Whatever the reason, Ebeling says it didn't justify the risk. President Ronald Reagan was also set to deliver the State of the Union address that evening and reportedly planned to tout the Challenger launch. ![]() The space shuttle program had an ambitious launch schedule that year and NASA wanted to show it could launch regularly and reliably. But it's still not clear why NASA was so anxious to launch without delay. But they didn't."Ī presidential commission found flaws in the space agency's decision-making process. "They had their mind set on going up and proving to the world they were right and they knew what they were doing. "I think the truth has to come out," he says about the decision to speak privately then. We spoke in the same house, kitchen and living room that we spoke in 30 years ago, when Ebeling didn't want his name used or his voice recorded. ![]() "Had they listened to me and wait for a weather change, it might have been a completely different outcome." "I was one of the few that was really close to the situation," Ebeling recalls. The data showed that the rubber seals on the shuttle's booster rockets wouldn't seal properly in cold temperatures and this would be the coldest launch ever.Įbeling, now 89, decided to let NPR identify him this time, on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger explosion.īob Ebeling in his home in Brigham City, Utah. Both were despondent and in tears as they described hours of data review and arguments. Three weeks later, Ebeling and another engineer separately and anonymously detailed to NPR the first account of that contentious pre-launch meeting. They watched the spacecraft explode on a giant television screen and they knew exactly what had happened. When Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, Ebeling and his colleagues sat stunned in a conference room at Thiokol's headquarters outside Brigham City, Utah. That night, he told his wife, Darlene, "It's going to blow up." The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol had tried to stop the launch. Thirty years ago, as the nation mourned the loss of seven astronauts on the space shuttle Challenger, Bob Ebeling was steeped in his own deep grief. ![]() 28, 1986, from a launchpad at Kennedy Space Center, 73 seconds before an explosion killed its crew of seven.
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