>The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on Januar

>>8635954
This is what happens when you let your space program become a pork program. You do stuff that doesn't make sense, and people die for nothing, their lives thrown into the same hole with billions of tax dollars and thousands of American lifetimes of effort.

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>>8635954
>hey guys, the space shuttle is gonna explode if you launch it now
- an engineer
>nah we're fine
- the executives

Fact: Sally Ride was a paid saboteur hired by anti-NASA lobbyists and martyred to the cause of decreased government spending.

>>8635954
>Cape Canaveral
Is this a JoJo reference?

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>>8636081
nigguh what

>>8636089
Read the manga

>>8635954
https://youtu.be/herczHmAyno?t=200

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>>8636213
I have, thank you very much, and I am pretty sure that place is actually a nasa thing

unless you mean something different, like event that happened there, but it isn't credible

>>8636015
This story is part of many books on organisational theory, just the kind of literature read by the executives that said go.

The other interesting thing is that none of the executives were ever jailed, they were not even put on trial.
>Murder 7 astronauts
>Destroy a space shuttle worth billions
>Break the back of US manned space program for years
>And get away with it.

>>8636393
>murder
seems more like manslaughter to me. But your point still stands.

>>8635954
F

>>8635954
Were they killed in the explosion or when the crew cabin hit the ocean?

>>8636975
Strange as it sounds it is believed they survived the explosion, said to be of the order of a small nuclear device as much of the fuel was not yet spent.

One hopes they were unconscious as they otherwise would have known they would not survive impact with the ocean which indeed is what killed them.

>>8636631
I guess overruling the experts would make it premeditated. And those responsible didn't even get a slap on the wrist.

>>8635954
That's so sad. Condolences to their memories and their families. Big respect for their sacrifices and achievements for humankind and science.

>>8636393
>>8637750
The "executives" of NASA were unaware of the problem because the engineers' complaints never got past their managers.

>>8637759
They created that situation, with "results, not excuses" attitude and killing the messenger.

Anyway, I hate this focus on the most immediate details of how the particular disaster played out. The space shuttle was a bad program that was destined for bad things.

The loss of seven lives is tragic, but is it more tragic than the loss of thousands of lifetimes of work poured into a predictably unproductive effort? Is it more tragic than the lives crushed and people driven to suicide or unable to pay for safety precautions or medical treatment that would have saved their lives by the taxation needed for the program? Is it more tragic than the missed opportunity to develop a real reusable spacecraft to serve as a model for private spacelines and open up a broad new field of human endeavor? Countless people die every day.

The shuttle was a bad faith program. They gave a song and dance about progress and economy, but it was pork. It was designed to be wasteful, because dollars aren't destroyed when they are wasted, they are always transferred to someone's pocket. There was a conscious decision made early on to NOT make anything worth having.

You don't attract good people to a pork project. You attract people who only care about having their jobs and their paychecks, not about what their job is for. The people who do care, and have more legitimate opportunities, leave. So it also degrades whatever institution you assign it to.

The Challenger disaster is a distraction from the larger failure of the shuttle program.