Chatter: The Inside Story of the Challenger Disaster with Adam Higginbotham
The Lawfare Podcast24 Sep 2024

Chatter: The Inside Story of the Challenger Disaster with Adam Higginbotham

The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986 riveted millions of Americans, who watched the horrific event live on television. What they didn’t know then was that the tragedy was largely preventable, a disastrous result of hubris and “magical thinking” as much as flawed engineering.


Journalist Adam Higginbotham’s new book, “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space,” is a definitive account of what went wrong, and how NASA failed to learn from its own mistakes. Higginbotham’s story begins with an earlier fatal accident, a fire in the capsule of the Apollo 1 mission, which presaged Challenger’s fate. He then recounts the early days of the space shuttle program. Astonishingly, the very mechanical flaws that led to Challenger’s destruction were known, but the warnings of a few engineers were ignored by more senior officials, who by the time Challenger was set to launch the first teacher into space faced tremendous political and public pressure to make the mission happen, despite obvious risks.


Higginbotham spoke with Shane Harris about his book, why he wanted to tell the Challenger story, and the future of human spaceflight.


Books, events, and people discussed on this episode include:


“Challenger”: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Challenger/Adam-Higginbotham/9781982176617


“Midnight in Chernobyl”:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Midnight-in-Chernobyl/Adam-Higginbotham/9781508278511


The Apollo 1 fire:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/apollo-1/


Roger Boisjoly, rocket engineer:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle-challenger-launch


The crew of Challenger STS-51L:

https://www.nasa.gov/challenger-sts-51l-accident/


The Columbia disaster:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/04/09/denial-of-shuttle-image-requests-questioned/80957e7c-92f1-48ae-8272-0dcfbcb57b9d/


Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Jay Venables of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Avsnitt(2868)

Lawfare Archive: Judge Cannon Dismisses Classified Documents Case Against Trump

Lawfare Archive: Judge Cannon Dismisses Classified Documents Case Against Trump

From July 16, 2024: On July 15, Judge Cannon granted former President Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith for the alleged mishandling of classified documents...

31 Jan 58min

Lawfare Daily: The Thousands of Lawsuits Challenging Pres. Trump’s Mandatory Alien Detention Policy

Lawfare Daily: The Thousands of Lawsuits Challenging Pres. Trump’s Mandatory Alien Detention Policy

Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, speaks to Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff about the thousands of habeas corpus cases he has pored through challenging a Trump administratio...

30 Jan 38min

Rational Security: The “Pawing at Scott” Edition

Rational Security: The “Pawing at Scott” Edition

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Alan Rozenshtein, Eric Columbus, and Molly Roberts for a deep dive into two of the week’s big national security news stories:“Slipping Down the Sl...

29 Jan 1h 13min

Lawfare Daily: Trump, Greenland, and the International Order

Lawfare Daily: Trump, Greenland, and the International Order

The crisis over President Trump's threats to annex Greenland appears to be over for now. But the second- and third-order consequences continue to unfold as NATO allies try to manage their relationship...

29 Jan 42min

Lawfare Daily: Elizabeth Tsurkov on Her Captivity in Iraq

Lawfare Daily: Elizabeth Tsurkov on Her Captivity in Iraq

Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Princeton PhD candidate Elizabeth Tsurkov to talk about the 903 days that she was held in captivity by Kata'ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia in Ir...

28 Jan 1h 10min

Lawfare Daily: The Military’s Operational Technology Cyber Vulnerabilities

Lawfare Daily: The Military’s Operational Technology Cyber Vulnerabilities

Andy Grotto, William J. Perry International Security Fellow and the founder and co-director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at Stanford University’s Center for International ...

27 Jan 48min

Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Jan. 23

Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Jan. 23

In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Eric Columbus and Lawfare Associate Editor Olivia Manes t...

26 Jan 1h 41min

Lawfare Archive: Joel Braunold on What Donald Trump's Return Might Mean for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Lawfare Archive: Joel Braunold on What Donald Trump's Return Might Mean for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

From December 6, 2024: For today’s podcast, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East P...

25 Jan 1h 3min

Populärt inom Politik & nyheter

aftonbladet-krim
rss-krimstad
p3-krim
motiv
fordomspodden
blenda-2
flashback-forever
aftonbladet-daily
spar
rss-sanning-konsekvens
svenska-fall
olyckan-inifran
svd-ledarredaktionen
rss-krimreportrarna
krimmagasinet
rss-frandfors-horna
rss-vad-fan-hande
rss-flodet
dagens-eko
grans