Halley's Comet & The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

"Unforeseen Consequences: Halley's Comet and the Challenger Disaster" explores the connections between one of the greatest astronomical discoveries in history, Halley's Comet, and the tragic events that took place during the Challenger space shuttle launch in 1986.

When 3 of Europe’s most brilliant scientist were having dinner in 1683, one of them - Christopher Wren - suggested a friendly wager: 40 shillings to the man who could explain why celestial objects tend to orbit in a shape known as an ellipse. Edmond Halley eagerly took up the challenge, but the 3 colleagues couldn’t have known just what far reaching consequences that simple bet would have. It resulted in the publication one of mathematics most important works, the discovery of Halley’s comet, and in chasing the comet – one of space flight’s most shocking disasters…

When the comet returned in our celestial neighborhood in 1986, we were determined to make the most of it. Countries across the world planned to send spacecraft and probes into orbit to gather data on the passing comet. The Soviet’s launched the probes Vega 1 and 2 and the European Space Agency deployed a probe called Giotto, which captured these spectacular photographs of the comet’s nucleus.

Not to be outdone, NASA planned to launch Spartan 203, an astronomy satellite that would have studied ultraviolet light from the tail of Halley's Comet, and what’s more NASA had a civilian join the crew, a teacher who would present a lesson from space, demonstrating Newton’s Laws of Motion

Unfortunately, the crew and the Spartan 203 satellite launched on the morning of Tuesday, the 28th of January, onboard NASA’s space shuttle, Challenger…

Seventy-three seconds later tragedy struck…. There were no survivors.

00:00 Intro
00:50 The Comet Through The Ages
02:53 A Friendly Wager
04:01 Newton
07:33 Halley's Comet and Challenger
09:54 NASA and Morton Thiokol
13:27 The Space Shuttle: A Brief History
17:05 Launch Day
19:06 The Whistleblowers
25:37 Aftermath

#documentary #space

[grimtt]

I was only 4 years old when this went down so I never knew the backstory about how the O ring problem was known prior to launch. Another example of why it’s best to listen to the engineers and not the politicians! I would push back though on the premise that the shuttle program didn’t amount to much in the end. With the possible exception of Christa, these astronauts knew the risks involved and believed even sacrificing their lives was worth it in terms of pushing the envelope of human endeavor. Dollars and cents wise it wasn’t a cost effective program but what we gained intangibly was priceless. That said, it was responsible to switch to unmanned craft, and also modern space related missions are mindful of reducing the pollution these humans create up there which is a good thing.