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On the 28.1. 1986 the orbital glider Challenger exploded briefly after the start from the Cape Canaveral. This misfortune could have been avoided. With the explosion the entire crew died: Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Christa McAuliffe, Gregor Jarris, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Judith Resnik died an unnecessary death. The minitioes reconstruction of the incident exposed a brittle rubber seal ring at one of the booster rockets as direct cause of accident: Fuel could withdraw, caught fire and led to the explosion.
Of engineers of the manufacturing firm Thiokol of the rockets these gaskets were regarded already longer than weak point, since their elasticity was not sufficient at low temperature for error free functioning. On the eve of the already several times delayed start the different engineers of the rocket manufacturer were, among them the project manager all McDonal and the expert for rocket seals, Roger Boisjoly, against a start. In a telefonkonferenz with NASA they made attentive to the temperature problems of the seals, since for the day of the start low temperatures were expected. NASA and their project manager pointed out that there would be no start restrictions because of certain temperatures, and pushed on the start. The deputy director of the rocket-manufacturing firm Robert Lund followed the doubts of engineers and spoke thereupon with its superior, Jerry Mason (likewise a Engineer). This said in an internal discussion of the rocket-manufacturing firm to R.
Lund: \" Take off your engineering has and PUT on your management, \" on which Lund the start release agreed. He told this to the project manager of the NASA, who reported to his boss that Thiokol agreed with the rocket start, without referring however to the doubts of the company. So the accident took its run. Because of the Challenger the American space flight was thrown back for years. Everybody feared that such a thing could happen again.
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