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This was an emotional read for me! I was in 4th grade in Florida when it happened. My class stepped outside to watch so I saw the explosion live in the sky. And in hindsight there were so many reasons to not launch that day 😔 The story was well told by the author.

By the time the design was complete...engineers... still believed they were employing a tried-and-tested joint for their new rocket: they had avoided any potentially dangerous innovation. But this was a convenient delusion.... in creating a man-rated, fail-safe joint they had also modified it so extensively that what they produced was, in effect, a quite new and experimental design.

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Cue the ominous soundtrack...

"Why are you interrupting my bird watching?"

Current library reads with one I just completed (The Mighty Red).

Day 11 of #12Booksof2024 is my favorite nonfiction read of the year

@Andrew65

....the exercises [water survival drills] were conducted under the gaze of dozens of reporters and cameramen...

By now, each of the women understood that the novelty of being America's first female astronauts made them a focus of attention, but their patience was already fraying....

when, as she was being winched aloft by a helicopter, a photographer asked Sally Ride to make a "happy face" for the cameras, she simply yelled, "No!"

CHALLENGER is riveting. Wrenching. Heartbreaking. And brilliant.

I had little background knowledge of the Challenger disaster and I‘m on a roll with space in books and tv so I thought I‘d dive into the background of the space shuttle. What a thorough read on the technical aspects of the vehicle, the political dynamics, and the big players of NASA this was! But Higginbotham dedicates most of the book to the profiles of the astronauts who were aboard the shuttle. I can see why this has many positive reviews.

July made for some very difficult decisions in the NONFICTION bracket for #2024ReadingBrackets. After much deliberation, the tagged book advanced to the quarterfinals.

Very informative read about the Challenger disaster and the culture at NASA that led to the fateful and ultimately tragic decision to launch despite indications of problems with the O-rings. It‘s pretty technical, especially in the first half. Thankfully I have an aerospace engineer on speed dial (my son) who could explain some of the more complex sections. Highly recommend, even if you don‘t have your own personal rocket scientist. 😀

Finished this chunkster of an audiobook today. (Took from Virginia to Tennessee and then from Virginia to West Virginia.) My husband and I both really enjoyed it, although it almost went too much in depth. I did appreciate that it focused on all the astronauts not just McAuliffe.

The Challenger explosion is the first major event of my life that I indelibly remember. I was 9. So I was very interested in this book and it is absolutely phenomenal. Higginbotham first goes back in NASA history and sets the stage for both the disaster and other previous disasters that happened. By the time he is approaching launch, I was saying, “No!” out loud to the audiobook. It‘s that good.

Oh, how I love it when a box of books arrives in my mailbox. 😍