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Challenger
February 2025: Science
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Challenger by Adam Higginbotham - 5 stars
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Great review Joy and excited to see your 5 stars (I know you do not give them out too often). I wanted to get to it this month, but I doubt that will happen. However, it has jumped up the TBR list so that I get to it soon.I for sure remember this vividly. I was in the office and our punch-card (aging myself, lol) operator came running out of her office screaming what happened. We were in shock and crowded the conference room where there was a television. It was extra devastating to a lot of the women because of the story of Christa McAuliffe. We had talked about it for months, about a woman winning the competition that was held. We would have been watching from the beginning, but the Scrooge boss denied us that.
Joanne wrote: "Great review Joy and excited to see your 5 stars (I know you do not give them out too often). I wanted to get to it this month, but I doubt that will happen. However, it has jumped up the TBR list ..."I used to be able to see the launched shuttles from my house in Florida once they got high enough. [I did not live there in 1986, though.] I have photos and videos of them. I have always been interested in the space program. This book is outstanding in the way the author tells the story. I am pretty sure you are going to appreciate it.
I listened to this one at the very beginning of the month. It was the one book I really wanted to get to. I’m not a huge fan of Higginbottham as a writer, but he had access to a trove of research that wasn’t available to earlier writers on this subject. I learned a ton I didn’t know, despite feeling like I have pretty much plumbed the well dry over the years. I definitely agree with you that this is certainly worth a read (or a listen — the audiobook is very well done).
This is an amazing book that provides a captivating account of the people, organizations, and the sequence of events that led to the catastrophic failure after launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. Of course, we all know the disastrous outcome before starting the book. The author weaves together many diverse pieces and parts of the story into an accessible and engrossing narrative. It details the many bureaucratic decisions, pressures to adhere to a schedule,
management incompetence, cost-cutting measures, and hubris involved in this tragic episode in history. It is also a story of courage.
In addition to the Challenger disaster, it covers other loss-of-life events in the Space Program, such as fire in the Apollo 1 training capsule in 1967 and the loss of Columbia in 2003, but the primary focus remains on Challenger. It documents mini biographies of each of the astronauts. It also covers the extra publicity the flight received due to what was supposed to be the first American civilian in space, teacher Christa McAuliffe, which meant that classrooms across the country were watching the launch live.
The explosion after the launch of the Challenger is one of those episodes in US history that many people remember vividly, down to where they were and what they were doing when it happened. This book makes clear that the engineers had raised red flags, and it was a disaster that could have been avoided. As I read along, I kept wanting to scream out, “No! Don’t do it!” I was totally immersed in this book. If you are interested in the history of NASA or the space program in general, this is a “must read.”