{"id":363761,"date":"2026-08-02T15:13:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/january-29-2026-the-challenger-disaster-aftermaths\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T15:13:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:13:31","slug":"january-29-2026-the-challenger-disaster-aftermaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=363761","title":{"rendered":"January 29, 2026: The Challenger Disaster: Aftermaths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-body-6630737211614833411\" itemprop=\"description articleBody\">\n<p>[Forty years ago this week, the Space Shuttle <i>Challenger<\/i><br \/>\nbroke apart upon takeoff, instantly becoming one of the most visible and tragic<br \/>\nAmerican stories of the last half-century. So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that<br \/>\nmoment and a handful of contexts.]<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">On a controversial investigation, a tragic follow-up, and a bigger<br \/>\nquestion that remains.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">As would likely be the case with any federal disaster as tragic<br \/>\nand as public as the <i>Challenger <\/i>explosion, and as was doubly the case due<br \/>\nto President Reagan\u2019s more personal interests in the mission as I traced in the<br \/>\nprior two posts in this series, the tragedy was followed by an intensive<br \/>\ninvestigation, or rather two interconnected ones: first the <a href=\"https:\/\/prologue.blogs.archives.gov\/2021\/01\/27\/roger-go-at-throttle-up-the-35th-anniversary-of-the-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster\/\">Presidential<br \/>\nCommission<\/a> on the Space Shuttle <i>Challenger<\/i> accident, chaired by former<br \/>\nU.S. Attorney General <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/ag\/bio\/rogers-william-pierce\">William P. Rogers<\/a><br \/>\nand featuring such space program and scientific luminaries as Neil Armstrong,<br \/>\nSally Ride, Chuck Yeager, and (most controversially) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4kpDg7MjHps\">Richard Feynman<\/a>; and a subsequent<br \/>\nHouse Committee on Science &amp; Technology inquiry. The Rogers Commission (as<br \/>\nit came to be known) held a number of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.c-span.org\/organization\/presidential-commission-on-the-space-shuttle-challenger-accident\/25990\/\">televised<br \/>\nhearings<\/a> and then released <a href=\"https:\/\/sma.nasa.gov\/SignificantIncidents\/assets\/rogers_commission_report.pdf\">its<br \/>\nextensive report<\/a> on June 6<sup>th<\/sup>, 1986; the House Committee then<br \/>\nreviewed that report along with its own findings and released <a href=\"https:\/\/www.govinfo.gov\/content\/pkg\/GPO-CRPT-99hrpt1016\/pdf\/GPO-CRPT-99hrpt1016.pdf\">its<br \/>\ncomplementary report<\/a> on October 29<sup>th<\/sup>. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Both reports noted a number of mistakes and missteps, not only in<br \/>\nthe immediate lead-up to the disaster, but also and especially in earlier moments<br \/>\nwhen specific issues (such as the difficulty of a launch in extremely cold temperatures,<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/spectrumlocalnews.com\/nc\/charlotte\/weather\/2021\/01\/19\/how-weather-caused-the-loss-of-the-space-shuttle-challenger\">as<br \/>\nwas the case on January 28<sup>th<\/sup><\/a>) had been raised and frustratingly<br \/>\nbrushed aside. Feynman went even further, making a more stridently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1986\/06\/11\/us\/feynman-s-own-findings-they-fooled-themselves.html\">critical<br \/>\ncase against NASA<\/a> that he demanded be added to the Rogers report as an<br \/>\nAppendix (<a href=\"https:\/\/centerforinquiry.org\/blog\/lessons-from-the-space-shuttle-challenger\/\">Appendix<br \/>\nF<\/a>). I have to imagine that such hindsight finger-pointing could be part of<br \/>\nvirtually any post-mission investigation and report, even with the 99% of such<br \/>\nmissions that went off smoothly and successfully across the Space Shuttle\u2019s<br \/>\n(and space program\u2019s) history. But the pro-NASA case was not helped at all by a<br \/>\nsecond and equally tragic shuttle disaster almost exactly 17 years later: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/remembering-columbia-sts-107\/\">on February 1<sup>st<\/sup>,<br \/>\n2003<\/a>, the Space Shuttle <i>Columbia<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-euNiLdcu_I\">broke up when attempting<br \/>\nreentry<\/a> into the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board.<br \/>\nAfter that second tragedy, NASA began to wind down the Space Shuttle program, replacing<br \/>\nit with the newly constructed International Space Station (ISS) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/history\/10-years-ago-sts-135-the-space-shuttles-grand-finale\/\">phasing<br \/>\nout the shuttles entirely<\/a> by the early 2010s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">No governmental or scientific program necessarily needs to last<br \/>\nforever, and no matter what the Space Shuttle program achieved a great deal of<br \/>\nsignificant success in its 30 years of operation. It also seems silly to even suggest<br \/>\nadditional federal expenditures on science or research here in early 2026,<br \/>\ngiven the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nea.org\/nea-today\/all-news-articles\/trump-cancels-federal-research-grants-what-are-consequences\">exact<br \/>\nopposite trends<\/a> that the second Trump administration <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/supreme-court-lets-trump-cut-783-million-of-health-research-funding-amid-anti-dei-push\">has<br \/>\ncreated<\/a>. But I\u2019m going to do so anyway, at least as a long-term goal. There<br \/>\nare all kinds of ways we can and must respond to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.saturdayeveningpost.com\/2021\/08\/considering-history-finding-critical-optimism-about-climate-change-through-cormac-mccarthys-the-road\/\">global<br \/>\nclimate crisis<\/a> and fight for a more sustainable future, most of them very<br \/>\nmuch focused on our own planet as they should be. But a federal program that<br \/>\noffers the possibility of helping us find other places around the galaxy where<br \/>\nwe might live\u2014and, yes, one that is not spearheaded by <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/billionaire-space-race-the-ultimate-symbol-of-capitalisms-flawed-obsession-with-growth-164511\">egotistical<br \/>\nand destructive tech billionaires<\/a>\u2014seems to me well worth reinvesting in and<br \/>\nextending as we deal with all those global challenges and their effects. I\u2019ve<br \/>\ngot one more post in this series on a different note, but to end the thread of<br \/>\nthe last few posts: while the <i>Challenger<\/i> was in many ways one of the<br \/>\nworst moments of the late 20<sup>th<\/sup> century in America, it also helps us<br \/>\nremember a program that featured much of our best, and could do so again. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Last ChallengerStudying tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Ben<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">PS. What do you think? <i>Challenger <\/i>memories or reflections<br \/>\nyou\u2019d share?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Forty years ago this week, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart upon takeoff, instantly becoming one of the most visible and tragic American stories of the last half-century. So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that moment and a handful of contexts.] On a controversial investigation, a tragic follow-up, and a bigger question that remains. As would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[185038,18041,13031,3805],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-363761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-aftermaths","tag-challenger","tag-disaster","tag-january"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>January 29, 2026: The Challenger Disaster: Aftermaths - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=363761\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"January 29, 2026: The Challenger Disaster: Aftermaths - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[Forty years ago this week, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart upon takeoff, instantly becoming one of the most visible and tragic American stories of the last half-century. 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