Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Challenger Disaster

Summary

Podcast Summary

All Of It – Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Challenger Disaster

Host: Alison Stewart (WNYC)
Guest: Adam Higginbotham (Author, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space)
Air Date: January 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special episode marks the 40th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Host Alison Stewart speaks with journalist and author Adam Higginbotham, whose recent book explores the events before, during, and after the tragic explosion that killed all seven astronauts on January 28, 1986. They reflect on the cultural, technological, and emotional legacy of the Challenger, discuss why the story continues to resonate, and take calls from listeners sharing their memories and feelings about that fateful day.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

Revisiting the Challenger Disaster

• Why Tell This Story Again?

  • Higginbotham notes that despite extensive coverage, no comprehensive narrative nonfiction book had covered the full story since the late 1980s, and much information had since become available in memoirs and archives.
  • The public memory has centered on Christa McAuliffe; Higginbotham wanted to highlight all seven crew members and the engineers who tried to stop the launch.

  “...the way the accident had been written about... had increasingly come to focus very tightly on the story of Christa McAuliffe... I wanted to return to the story and tell it in a different way so that it brought to life the other six members of the crew...” — Adam Higginbotham (03:21)

NASA’s Shifting Public Perception

• Early NASA: Cold War & Apollo Era

  • NASA began as a Cold War response to the Soviet Union's Sputnik; Americans invested heavily in the space program to demonstrate national prowess.
  • The Apollo program was fueled by a “blank check” mentality to fulfill President Kennedy’s moon landing promise.

• The 1970s & ‘80s: Public Boredom & Shuttle Era

  • By the late ‘60s, public interest waned. Budgets were slashed. Even moon landings lost their novelty, with TV viewers wanting their regular programming back.
  • NASA promised routine “truck-like” shuttle missions—launching frequently, with astronauts in more accessible, everyday settings.

  “...the public kind of got bored with it. ...when the last mission was launched to the moon in 1972, TV viewers called in to television stations to complain that their favorite soaps were being interrupted...” — Adam Higginbotham (07:09)

The Promise and Pressure of the Space Shuttle Program

• Making Space Seem Routine

  • Idealistic “airline-style” turnarounds for shuttles resulted in underfunding, part shortages, and dangerous organizational shortcuts.
  • 1986 was set to be the busiest year in NASA’s history—with a dangerous pace.

  “...that flight rate essentially almost kind of broke the agency. It was really sort of coming apart at the seams... it wasn't set up to run a trucking business into space.” — Adam Higginbotham (09:10)

Crew Selection and Diversity

• Crew Symbolism

  • The Challenger crew represented a diverse America: Ellison Onizuka (first Asian American in space), Judith Resnik (second American woman), and Ronald McNair (second African American), alongside Christa McAuliffe, an “everyperson” chosen as the first “Teacher in Space.”
  • NASA’s Spaceflight Participant Program was devised to rekindle public excitement by sending ordinary citizens—including teachers, journalists, and perhaps even “Big Bird”—into space.

  “...they were chosen because they represented a kind of idealized picture of melting pot America...” — Adam Higginbotham (10:09)

  “And this went so far that they actually corresponded with Spinney and he agreed to do it.” — Adam Higginbotham (13:10)

Public Relations & Space as Spectacle

• The Teacher in Space was only the first of several PR initiatives; plans included sending journalists, artists, and even puppeteers into orbit to broaden public engagement.

  “...public relations was, was a leading element. Yes, in the spaceflight participant program.” — Adam Higginbotham (13:44)

Personal Memories: Host, Guest, and Listeners

• Alison Stewart & Adam Higginbotham Reflect

  • Adam: Heard about the disaster hours later as a British high school student. It was “inconceivable” that NASA, which appeared infallible, could experience such tragedy. (15:47)
  • Alison: First breaking-news experience as a college radio broadcaster—learning to manage the emotional weight of such reporting. (16:37)

  “I can still really remember how really, you know, totally inconceivable I found it... NASA was an organization that could achieve the impossible on a regular basis.” — Adam Higginbotham (16:07)

Caller Memories (Selected)

• Alexis (Hempstead, Schoolteacher) (17:31)

  • Connects Ron McNair’s story to her teaching, reading “Ron's Big Mission” to students, underlining the personal impact and circles of representation.

• Carrie (Croton on Hudson, Hospital Worker) (18:31)

  • Shares the shock and devastation felt in her workplace; recalled knowing someone with NASA connections.

• Marisa (Pelham, FL native, Student at the time) (22:39)

  • Describes the routine of watching shuttle launches and the immediate confusion and panic when the Challenger launch did not go as expected.

  “...like, the whole school went bananas afterwards because we went right to the principal's office and said, something huge has happened.” — Marisa (23:41)

• Mendel (West Hartford, Student) (23:58)

  • Linked personally as his teacher had advanced in the NASA teacher selection process, showing the depth of connection many citizens felt.

• Matthew (Spring Lake, Senate Employee) (26:12)

  • Described the shock in Washington, including the visible emotion of senators and journalists; cited Ronald Reagan’s unifying speech.

The Root Cause: Organizational Failure and the Cold

• The disaster was attributed to O-ring seal failure in the solid rocket boosters—longstanding engineering concerns exacerbated by record cold. Engineers knew the risks; their concerns were overruled after pressure from NASA management (not, as rumors suggested, by the White House).

  “...what actually caused the accident was a failure of the seals in the solid rocket boosters... their theory was that the extreme cold had made the seal so inflexible that they couldn't do their job properly...” — Adam Higginbotham (19:30)

  “They did indeed get them to send over this fax...that changed their recommendation from no go for launch to go for launch.” — Adam Higginbotham (21:51)

• Mythbusting: Presidential Pressure

  • The Rogers Commission found no evidence that Reagan pressured for the launch to coincide with the State of the Union; the management decisions were internal to NASA.

  “That is not true. That was a sort of conspiracy theory... thoroughly investigated by the Rogers Commission and they established that there was no evidence to that.” — Adam Higginbotham (28:24)

Aftermath and Cultural Impact

• NASA’s Response: Paralyzed and Secretive

  • The agency was ill-equipped for crisis communication and the absence of transparency appeared as a cover-up, further eroding trust.

  “...their response was sort of paralyzed. And they didn't release very much information at all about what had happened. And it led to an assumption on the part of the media...that they were trying to cover up what had happened.” — Adam Higginbotham (25:03)

• Rogers Commission Findings

  • The Commission’s report called it an “accident rooted in history,” citing organizational failures, overconfidence, chronic miscommunication, and ignored warnings.

  “...series of red flags stretching back 10, 20 years before the accident...” — Adam Higginbotham (29:25)

• A Lasting Loss of Innocence

  • Challenger shattered an era’s faith in American technological might and optimism; trust in NASA never fully recovered.

  “NASA was one of the last American institutions after Watergate, after the Vietnam War, in which people still had total confidence...all of that was just shattered...” — Adam Higginbotham (30:32)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:28 – Episode introduction; remembering Challenger and its crew
• 02:30 – Adam Higginbotham on why the Challenger story deserved a new retelling
• 04:03 – Cold War origins of NASA; evolution of public interest
• 08:19 – 1986: “Banner year” plans and the pressures of routine spaceflight
• 10:06 – The crew’s diversity and the “Teacher in Space” program
• 13:17 – PR ambitions: Big Bird and ordinary citizens in orbit
• 15:47 – Host and guest share personal Challenger memories
• 17:31–24:44 – Listener calls: emotional, personal, and educational echoes
• 19:21 – The disastrous cold and its role in the mechanical failure
• 25:03 – NASA’s mishandled crisis management and fallout
• 28:24 – Debunking rumors about White House pressure
• 29:20 – Rogers Commission findings and historical critique
• 30:32 – Cultural aftermath: NASA's reputation and national optimism
• 31:35 – Closing thanks and final thoughts

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Memorable Quotes

• “You know, this was the idea...a real spaceship that would just take off, go into space, fly into space like a rocket, go into orbit around the Earth like a spaceship, and then glide back down to Earth, land on a Runway like a plane...” — Adam Higginbotham (06:21)

• “[Challenger] represented a kind of loss of innocence...I think people lost a kind of open minded optimism that they felt about high technology that day. And I don't think that's ever really returned.” — Adam Higginbotham (30:32)

• “The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted. It belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future...” — President Ronald Reagan, from his national address (27:21)

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Tone & Atmosphere

The episode is somber, earnest, and reflective, matching the gravity of the anniversary and loss. There is a sense of nostalgia and reverence for the Challenger crew and a thoughtful critique of the culture, decision-making, and media attitudes that shaped—and were shaped by—the disaster. Listeners’ calls further ground the story in personal, communal, and nation-wide memory.

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Conclusion

The 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster is not only a moment to remember the seven lost astronauts, but also to reflect on the evolution of America’s relationship with technology, risk, and public spectacle. As Adam Higginbotham and Alison Stewart discuss, the Challenger’s legacy is both a tale of heroism and a cautionary story of institutional hubris, cultural optimism, and the enduring power of collective memory.

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

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This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm very grateful that you're here on today's show. We'll kick off this month's full bio conversation about the Schuyler sisters, Angelica, Eliza and Peggy with Amanda Viall, the author of Pride and the Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution. Emmy Award winning actor Katherine Lanassa will be here. She plays nurse Dana on the HBO series the Pit. And author George Saunders joins us in stud to talk about his new novel Vigil. That's the plan. So let's get this started with a somber anniversary. Forty years ago on January 28, 1986, millions of Americans tuned in to watch the Challenger venture into space. 73 seconds after launch, the Challenger exploded. All seven astronauts on board were killed. They were Dick Scobie, Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ron McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. Here's what you would have heard on CNN as the launch went wrong.

[News Reporter]

Looks like a couple of the solid rocket boosters blew away from the side of the shuttle in an explosion.

[Caller or Advertiser]

Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the sit, obviously a major malfunction.

[Alison Stewart]

A subsequent investigation revealed that there were serious questions about the safety of the launch that were overlooked. Journalist Adam Higginbotham is the author of a book that tells the story of the Challenger and what led up to and followed that fateful day. It is called Challenger A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. It is now out in paperback. And Adam is with me now to reflect on the anniversary. Thank you for being here.

[Adam Higginbotham]

Thank you for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

So there's been a lot of coverage of the Challenger disaster over the last 40 years. What more did you feel was left to the story?

[Adam Higginbotham]

Well, I mean, when I started looking into the idea of doing it, I did kind of wonder that myself, but quickly discovered that, you know, by the time I started work on the project, I mean, probably like 35 years had elapsed since the accident actually happened. And what I quickly realized was that the that nobody had really attempted to write a serious narrative nonfiction account of what happened that day since 1987, probably, and also in the years since the accident happened, a huge amount of information had come out, both in archival material and in personal memoirs. And also that the way the accident had been written about and featured in films and documentaries had increasingly come to focus very tightly on the story of Christa McAuliffe, the teacher in space. And so I wanted to return to the story and tell it in a different way so that it brought to life the other six members of the crew who you mentioned who were on board the ship that day. But also the stories of the handful of rocket scientists, rocket engineers, who attempted to stop the launch happening at the last moment, but obviously failed.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's put this in contrast. If you compare NASA today to what it was like in the 80s versus what it meant to people in the 60s. Let's start at the beginning. Why did NASA start.

[Adam Higginbotham]

You mean, why did it start in the 60s? Yeah, well, in order. I mean, it was a. It was a product of the Cold War, really. So, you know, the. When the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, this. This was received by the American public certainly as a tremendous shock. And the idea that a kind of a nation that had been characterized as a state of backward potato farmers could take this leap forward in technology meant that almost overnight, a huge amount of money had to be put into a US Space program in order to try and catch up. And then that led to, you know, the Moon program and the challenge that President Kennedy put forward to put men on the surface of the moon and safely return them within 10 years.

[Alison Stewart]

So by the time we got to the 80s and the late 60s, it was an extraordinary event to be on the Moon. It was exciting. By the time we got to the 80s, what was the context for NASA?

[Adam Higginbotham]

Well, I mean, really, before Armstrong and Aldrin even walked on the moon, they had already started. The US government had already started cutting NASA's budget. So they were able to organize the moon program and make this amazing achievement because they were essentially given a blank check and whatever it cost, they were going to put people on the moon before the decade was out. They succeeded in doing that. But. But the truth was that there had always been kind of public disquiet about the amount of money that was being spent on the space program, given the poverty and difficulty that there was within the United States, let alone around the rest of the world. So that combined with the fact that after 1969, the moon missions continued for years and the public kind of got bored with it. I mean, it's hard at this point in time, given the amount of nostalgia there is for the Apollo program, to look back on it and realize that, you know, when the last mission was launched to the moon in 1972, TV viewers called in to television stations to complain that their favorite soaps were being interrupted by live footage of the launch taking place. And it was against this backdrop that the space shuttle program was created. So, you know, when NASA decided that they wanted to take the next step in space travel and create a reusable spacecraft, which at the time was a kind of science fiction idea of having a real spaceship that would just take off, go into space, fly into space like a rocket, go into orbit around the Earth like a spaceship, and then glide back down to Earth, land on a Runway like a plane, and then just be turned around by the engineers who would just kind of wipe down the windshield, change the oil, put it back on the launch pad, all ready to go again the next day. You know, this was the idea. When they came to the White House and to Congress and asked for the money for this, they were like, no, this is way too expensive. You can't do this. But NASA was by that time convinced that in order to continue to survive as an agency, they needed to keep flying people into space. They needed to keep doing more and more audacious things to keep the public engaged with it and to keep congressional funding flowing. So they entered into this sort of devil's bargain where despite being offered a fraction of what they thought it would cost to build this thing, they agreed to go ahead with. With the money that they were given. And so that was the beginning of a sort of long path of compromises and cutbacks and financial squeezes that ultimately led to the space shuttle being. Although it was an amazing achievement to get it launched in the first place, it was always hobbled in achieving what they expected it to do.

[Alison Stewart]

You wrote that 1986 was expected to.

Be a banner year for the space shuttle.

What did they have planned?

[Adam Higginbotham]

It was going to be the busiest year of manned spaceflight launches in NASA history. So the part of the point of the shuttle was that it was going to be this vehicle that made spaceflight routine. So space was just going to be a place where you went to work and traveling on the space shuttle. It was a shirt sleeve environment. It wasn't like traveling to the moon where everybody got into these bulky pressure suits with these kind of fishbowl helmets. You would just get into a sort of blue jumpsuit and then maybe put on a helmet and Then. But you get into space and it'd be just a working environment. And the whole point of this began to kind of approach what they promised in 1985, where they had roughly one launch of the space shuttle every month. And that flight rate essentially almost kind of broke the agency. It was really sort of coming apart at the seams because it wasn't set up to run a trucking business into space.

[Alison Stewart]

You had to wait till one shuttle came back to take a part of.

It, to put it onto the next shuttle for it to take off.

[Adam Higginbotham]

Exactly, exactly. Because they just didn't have enough spare parts. And they were used to tailoring spaceships for one mission at a time. And suddenly they had a fleet of four spacecraft that were constantly rotating through Cape Canaveral on the way to space.

[Alison Stewart]

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. My guest to reflect on the anniversary is journalist Adam Higginbotham, the author of the book A True Story of Heroism and a Disaster on the Edge of Space. It is out in paperback. Now let's talk about the astronauts who were on board that day. Why were these, the astronauts chosen for this specific mission?

[Adam Higginbotham]

Well, I think that in part they were chosen because they represented a kind of idealized picture of melting pot America. And it's one of the reasons, I think, why the accident, when it happened, made such an impact on the American psyche is because in addition to the Teacher in space, candidate Krista McAuliffe, the crew was. Was made up of this really kind of diverse cross section of the astronaut core that represented America. You know, so you had Ellison Lazuka, who was the first Asian American in space. You had Judy Resnick, who was the second American woman in space. You had Ron McNair, who was the second African American in space. You know, and on top of that, then you had had Christa McAuliffe, who, who was picked because she was this sort of every woman, someone who was not only a great communicator but extremely charming and was just kind of. And seemed totally normal. You know, she seemed to be a placeholder really, for anybody who was an ordinary person who had ever dreamed of going into space as an astronaut.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah. What was the idea behind Teacher in Space?

[Adam Higginbotham]

Well, I mean, that goes back to a similar problem that NASA was suffering from, as they did with the Apollo program, which was that they began to realize that their effort to make space flight seem routine with the space shuttle had succeeded all too effectively to the point where the public got bored with it. Ho hum, you know, when they started launching One mission every month or so. Then it reached a point where public attention drifted away to the extent that the three national television networks stopped covering the launches live, just because it seemed to be, as you say, a pretty ho hum exploit to launch this vehicle into space regularly.

[Alison Stewart]

And having a teacher in space wasn't just the beginning of it. They were going to have journalists go into space, all kinds of people in the future who lined up to be on that list.

[Adam Higginbotham]

It was, it was conceived as what was known as the space flight participant program. And so they, they did a lot of lengthy consideration about what kinds of people from ordinary walks of life they would choose to represent ordinary people. And initially the. The chief of NASA, the administrator of NASA, was very keen on the idea of spend sending a Boy Scout into space. And then they gave extremely serious consideration to sending Carol Spinney, who was the puppeteer who operated Big Bird on Sesame street, into space as the first citizen astronaut because they were interested in engaging children's interest in spaceflight. So, you know, Big Bird seemed like a logical choice. And this went so far that they actually corresponded with Spinney in and he agreed to do it.

[Alison Stewart]

Oh my gosh.

[Adam Higginbotham]

And the main reason why they didn't is because they eventually figured out that the costume with the feathers and everything was gonna behave awkwardly in orbit and that was gonna cause problems. So at that point they moved on to other kinds of candidate.

[Alison Stewart]

I am sensing that this was a PR ruse.

[Adam Higginbotham]

Ruse is a strong word.

[Alison Stewart]

Ruse is a strong word. A pr.

[Adam Higginbotham]

But promotion, I would say that public relations was, was a leading element. Yes, in the spaceflight participant program. And, you know, and so they, they chose a teacher first and then they had. Actually, at the time the accident took place, I think that they had already selected a journalist candidate to be the next person and that that was going to go ahead. But then they had plans for, you know, artists and sculptors and photographs, photographers.

[Alison Stewart]

And all the like. We got a text here that says in a small park on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, there's a monument to Dr. Ronald McNair.

[Adam Higginbotham]

Right.

[Alison Stewart]

Which is very interesting.

[Adam Higginbotham]

Right.

[Alison Stewart]

And this is our time. We're going to invite listeners to either call in or text in. We want to know what you remember about the Challenger disaster. Where were you, what you remember feeling? Our Phone number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. How did you and your family talk about it? How did your friends at school talk about it? What do you think changed in American culture that day? Our number is 212-433-969-2212-4433 W NYC. We'll have your calls and we'll have more with Adam Hickinbothan after a break.

You are listening to all of it on WNYC. I am Alison Stewart. Today is the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. My guest to reflect on the anniversary is journalist Adam Higginbothen, author of the book A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. The paperback is out now. It's an excellent book. We want to know from you, do you remember watching the Challenger disaster? Where were you? How did you react? What did you think? It changed about American culture. Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. Adam, so, so where were you?

[Adam Higginbotham]

I was at school. I was at high school in England. And because of the time difference, you know, I was in class when it happened or just coming out of it. And obviously because this was a pre cell phone, Pre Internet, pre 24 hour rolling news time, I didn't hear about it when it happened. And I just went out with my friends after school and it wasn't until I got home quite late that night that my mother had been watching the news and knew all about it, told me what had happened. But I can still really remember how really, you know, totally inconceivable. I found it, it took me a while to kind of wrestle with it and realize that this really had happened because I, like so many other people had had started to believe that NASA was an organization that could achieve the impossible on a regular basis.

[Alison Stewart]

I was in college, I was at my college radio station and they said they had, in introducing us to all the equipment, they said when that bell goes off, that means something has happened. I remember that from the first day and then I was in and the bell went off and everybody's head just turned to like, what's happened? Like we didn't know what was happening. It came over like a fax machine. It practically came over and we, you know, broke, broke, broke into air on college radio. But it was a really, really my first experience with breaking news. And what to do with that, what to do with that emotion, what to do with the job of telling people about it. It was an interesting point in my career, my career. Let's talk to a couple of people who have called in. Let's talk to Alexis in Hempstead. Hi, Alexis, thanks for calling all of it.

[Alexis (Caller)]

Hi, good morning. I was just telling as you guys are recalling. I was standing in my living room getting ready to go to high school, and I just remember, like, the shock of the moment. I knew exactly where I was standing. But also I'm a schoolteacher and every year I read a book, book to my students called Ron's Big Mission. And it's about Ron McNair and how when he was little, he just went to the library. He wanted a library card. And at that point, African Americans couldn't take books out of the library. And every time I read a book, I choke up. And it's just, it's like a full circle moment for me.

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk to Carrie in Croton on Hudson. Hi, Kerry, thank you for making the time to call. All of it.

[Carrie (Caller)]

Yes, I, I just remember so clearly exactly where I was standing. I was at work, and I work in a hospital. We had kind of stopped to watch the launch and, and when it was just devastating to see the explosion. And, you know, it was, it was just terrible. And at the time I had a, worked with NASA and she worked with astronaut families. And I just called her immediately because it was just, she was, you know, it was just horrible. And, but, and it was such a hopeful time and so excited about it. And then to have that happen, it was just tragic.

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk about the day itself, Adam. It was January 28, 1986, Kennedy Space center in Florida. But it was really cold.

[Adam Higginbotham]

It was really cold. It was the coldest day in 100 years.

[Alison Stewart]

So why is the temperature such an important detail?

[Adam Higginbotham]

Because they, because what actually caused the accident was a failure of the seals in the solid rocket boosters that were the strap on rockets that provided the shuttle with most of its thrust on the way to orbit. And they'd had problems almost since the very beginning of the shuttle program with these rockets and with the seals specifically. But almost exactly a year before, in January 1985, when they recovered the rockets from the shuttle mission that had flown, then they discovered that the kind of damage that they'd seen in these seals in the solid rockets was a lot worse than they'd ever seen before. And the engineers who examined the damage quickly made a connection between the historic cold that had fallen over the launch pad the night before that launch and the damage. And they thought their theory was that these, the seals are made of this sort of synthetic rubber called Viton. And their theory was that the extreme cold had made the seal so inflexible that they couldn't do their job properly. They couldn't flex into the gap in the joint in the rocket at the point of ignition, and therefore made it possible for hot gas from inside the rocket to leak out. And so when the engineers heard the weather forecast in January 1986 of further historic cold sweeping over the launch pad, they immediately thought, well, we've got to stop the launch because it has to be postponed at least until the temperature improves, because otherwise, if the damage under similar circumstances last year was so bad, it could be a lot worse, and we run the risk of catastrophe. And so, late on the night of January 27, the engineers of the contractor that built the rockets over at Morton Thiocol in Utah called this late night teleconference meeting with their bosses at NASA to try and tell them that they recommended against a launch, and they wanted.

[Alison Stewart]

Him to sign a piece of paper that says, I'm okay with the launch.

[Adam Higginbotham]

Well, what happened is that they were pretty wild. The engineers presented all their data and sent them a piece of paper that said, we do not recommend launch. But the NASA bosses, who at that point were under enormous pressure to get the launch to go ahead, made it very clear to them that they didn't want to hear this. They didn't explicitly say, we want you to change your minds, but they made it clear that they would be quite unhappy if they didn't. And then, as a result, they did indeed get them to send over this fax, and that changed their recommendation from no go for launch to go for launch.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Marisa, who is calling from Pelham. Hi, Marisa, thank you for taking the time to call all of it.

Hi.

[Marisa (Caller)]

I grew up in Florida. And in Florida, when they first started launching, we probably lived about an hour and a half south. But the schools would release and everyone would go out and watch them launch. But so I probably seen, like, at least 5, 6 launches live from where I lived. And then it got boring because they just launched so often. So this particular launch, I just happened to be sent by the teacher down to the, like, principal's office to bring in their attendance or something. So I'm standing outside because it's one.

[Adam Higginbotham]

Of those outdoor Florida schools.

[Marisa (Caller)]

And I was watching it and said, something's wrong. And there was nobody there. I was, like, alone, just sort of freaking out, like, what? What's happening? Like, and another kid was walking by, and he was like, something's wrong. And we both ran to the principal's office just in an absolute panic because you just expected the boosters to sort of. It was a very predictable thing. There was a little moment in the middle of lunches where the boosters would release, but then it would continue to go up. And this just didn't go up. It just hung there. And like, the whole school went bananas afterwards because we went right to the principal's office and said, something huge has happened.

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you so much for sharing your memory. Let's talk to Mendel in West Hartford. Hi, Mendel, thanks for calling, all of it.

[Caller or Advertiser]

Hey, Allison, thanks for having me on. I was 12 when it happened, and there was a construction crew at my house and we all stopped to watch the launch and nobody said a word. And my math and science teacher at the school that I went to, he got through the third round of, you know, to get on the flight. And he was a helicopter pilot for the Air National Guard. And this guy was a super confident person who's got a great personality, but he was like, white as a ghost for the next week. I mean, like, it was just. And we were. We sent seeds up when, you know, with the space shuttle and everything, you know, and they were going to come back and then we were going to do science experiments. It was, it was chilling.

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you so much for sharing your memory as well. You know, so many people were watching, so many children were watching. They pulled the TVs into the rooms for kids to see. How did NASA and the government handle the immediate aftermath of the disaster?

[Adam Higginbotham]

Not well. Yeah, because they didn't. They were kind of paralyzed. They did actually have. They had trained with. With or they had developed procedures for how to deal with an accident like this, but they had never really had time to train on them. And as a result, their response was sort of paralyzed. And they didn't release very much information at all about what had happened. And it led to an assumption on the part of the media at the time that was kind of primed to. Because of their suspicion of the lingering suspicion of. Of government organizations and the White House, especially after Watergate, that was still lingering in the minds of a lot of journalists who were reporting on it at the time. And so it began to look like they were trying to cover up what had happened. And it wasn't until the Reagan administration appointed the Rogers Commission, an independent presidential inquiry into what happened, that that the real truth began to come out.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Matthew from Spring Lake, New Jersey. Hi, Matthew, thank you for calling all of.

[Caller or Advertiser]

Hi, Allison. Yeah, thank you very much for taking my call. I was telling your screener that I had just Begun a job in the United States Senate a week before I graduated from college in May of 85. And I just remember how everyone was in shock. It was an entry level position in the Senate chamber itself. And I can remember walking through the press gallery on the third floor behind the chamber, all the journalists just couldn't believe it and were people crying. And then I remember on the floor, senators coming in to speak and John Glenn was then the senator from Ohio. And I remember him giving this terrific. And then the days afterwards with Ronald Reagan giving his speech which brought the nation together in its grief. Unfortunately, current times, we don't have that anymore.

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you so much for calling in. Yes, we have a little bit of President Reagan's speech. Let's listen.

[News Reporter]

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space. And perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew were pioneers. And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted. It belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future and we'll continue to follow them.

[Alison Stewart]

Someone asked this question, they texted it in. Who put the pressure on the engineers to launch? I understand it was President Reagan. Is that true?

[Adam Higginbotham]

That is not true. That was a sort of conspiracy theory that was widely aired at the time and continues to kind of re. Emerge even now. But it was also very thoroughly investigated by the Rogers Commission and they established that there was no evidence to that. The idea was that because the State of the Union address had been scheduled for that night, January 28th, that Reagan and his people wanted to have Christopher McAuliffe call in and participate in the State of the Union address. And so if they didn't get the shuttle off the ground that morning, that wouldn't have been possible. But there was no evidence to suggest that that was ever planned or that anyone in the White House put pressure on the engineers to launch.

[Alison Stewart]

So, so what did they uncover? What did the commission uncover?

[Adam Higginbotham]

They uncovered, you know, the, the report.

[Alison Stewart]

You got a big book about it.

[Adam Higginbotham]

Actually the, the, the report that they eventually published, which, you know, stretches to five quite hefty volumes. You know, called the Accident. An accident rooted in history. And it explains very clearly how there's this kind of long series of compromises and overconfidence and miscommunication and a whole series of red flags stretching back 10, 20 years before the accident actually took place. And that on the day of the accident there were clear warnings about the problems with the rockets and the cold weather, that had they been heeded, you know, the lives of the astronauts would have been saved.

[Alison Stewart]

We covered a documentary about Sally Ride.

The first American woman in space. And she participated in the commission that investigated the disaster. And she said she lost trust in NASA leadership during the course of that documentary. How long did it take NASA to recover its reputation?

[Adam Higginbotham]

I'm not sure it ever recovered its reputation because there's clearly looking back on it, there's clearly a time before the Challenger accident and a time after the Challenger accident. And I think one of the reasons it remains kind of seared into the national consciousness is because it represented a kind of loss of innocence. NASA was one of the last American institutions after Watergate, after the Vietnam War, in which people still had total confidence. You know, it still did exactly what it was supposed to do. It was a source of great pride. The shuttle itself, you know, in the years before 1986 was just, was a great symbol of American technical superiority and kind of cultural primacy in a way. And all of that was just shattered with a Challenger accident. And I think people lost a kind of open minded optimism that they felt about high technology that day. And I don't think that's ever really returned.

[Alison Stewart]

The name of the book is a true story of heroism and disaster on the edge of Space. It's by Adam Higginbotham. Thanks to all of our callers who called in. And Adam, thank you so much for spending some time with us.

[Adam Higginbotham]

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[Caller or Advertiser]

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[Adam Higginbotham]

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[Caller or Advertiser]

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[Ira Flato]

I'm Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24 7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their lives. Cancer, climate change, genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.