Challenger at 40: Lessons from a tragedy

Here at NPR, we've been following the news unfolding of the Minneapolis protest, including the recent shooting and killing of a 37 year old man Saturday morning by federal agents. That's the third shooting and second death in Minneapolis involving federal immigration officials in January. We'll bring you more details on that developing story when Up First returns tomorrow. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. On the morning of 01/28/1986, Bob Ebeling was anxious and angry as he drove to work to the Morton Thiokol booster rocket complex outside Brigham City, Utah. He knew that 2,000 miles away at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ice had formed on the launch pad that cradled the space shuttle Challenger. Seven astronauts, including a civilian, a high school teacher, were set for liftoff that morning. Ebeling believed their lives were at at stake. His daughter, Leslie, was in the car with him. And he said, we are going to have a catastrophic event today. The night before, Ebling and his Thiokol colleagues, all booster rocket engineers, argued for a launch delay. They said the freezing weather overnight could cause a catastrophic failure in the booster rockets that would lift Challenger towards space. And he said the Challenger's gonna blow up. Everyone's going to die. And he was beating his hands on the dashboard. He was frantic. But in Florida, all systems were go. The NASA launch control team declared Challenger ready to fly. I uphold the technical community, and you have our consensus to proceed with this launch. Good luck and Godspeed. Except that wasn't true. There wasn't consensus among the technical community to proceed. But the launch director and other top NASA officials didn't know this. They didn't know that Ebling and other engineers at Morton Thiokol had told other NASA officials it was too risky to launch. Today on the Sunday story, we look back forty years ago this week at that desperate eleventh hour effort to keep the space shuttle challenger grounded, at the resistance to heeding those warnings, at a persistent and crushing burden of guilt for some of those involved, and at lessons learned from the Challenger disaster, which continue to resonate today. If they would have waited one day, discussion here would be completely different. We'll be right back. This message comes from Schwab. Everyone has moments when they could have done better, like cutting their own hair or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com. This message comes from Prolon. Feeling heavy and depleted after the holidays? Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet aims to make it easy to reset your body, habits, and energy heading into the new year. Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, the goal …