Remembering the Involvement of Asbestos in the Challenger Tragedy: January 28, 1986

My research thesis on the involvement of asbestos and potential asbestos substitutes in the Challenger tragedy is discussed at https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=10618. I first posted my full research project discussing this Internet myth during January 2022 in the blog located at https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=9723. The full blown 75 page research paper with footnotes and bibliography can be read at https://theasbestosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Space-Shuttle-Challenger-Thesis-1282022.pdf. If you are interested in the topic but do not want to read the entire scholarly analysis, please find a plain language 10 page analysis (without footnotes or a bibliography) at https://theasbestosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Summary-Research-Challenger-2023-Blog.pdf.

For those of you too young to have witnessed the tragedy, the research papers cited above would be a good way to understand what happened on January 28, 1986, and why the clocks around the world seemed to stop. For those of us who watched the launch (I was having lunch at a local bar in Grand Rapids, Michigan), that clock still hasn’t moved and our memory remains the same.

I blog on this tragedy every January, just before the anniversary. I continue to wonder about the IBM poster featuring the Challenger on the launch site with the statement “Defense Prevention … it matters.” I wonder who gave the order at IBM to tear down the posters immediately after the failure, and what they were feeling. As to what the involved Thiokol rocket scientists and engineers felt, you can ready my research paper as I discuss that in the context of moral injuries near the end of the paper.

Feel free to let me know what you think by leaving a comment or emailing me at TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com. Thank you. Marty