25th Anniversary of The Challenger On Friday

[Donger]

Originally Posted by chris

The sad part.....the whole accident should have been avoided. Stupid politics and government bureaucracy. O-rings were too cold.

A case could made the this accident is the perfect reason why government should get out of the space transportation business. A business entity would have had to obtain liability insurance....and they would insisted on safety procedures to get insurance coverage.

The 2nd shuttle accident was all about government bureaucracy. Again, lower level engineers pointed out something wrong, and senior management, over rode their concerns.

I never understood why criminal charges were not filed. The Senior Manager who overrode the engineers in the 2nd accident....what ever happened to her??

She was demoted, but is still with NASA, apparently. There really wasn't much that could have been done to save Columbia, though. They didn't have a method to repair damage and I don't think that another shuttle was ready to launch a rescue.