried to cover it up. This is one of the very few conspiracies I tend to believe.

Really sad story all around.

 

[Duritz]

I tend to think there is actual evidence that they survived the explosion and free fall in the capsule, then died on impact. I also tend to think that NASA tried to cover it up. This is one of the very few conspiracies I tend to believe.

Really sad story all around.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that is, tragically and mortifyingly, true.

There's also evidence that many at NASA knew about this potentiality pre flight and protested that it should not go ahead. If that's true then NASA are guilty of manslaughter.

 

[Zidane98]

There were engineers that expressed concern about the performance of the o-rings which seal the solid rocket boosters when under pressure.

They were overruled on the basis that a previous Discovery mission in similar conditions was successful. What they didn't realise was Discovery ' s o-rings were about 2 mm away from burning through like in the Challenger disaster.

Space flight has many unknowns & dynamics and that's why there was 2 disasters in the 30 year history of the programme which may not seem much but is quite a large number in proportion to the small number of flights.