January 28, 1986 was an unusually cold morning. Ther have been several delays already and everyone was nervous. The entire country was watching. Nobody knew that it was going to be the Space Shuttle Challenger’s final flight.
Only 73 seconds after launch, the Space Shuttle disintegrated. It was sure death for all the seven crew members. There was no escape hatch.
The cause of the explosion were faulty O-rings that didn’t work well in the cold. The sad part is that the engineers knew there was a problem. But everyone was more concerned about looking good than actually doing a good job.
Wunderkind physicist Richard Feynman aptly commented:
"For a successful technology reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
Aftare the tragedy, NASA experienced several other mishaps which probably contributed to the slow down of space exploration in general.
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Terrible things happen when you care more about what other people would say than actually doing a good job.