[woman] There it goes. I see it in between the trees.
[man] There it goes. It's comin' way over top the trees, isn't it?
-[woman] Uh-huh. -[man] That's brighter than usual.
[woman] Yeah, it is.
-[man] Well, that's it. Oh, yeah! -[woman] Yeah!
-Right over those trees! -[man 2] Oh, yeah, there it is.
[man] I don't remember it being that bright and big.
[woman] I don't either.
[man] What was that part? That must've been one of the boosters.
[woman] Oh, look! There's two. It's going off into two--
[man] Hey, is that trouble, or not?
[man 2] What?
[man] They're not having trouble, are they?
[man 2] I don't know! I ain't never seen anything like that.
[man] That didn't look right. That's trouble of some kind, George.
[George] I don't know.
[man] They got troubles!
[theme music playing]
[overlapping murmurs and chatter]
[operator] Again, I repeat, we have a report that the vehicle has exploded.
[people sobbing and crying]
[Lisa Bristol] Listening to the announcer,
that's when we knew something really horrible had happened.
That there's no going back.
That…
That it probably wasn't survivable.
[June Scobee Rodgers] Christa's husband, Steve McAuliffe,
his eyes met mine.
I didn't have an answer.
My son, who was a pilot engineer himself…
We didn't have answers.
And I turned and kept looking.
And I thought, "This is not gonna be good."
But, I said, "They're okay, they're trained to land.
They're trained for emergencies. They'll go land over here. It'll be okay."
[Marcia Jarvis] I remember Rich Scobee said,
"If there's any way my dad can get everybody out of it, he will."
He had total confidence in Dick to do that.
[Barbara Morgan] I remember coming down and just running as quickly as I could
'cause I wanted to reach the crew quarters to help out the families.
I was just saying, "Dick, Mike,
El, Ron, Judy, Greg, Christa."
That's-- that's what was going through my mind.
Fido, can we get any reports from recovery forces?
[operator] Stand by.
We'd had no idea if the orbiter was intact, we had no idea where it was,
or what it might… What kind of condition it might be in.
I never even tried to make a call to the Challenger crew.
We had no way of helping.
[operator] We are now looking at all the contingency operations
and awaiting word from any recovery forces in the downrange field.
[William Harwood] Staring out at that contrail,
I just felt tears start welling up.
And I remember having to really grip my legs hard
and say, "Leave this. Think about this later."
And I, you know, kinda shook my head and started typing again.
[woman] When the Challenger exploded, none of us knew.
We weren't savvy in what it was supposed to look like.
A teacher started yelling, "Stop! It exploded!"
And then it was just, like, a hush.
[Leslie Serna] We all just sat there in awe about what had taken place.
Dad put his hand in his face
and sobbed, sobbed, and sobbed.
[Russell] I noticed in front of the room, that the senior engineer got up and left.
And I left a little bit after him. And I went down to his-- his, uh…
I went down to his office, and he was in tears.
And I was in tears.
And it seemed that there was no question in either one of our minds that, uh…
that what we had feared had come to pass.
And we just felt terrible about it.
[reporter] There's Larry Speakes in the White House Briefing Room.
The President is concerned. He is saddened.
He is, uh, very anxious to have more information on it.
At the moment, as I say,
we're learning most of our information from what the public is getting.
[crowd clamoring]
[John Zarrella] In unison, everybody takes off
and runs towards the press dome,
which is where the NASA public affairs folks are.
By the time I get there, I mean, it's an absolute chaotic…
event going on and nobody knowing what to do or what to say.
And NASA public affairs was, like…
Nobody planned for anything like this.
[June] They took us on a bus to the crew quarters.
And, sitting in that bus, we stopped at a stop light.
Around me, everywhere on the streets, people were parked,
out of their cars on major thoroughfares.
Some people were at the steering wheels, weeping.
[voice trembling] Some people were out banging on the hood of their cars.
I knew-- I knew something really, really bad had happened.
[Tom Brokaw] There are rescue ships and other vehicles now, other helicopters,
other vessels are attempting to find out what they can.
The silence is deafening.
There is no word from NASA, no word from the rescue vehicles,
no word whatsoever on what may have happened.
[indistinct clamoring]
[Harwood] First thing everybody wanted to know was what caused the accident.
So it was a mad rush to try to get experts to tell you what could've gone wrong,
what are some of the likely candidates.
[Tom Brokaw] In slow-motion now.
To my eye, at least, it appears that the entire external tank just came apart.
[man] Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say something with the main engine,
since that would be the high probability, but that could be totally wrong,
and it'll take a lot of numbers crunching and data analysis to really sort it out.
It was what, uh, engineers call a catastrophic failure.
Several things had to go wrong at once,
and from the looks of those tapes, that was certainly the case.
The shuttle had a telemetry stream that was really unbelievable.
I mean, they had enormous amounts of data
all the way up to the moment they lost the orbiter.
So we were waiting for NASA to tell because they must know
what happened, or have a pretty darn good idea.
[operator] J.C., all operators, contingency procedures in effect.
[Frederick Gregory] They locked the doors to keep people out.
And then, for the next four or five hours,
we sat there and tried to go back through everything we'd seen,
just trying to figure out if there had been
anything that we could have seen and prevented.
[Covey] We had to collect all the documentation
of everything that we had done, said,
or thought, or knew before we could leave the control center.
[operator 2] Okay, everybody, stay off the telephones,
make sure you maintain all your data, start pulling it together.
[Allan McDonald] The first comment came by was that "anybody that's at a console
must not change the screen. It must be left where it's at."
And that all of this data is going to be treated as secret-level.
No one can leave the room. Not even to go to the bathroom.
No one can use a telephone.
And they made it very clear
that no one should be talking to the press.
[June] We pulled up to crew quarters. We all stepped into the lobby,
and there was the announcers for NASA. NASA reporting.
And, you know, it's obvious… They were saying it was an obvious disaster.
Obvious total loss of the orbiter, the crew.
"Obvious."
Um…
[sniffles] And…
that was confirming.
I knew… they were all gone.
Not all the crew members' families really understood
that their crew member is not coming back,
even though that was pretty obvious. But not all of them understood that.
I had seen Ron come through difficult times before
and I, for some reason, um…
Yeah, I thought he was gonna make it somehow.
[June] The NASA official, George Abbey,
came out and looked at all of us,
including parents, and children, all brought together in the same room…
and he said, "No one could've survived. No one could have survived."
I had heard that and I remember just…
[voice breaking] …like, hyperventilating, 'cause, up to that point, I thought,
"Well, surely they're--" I mean, here's me, like, optimi--
"Surely, they're floating somewhere.
Like, surely somebody figured out how to get them out of there."
[crying] This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
This wasn't the end of the story.
Well, the doctor said, "Can I give you something for your nerves?"
And I told her, "I am not nervous.
If you give me something for heartbreak, I will take it.
But I'm not nervous."
I went into Dick's room by myself, so that they couldn't see me.
And I reached over to his closet, where his clothes were hanging,
and hugged his clothes, all hanging in that closet.
And picked up his briefcase and opened it.
I saw his astronomy maps
and I saw a Valentine card,
"To my wife."
January the 28th, he was already prepared to come home and give me a Valentine.
[shuddered breathing]
[reporter] Mr. Vice President, can you tell us further details about the shuttle?
-Were you briefed on this? -No. No more than anyone else knows.
-A terrible tragedy. -[reporter] How would you react to this?
[Bush] Great concern for the families. I really don't have any detail on it.
Vice President Bush flew down to the Cape to meet with family members
that same day, along with Jake Garn, who had flown on the space shuttle earlier.
[Marcia] Jake Garn was a senator from Utah who bumped Greg from his first flight.
So that was hard for me to see Senator Garn there.
At that time, I think… I believe I walked out of the room.
[Jesse Moore] I regret that I have to report,
that based on very preliminary searches of the ocean where the Challenger
impacted this morning…
these searches have not revealed any evidence
that the crew of Challenger survived.
The American space shuttle Challenger exploded 60 seconds into its flight.
…obliterated the shuttle Challenger--
[speaking French]
[speaking Russian]
[speaking Japanese]
[speaking Spanish]
[speaking German]
[man] My heart sort of stopped beating, you know, just feel for the families,
you know, 'cause that school teacher, you know, was involved in it and,
you know, it's just a really, you know, terrible thing to happen.
Seven really brilliant and beautiful people got killed.
I was shocked.
Reminded me a lot of President Kennedy's death in '63.
I don't know where the analogy comes, but it was a national tragedy.
[man 2] Many schools had broadcast the launch,
and it was horrible for the kids.
[Peter Billingsly] We felt connected to it.
Like, "That's us! That's a teacher!" We were invested.
And for many, it was the first dealing of death.
It was somewhat of a loss of innocence.
[softly] Just… She was just really special.
It's hard.
Well, I was really amazed to see it
'cause I never thought an explosion would really ever happen.
I felt as if, um,
my whole body blew up inside when I saw that.
And I can, just, never be as shocked as I am now.
[Brokaw] The real question that remains to be answered, of course, is,
was there some kind of incompetence on the part of those people
who are charged with the Space Shuttle Program?
The American public will be demanding some difficult answers
to some difficult questions, and of course we'll all have to examine
what it is that we want from this era of high technology.
[Ronald Reagan] Ladies and gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight
to report on the State of the Union.
But the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans.
Today is a day for mourning and remembering.
Nancy and I are pained
to the core over the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger.
We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country.
This is truly a national loss.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger
honored us with the manner in which they lived their lives.
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them,
this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye,
and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.
Thank you.
We set up a review board to talk about what could've caused it.
And nobody seemed to know.
And finally some photography became available.
NASA's STS-51L investigation board today released photographic data
of the STS-51L system during its ascent.
They observed what appears to be an unexpected change,
seen as an unusual plume in the lower part of the right SRB area of the system.
The cause is still unknown,
and neither the board nor NASA will speculate as to the cause or effects
of this observation until all data has been carefully studied and evaluated.
[reporter] By "unusual plume," do you mean to say "flame"?
No… The, uh-- the board said "an unusual plume," and the, uh…
and that's what the, you know, statement says.
NASA was so tight-lipped about it that the briefer that they put up
wasn't allowed to call it "flame."
It was an "anomalous plume."
And I remember watching that video,
in which there is a very clear jet of flame.
You could see it start small and get bigger.
It was clearly a burn-through in the booster.
[reporter 2] Can you elaborate at all
on what was unusual or abnormal about this plume?
Its location or when it showed up, or what is the unusual aspect?
The statement of the board is it's an "unusual plume."
And that's, you know, all that I have.
NASA was issuing a lot of extraordinarily general answers
to highly specific questions.
And usually when that happens, it means one of two things:
either the people you're asking the question to don't know,
or the people you're asking the question to do know,
and they're trying to keep you away from the specifics.
[reporter 3] Would it be logical for us to assume
the focus of the investigation, at this point, is trying to determine
what caused that plume and what effect it had on the explosion?
Yes and no.
The board is looking at that area,
but they're also looking at a lot of other areas.
[David Sanger] It seemed to us that there could well be deflection under way.
NASA was zeroing in on there being a problem with the solid boosters.
But we were told we couldn't offer something up
that they didn't want to release.
We were circling the wagons.
Management was a little frightened, and didn't want to deal with it.
And, of course, when you blow up a three billion dollar orbiter
and kill seven people on live television,
it's not gonna wait two or three months for an investigation. It's just not.
That's just human nature. Everybody wanted to know what happened.
-[program music playing] -[announcer] From CBS News Washington,
Face the Nation with White House Correspondent Lesley Stahl.
We spoke with the acting head of NASA, Dr. William Graham, this morning
about that flame that appeared in the right booster rocket
15 seconds before the shuttle exploded.
Can you just give us a succinct explanation of
how it was possible that no one picked up this plume?
[Graham] These very heavy steel casings that constitute the, uh, structure
of these solid rocket boosters are considered primary structure
and not susceptible to failure.
Of course, we designed them that way.
It wasn't just a chance that they're not susceptible,
or we thought them not susceptible,
but they were designed with great care and great thought
and everything we could do to keep them from having any--
[coughs] Excuse me, any failure modes.
[Richard Cook] I saw William Graham on Face the Nation
saying that the solid rocket boosters were primary hardware
not susceptible to failure.
The same day, the photograph was published in the press
of a flame coming out the side of the solid rocket booster.
I was also told by one of the engineers, whose memo I had gotten,
not to show that to Graham.
And it seemed to me that people from NASA were keeping
the knowledge of O-ring erosion from the head of the agency.
[Reagan] I am today announcing the formation of a presidential commission
on the space shuttle Challenger's accident.
William P. Rogers, former Secretary of State and former Attorney General,
will serve as chairman of the commission.
[Sanger] Bill Rogers, an interesting choice
because he was a political figure, not somebody with any technical knowledge
of the space program.
He was such an establishment figure,
and we later learned that Reagan had said to him,
"Whatever you do, don't embarrass NASA.
They're national heroes. We're going to need them.
They're going to have to launch again."
Ladies and gentlemen, I now would like to call this first meeting to order.
[Keel] I was the Executive Director of the Shuttle Commission.
I had several positions in government prior to that,
including Assistant Secretary to Air Force for Research and Development.
In addition, there were people
like Dr. Sally Ride, first American woman in space,
Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the moon, of course,
and Dr. Richard Feynman, who was a Nobel Laureate.
[Sanger] Feynman was a fascinating addition to the commission.
Here was a scientist who was known not only as a brilliant lecturer,
but as a man who had been involved in the creation of the atomic bomb.
He was deeply anti-authority.
If the people in the Swedish Academy decide that X, Y, or Z
wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.
I won't have anything to do with the Nobel Prize. It's a pain in the…
[chuckling quietly]
I'm not sure that they understood any of that when they appointed him.
And it turned out that he had one great ally on the commission,
and that was General Don Kutyna.
[Kutyna] Feynman and I kinda got close.
The first day of the commission, for the VIPs,
everybody had a limo to pick them up.
And he said, "Kutyna, where's your limo?"
And I says, "I'm just a two-star, I ride the subway."
And he says, "Kutyna, you're all right," and patted me on the back.
And from that day on, he and I rode the subway to meetings
instead of having a limo come pick us up.
I don't think Rogers necessarily wanted a military guy on the commission.
State and military did not get along.
I think he put up with me during the commission, and after that,
we did not call each other or send Christmas cards.
[Rogers] That is our purpose this morning
to be brought up to date on the events that occurred since the accident.
We will call on NASA officials.
[Sanger] At the beginning, Rogers was extremely defensive of NASA.
And he gave a lot of leeway to NASA officials.
I had not planned to focus on any particular area.
And that's why I'm not prepared to do that.
[Rogers] Yeah. We can come back to that.
We appreciate that we didn't give you much notice of the meeting, so proceed.
We'll be able to get that information.
I saw NASA officials making statements that were simply not true.
[Judson] We have seen some erosion of those seals.
The primary seal. We've never seen any erosion of the secondary seal.
And when I saw this, I said, "What am I gonna do?"
[Phillip Boffey] I was handed a message by the newsroom clerk,
and it said some guy wants to talk about the Challenger accident,
and he wants to speak to our NASA writer.
I think he called himself something-or-other Lee. Maybe Richard Lee.
I get out the NASA phone book that we had in the bureau, and I can't find any Lee.
So I call this guy back and I said,
"You know, Mr. Lee, I can't find you in the NASA phone book."
Well, he says, "Well, okay, I'll fess up. My name's Richard Cook."
I said, "I have some documents about the NASA explosion."
Then he said, "Well, can you come down here tomorrow and see me?"
I was feeling very nervous
because I knew how far outside official channels I was going.
[Boffey] He said, in that first conversation,
"I don't want my name identified. NASA could fire me."
I told him I wanted to see everything he had before I made a judgment.
[Cook] He looked at the documents and said, "This looks like good stuff."
He said, "The publisher wants this to be the lead story for Sunday."
But we've got to use your name on that memo.
And I kinda gulped.
It's one thing to have an anonymous document leak,
but if you can't attach it to somebody,
it's just another…
anonymous guy who may or may not know what the hell he's talking about.
And I said, "Okay."
[Boffey] It was a major scoop.
[reporter] Three years ago,
NASA safety analysts documented problems with the seals
on the solid rocket boosters on the shuttle flights.
[Sanger] The story suggested, for the first time,
that there had been a past problem with the solid rocket boosters.
[Keel] This was explosion information.
Secretary Rogers was not happy with that.
He wanted to make sure, in no uncertain terms,
that we're not happy with learning things, uh, second-hand, if you will.
So he and I concurred that the next meeting should be closed-door.
And it was basically a "let's come to terms here with NASA officials."
[reporter] The presidential commission investigating the Challenger tragedy
now moves its hearings into private session.
[McDonald] We met at the old executive office building next to the White House.
Larry Mulloy made it very clear that he's gonna make the whole presentation.
Larry started talking.
Sally Ride says, "Well, before you start, here, you know,
I answered a few of my phone calls,
and one of them was from a reporter here in Washington,
said that they heard some rumor that one of the contractors
may have recommended not even launching.
Is that really true?"
[Russell] Larry Mulloy was not gonna mention that there was any big deal,
that they had an O-ring issue. They talked about it. They resolved it.
And that was all that he wanted to say about that.
Sally Ride said, "Well, do you have any documentation
from the contractor saying he was worried about cold temperatures?"
Larry says, "I don't recall any."
I thought, "Well, that's a flat-ass-out lie."
[Keel] And at that point, Allan McDonald from Thiokol,
on the back bench against the wall, stood up and raised his hand.
He was trembling, and his voice was quivering.
And he said, "Mr. Chairman, we recommended not to launch
because of concern about the temperature."
And so that was a startling revelation.
We already had scheduled an open session for the very next day.
Chairman Rogers said, "Let's not talk about the weather at this next hearing.
Let's give NASA a chance to explain themselves."
[footsteps approaching]
[Kutyna] After the commission meeting,
we were in the basement of the State Department.
Sally Ride was walking next to me.
And, without saying a word to me, gave me a piece of paper.
It had two columns.
One column was outside air temperature.
The other was the resiliency of an O-ring.
And, of course, the paper showed that the ability to bounce back
as it got colder got less and less.
And NASA was withholding it.
The thing was, how can I introduce this into the commission
without getting Sally in trouble?
Feynman came to my house for dinner.
I had an Opel GT in the garage that I was very proud of.
So I came out of the kitchen door, walked him around the Opel GT,
and the engine was open.
It just hit me.
"Professor, I have O-rings in this engine,
and they leak when it is cold."
On the counter I had an O-ring.
He picked it up and he looked at it. And he didn't say a word.
Richard Feynman called me right around midnight.
And he said, "David, I have to do something
during the commission hearing tomorrow."
He said, "I can't tell you what it is,
but I need to get a little bit of basic equipment for it.
Where do I get a pliers?" And I said, "Well, Dr. Feynman,
it's midnight here in Washington.
There's sort of nothing open, except maybe a 24-hour drug store."
He said, "Well, take me to the drug store."
[Rogers] I'd like to call the commission to order, please.
This morning we will start the meeting with officials from NASA,
particularly dealing with the matter of seals on the booster rockets.
[man] I'd like to introduce Mr. Larry Mulloy,
who is the project manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
[Keel] Larry Mulloy came up to talk about the joints for the solid rocket motor.
So let me go to chart, uh, five, please.
[Kutyna] Richard Feynman was a little bit of a showman.
To get the microphone to become a hot mic,
you press the little red button.
The button would light up,
and then your mic was hot, and you could talk.
And so he started reaching out for the mic.
And I grabbed his hand, and I said, "Not now."
He looked and he says, "When?"
And I says, "I'll tell you when."
And it was a proper break, then I said, "Now."
[Richard Feynman] Well, I took this stuff that I got out of your seal,
and I put it in ice water.
And I discovered that, when you put some pressure on it for a while
and then undo it, it maintains… It doesn't stretch back.
It stays the same dimension.
In other words, for a few seconds, at least, and more seconds than that,
there's no resilience in this particular material
when it's at a temperature of 32 degrees.
I believe that has some significance for our problem.
[Sanger] If anybody other than a Nobel Laureate in physics
had conducted this experiment,
they would've been laughed off the stage and, you know, told,
"Sorry, we do real science here."
And because it was Richard Feynman,
all the NASA people could do was sit there and fume.
And that's all Rogers could do, too.
[Kutyna] That night, on national television,
every television channel had him doing the O-ring experiment on there.
[reporter] Commission member and physicist Richard Feynman
wanted to know what happened…
[reporter 2] He even dunked a piece of one ring into ice water
to show that it becomes brittle.
[Boffey] That was all you saw or heard for about 24 to 48 hours.
Sure affected public perceptions and understanding of what had happened.
[Sanger] Feynman and Kutyna basically forced everyone to focus attention
on the cold weather conditions.
[reporter] It was 38 degrees in Cape Canaveral at the moment of launch.
[reporter 2] The rings become brittle in cold weather. It was 38 degrees…
[Sanger] As bureaucratic jujitsu goes, it was pretty brilliant on Kutyna's part.
[phone ringing]
[McDonald] At about 11:00 at night, I got a telephone call.
And it was a fellow from the New York Times.
He said, uh, "We have an issue we're releasing in the morning
about a discussion you had with the presidential commission
indicating concerns about launching in the cold temperatures,
and we wanted to verify if the information we have is correct."
He came to the conclusion that we had the story already,
and we were going to publish it one way or the other.
[reporter] There was an extraordinary meeting at Cape Canaveral
the night before the Challenger launched.
Mulloy argued that the O-ring seals would withstand the cold temperatures,
despite Thiokol's objections.
[Sanger] We established there had been a very specific warning
from the engineers, who knew the solid rocket booster best,
not to launch in those cold conditions.
It became impossible for Chairman Rogers to observe the instructions
from President Reagan to make NASA come out of this not looking bad.
The engineering people would not recommend a launch below 53 degrees Fahrenheit.
I found this conclusion without basis, and I challenged its logic.
They construed what you said to mean that you wanted them to change their minds.
So they were under a lot of pressure to give you the answer you wanted.
[Sanger] Why were they in such a rush?
If it was too cold today, you wait for the temperature to warm up.
The answer was, they were trying to stay on a schedule.
Mulloy was operating within the constraints of a system
that required far more launches than they could successfully make.
Larry Mulloy was less a bad actor…
It's a guy who acted badly because his hand was forced
by the constraints of the system.
[McDonald] Larry Mulloy was told by his boss, Dr. Lucas.
He made it very clear that NASA needed to launch shuttles
and launch them on schedule.
[Rogers] Were you familiar with the concerns
that had been expressed in the previous years, I guess?
[Lucas] I have been aware of the problem with the seals.
My assessment was that it was a reasonable risk to take.
Thirty years have not changed the way I think about it at all.
Going into space is something that great countries do.
They want to advance technology. They want to learn.
It's also risky.
You have to take some chances.
[Rogers] Beginning in April 1985,
did you then begin to think it was a problem with flight safety?
I did not think it was a problem sufficient to, uh, ground the fleet.
The waiver says, "Actual loss: loss of mission, vehicle, and crew."
I don't see how you could say that didn't involve flight safety.
[Sanger] We began to get a sense of how much they knew.
The thought rose in the back of our minds
that this wasn't really an accident at all,
that this was more like manslaughter.
[June] To learn that there were managers who allowed this spacecraft to take off,
knowing full well the risk, I was tremendously angry.
Unable to forgive people who made such a bad decision.
[Cheryl McNair] They knew something was not right.
They didn't consider human life,
and the safety and the effects that it could have on a family.
There was a root of anger and bitterness and sadness that was growing in me
because how could they let this happen?
[Sanger] The culture at NASA in that period in time was, "we can do anything."
[reporter] NASA projected the image of a well-managed agency,
accomplishing miracles in space and keeping to its budget.
[Harwood] NASA was always the good guys, the "right stuff."
[Billingsly] We were wired to believe. We were filled with hope.
[Sanger] By the time the shuttle was flying, NASA was basically saying,
"This is so safe, we can put school teachers on it."
Then you realize they're really rolling the dice.
[Lucas] There's no way you can account for those seven lives,
except to say that that's the way development happened.
My forebears came across the Appalachian Mountains in a wagon
with horses. Some of them didn't make it.
It's regrettable, but costs sometimes are very difficult.
And those lives were-- were it.
[reporter] Search teams have now recovered
hundreds of pounds of debris from the Challenger.
[Rhea Seddon] After the 51-L accident, I didn't know quite what to believe.
I didn't know who to blame, and so we all looked for what we could do.
I had the task of helping to identify things
that came out of the Atlantic Ocean.
Scuba divers went down.
It was in fairly shallow water.
The crew members are there, inside this intact compartment.
And that just tore me to pieces.
[reporter] Yesterday divers confirmed
that they have located the Challenger's cabin and its crew.
Family members were notified Friday
when the wreckage was found by sonar in 100 feet of water.
[June] It was several weeks later,
they had retrieved the remains of the astronauts.
[inhales sharply]
And I-- I-- I just started… crying.
I was so devastated, I totally broke down.
[Lisa] "I've had a long day preparing for the memorial service.
Today is the final ceremony to attend."
[somber instrumental music playing]
[jets whooshing]
[Russell] After the testimonies,
it was clear that it was going to be a tough time for the company.
We had, uh, accepted the, uh--
the risk to fly and, therefore, we're responsible for that acceptance.
[Kilminster] I received a call from my boss at that time
to tell me that I was going to be removed.
I was disappointed to hear that, but I wasn't… totally surprised.
[reporter] The company receptionist made the announcement
that 200 employees were being laid off.
Fourteen hundred others put on a part-time status,
a four-day week, pending resumption of operation.
The last rocket motor sections from the production line
are being stored away.
People from the town were filled with tension and sadness,
and everyone was talking about it.
The town was disappointed that we had failed the space program.
There was graffiti on the bridge that you take going into town.
My dad's eyes got filled with tears.
Big, white spray paint:
"Thiokol Murderers."
He spent 24/7 for nearly 30 years feeling like he was to blame.
[Russell] One night, I went to Joe Kilminster's house.
He broke down into tears.
He was under the weight of that decision that was made.
There were seven wonderful, wonderful, capable, dedicated people
that lost their lives.
And I was part of a decision-making process
that said it was okay to launch.
That has…
always been on my mind.
The presidential commission returned its verdict today
on the Challenger space shuttle disaster.
It found responsible a rubber seal on a booster rocket that was faulty,
and an attitude of NASA that was equally faulty.
It was a fatally flawed decision process.
But the human failure was centered on Marshall.
And if I had to fix the responsibility, I'd fix it in on Lucas.
Marshall's director, William Lucas, has just announced his early retirement.
I did what I thought was right in the light of the information I had,
and if I were going over it
with the same information I had at the time,
I'd make the same decision.
'Cause I thought it was right.
I didn't do anything that I thought was wrong then,
and I didn't do anything that I think was wrong in retrospect.
[reporter] The man who is most heavily criticized in the report,
Lawrence Mulloy, has been moved into another job,
and has indicated that he may leave NASA.
I feel I was to blame.
But I felt no guilt.
[June] Forgiving him was difficult.
You go through anger.
You go through resolution. You go through, "They're in a better place."
You can think away anything.
But it was…
hard to forgive.
There were still those times that I had to stop and physically say to myself,
"I forgive those people.
We need to forgive those people. We need to move on."
[Marcia] After the accident, on the 28th of January,
I have always woken up at sunrise.
I think Greg would be very upset if I just spent my life being negative.
A sunrise is a new beginning…
and if we can make those new beginnings beautiful in our lives,
then I think that's important.
[Reagan] In America, we learn from our setbacks as well as our successes.
And although the lessons of failure are hard,
they are often the most important on the road to progress.
We've learned in these past few months that we're frail and fallible.
But we have also learned that we have the courage to face our faults
and the strength to correct our errors.
This has been a difficult passage for America, but we will go on,
just as the crew of the space shuttle Challenger would have wanted us to.
We'll simply do what has to be done to make our space program safe
and reliable and a renewed source of pride to our nation.
We've suffered a tragedy and a setback.
But we'll forge ahead, wiser this time and undaunted.
As undaunted as the spirit of the Challenger and her seven heroes.
[Crippen] Dick Truly was given the job of Associate Administrator.
Dick called me up and said, "Would you come up to Washington?"
No doubt it was a tough job because we had more people telling us
why we couldn't go fly than why we ever could.
[McDonald] I got called in by our new general manager, and he said,
"We've been working with NASA on how we're going to recover from this problem.
So we're gonna do this in a task force.
And we're gonna have the lead of the task force.
NASA is gonna be working for us.
We want you to be the head of that. Would you take that job?"
[reporter] Allan McDonald, one of the engineers
who opposed the Challenger launch,
is now in charge of designing a new, safer booster.
I mean, we ended up redesigning everything in that to some degree.
[reporter 2] A full test firing of a solid rocket booster
was conducted by Morton Thiokol,
the maker of the SRB that failed on Challenger.
Morton Thiokol says initial data indicates the rocket's O-rings performed flawlessly.
It was a two-year process to do, but the redesign was marvelous.
[crowd cheering and applauding]
[reporter] Hundreds of NASA workers cheered as Discovery was pulled along.
It was like a ticker-tape parade for a long-lost hero.
[reporter 2] NASA officials insist that this time they will not waive the rules,
as they did many times in the past.
[Brokaw] Thirty-two months ago, this was the site, of course,
of a tragedy that none of us will forget.
The loss of the shuttle Challenger and seven astronauts.
Now, for the first time since that awful day,
NASA is ready to launch another shuttle: the shuttle Discovery.
[Aldrich] We got to fly again after Challenger, and here's Discovery…
[chuckling] …ready to go.
Return to flight was so important to prove that we could go forward.
[Billingsly] The last image of a launch, for me, was…
a live explosion.
I think it was important to see something successful.
[applause and whistling]
[reporter] The launch team leaving the suiting room now,
and coming down from their third-floor crew quarters area.
[Covey] It was an honor to be asked to be on that crew.
I was committed to make sure that the Challenger crew
had not been lost in vain.
[Harwood] Even though I had total confidence in the redesign,
I truly believed they'd fixed the problem… I don't think
you could ever be relaxed, watching a shuttle launch after Challenger.
[Brokaw] Here we go.
Remember the Challenger. Godspeed, Discovery.
[mission control] …eleven, ten…
We're a go for main engine start. Seven, six…
My daughter and I were hugging each other, just so scared it was going to explode.
[mission control] …zero, and liftoff!
Liftoff. Americans return to space, as Discovery clears the tower.
[operator 2] Roger roll, Discovery.
[June] I stood up as close as I could be to the TV to say,
"Godspeed. Godspeed."
[mission control] Discovery, go and throttle up.
[operator 2] Roger, go.
[operator 3] Discovery given a go at throttle-up. Three engines at 104%.
Velocity 3,200 feet per second, altitude 10.8 nautical miles,
standing by for solid rocket booster separation.
[man] There they go.
That looks normal.
Looks great.
[Gregory] I think all of us were holding our breath.
And so we were all very excited and thinking, "We're back on track again."
[all cheering]
I was thrilled. We had done it.
[Aldrich] I felt like we all had done our job.
And that we could go on.
And we did.
[closing theme music playing]