> The failure allowed heated, pressurized propellants to leak out onto the external fuel tank, causing catastrophic structural failure. Seventy-three seconds into its 10th flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart, killing all seven members of its crew. It was 11:39 a.m.
Sigh. It's perhaps silly of me in an age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, but I'm saddened to see this line repeated yet again, 30 years on. Perhaps Malinowski is just echoing old reporting. But a journalist of her caliber seems likely to have run this by NASA. Which suggests NASA PR is still prioritizing spin over integrity, even all these years later.
For those who haven't seen this line before, the template is "<explosion> <fast> <dead>". As in 'the explosion ripped apart the shuttle faster than the blink of an eye, killing the astronauts'. By such word-smithed sleigh-of-hand, NASA would leave readers with the impression that the crew was killed immediately, a quick non-lingering death, without flat-out lying.
One thing we're sure of is that some of the seven were not killed in the breakup at 11:39. I don't recall whether Onizuka's air pack was one of those found, and found to be manually activated. Nor whether there ended up being any evidence of cabin depressurization. But my understanding is that now, as then, there's no reason to believe that some of the seven didn't survive until cabin ocean impact minutes later.
> On the roof of the launch control tower, the families of the crew desperately searched the twin trails of smoke that twisted skyward for signs of the crew cabin.
:/ Perhaps it doesn't matter. It's not that different a story. And there's the "little white lies are fine" interpretation of integrity. Why shouldn't popular history get a prettified version? And given how NASA is funded, embracing integrity might be quite unhealthy. And yet... I'd have been happier if Malinowski wrote this paragraph a bit differently.
Or, given the overall tone of the piece, she didn't feel it necessary to go into those details. I'm sure there are plenty of other details that also went glossed over. Your own tone implies they're lying for a possibly nefarious reason -- what is it? If I'm right, it might be more accurate to point out how she failed to mention the engineer's warnings to NASA and other supervisors about the high risk of failure of the gasket(s), as that, to me, makes them look markedly worse than the astronauts surviving the breakup.
I'm sure it's harrowing to have 2 and a half minutes to contemplate your inevitable death and try fruitlessly to stop it (and even for us to read about it) but I don't think it's nefarious to leave that bit out so much as some degree of respect to the families.
> your own tone implies they're lying for a possibly nefarious reason
Nefarious? Flagrantly wicked, abominable, impious? No, just PR spin - long-term repeated misrepresentation. Unremarkable in politics. Much less accepted in engineering. The question of "to what standards should NASA PR be held?", is indeed a root issue. For NTSB, it would be shocking. For DHS, unsurprising. NASA struggles to survive in a niche much more like DHS than NTSB. But the question repeatedly asked over the years, both within and without, is whether NASA PR weighs political concerns too heavily - to a degree sometimes simply unnecessary - and engineering/science-style honesty too lightly.
> she didn't feel it necessary to go into those details
My focus is not on the piece in isolation. Though one might object to the piece in isolation reinforcing a widespread misconception. But my sadness stemmed from context. From yet again seeing the same, not "trope"... "spin"? - descriptive devices that have repeatedly been used to mislead people.
"Seventy-three seconds [...] broke apart, killing all seven members of its crew. It was 11:39 a.m." Other versions have had timestamps down to hundredths of a second, as if that somehow mattered. Comments like 'too fast for even the computers to notice', or 'if you blinked, you'd have missed it'. Crew deaths from ocean impact have little more connection with T+74 disassembly, than with T+58 plume. Crew experience has little connection with computer and ground observer experience. But NASA PR repeatedly used these same tricks of phrasing to establish and reinforce a misconception. I was just sad to see them yet again, so many years later.
> failed to mention the engineer's warnings
My focus isn't on what is absent, but on what is present - this familiar structure of misdirection.
> as some degree of respect to the families
It's been thirty years. Is the cost-benefit tradeoff really still in favor of continuing to use this same misleading description?
But here's a more upbeat interpretation: Perhaps the author simply modeled the paragraph on one decades old - it is "pretty" - and didn't run it by anyone. So maybe we're just seeing an unfortunate blast from the NASA PR past, rather than anything contemporary.
Sigh. It's perhaps silly of me in an age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, but I'm saddened to see this line repeated yet again, 30 years on. Perhaps Malinowski is just echoing old reporting. But a journalist of her caliber seems likely to have run this by NASA. Which suggests NASA PR is still prioritizing spin over integrity, even all these years later.
For those who haven't seen this line before, the template is "<explosion> <fast> <dead>". As in 'the explosion ripped apart the shuttle faster than the blink of an eye, killing the astronauts'. By such word-smithed sleigh-of-hand, NASA would leave readers with the impression that the crew was killed immediately, a quick non-lingering death, without flat-out lying.
One thing we're sure of is that some of the seven were not killed in the breakup at 11:39. I don't recall whether Onizuka's air pack was one of those found, and found to be manually activated. Nor whether there ended up being any evidence of cabin depressurization. But my understanding is that now, as then, there's no reason to believe that some of the seven didn't survive until cabin ocean impact minutes later.
> On the roof of the launch control tower, the families of the crew desperately searched the twin trails of smoke that twisted skyward for signs of the crew cabin.
:/ Perhaps it doesn't matter. It's not that different a story. And there's the "little white lies are fine" interpretation of integrity. Why shouldn't popular history get a prettified version? And given how NASA is funded, embracing integrity might be quite unhealthy. And yet... I'd have been happier if Malinowski wrote this paragraph a bit differently.