I remember the Challenger space shuttle disaster. We watched it live in elementary school. Too young to understand death or the mess of the world the grown-ups were making, I’ve learned a lot since then. Now I’m one of the grown-ups and we have some serious cleaning up to do.
Conclusions from the investigation were damning. Under pressure to launch faster, NASA’s culture shifted from proving systems were ready for launch to overriding major objections. O-rings couldn’t handle the cold. Despite prior O-ring launch concerns, there’d been no disasters, so legitimate worries were ignored. Then we lost seven astronauts and a space shuttle on live television.