Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster (review)

In late February 2010, the fifty-seventh and final ground firing of a space shuttle solid-rocket booster occurred. These tests and a hundred-plus shuttle flights significantly shaped the design, development, and operation of the space shuttle system over nearly four decades. Via an insider's perspective, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings describes and analyzes the processes of managing such an aerospace project in the light of tragic mistakes. The author, Allan J. McDonald, formerly directed the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project at producer Morton Thiokol, Inc., and he was instrumental in redesigning the shuttle's twin solid-rocket boosters following the 28 January 1986 Challenger explosion. To craft his book, McDonald sought the services of historian James R. Hansen, author, among many other works, of First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong (2005). Hansen contributed the foreword, McDonald's biographical sketch, and a scholarly bibliographical essay. Those familiar with his writing will also note his deft touch throughout the narrative.

McDonald does not provide a generalized tale of what happened during the Challenger explosion and the deaths of its seven astronauts. Those seeking this should first skim Hansen's bibliographic essay for a more popular-audience introduction. Rather, he demonstrates the detailed functioning of government, industry, and academe in an aerospace case study in which he himself served as a first-person participant. As such, he analyzes primary sources retained for more than two decades which detail engineering, leadership, and management personalities and decisions involved in the shuttle program. He tells not so much Challenger's tale as he illuminates relationships within the aerospace community, demonstrating that success in such work demands integrity and professional heterogeneity in engineering, management, testing, operations, and bureaucracy.

Details matter in rocketry. McDonald provides a plethora of internalist explanations covering the design, function, and limitations of the O-rings sealing the solid-rocket motor joints. He repeats his descriptions—perhaps too frequently—to aid reader retention. Nonetheless, the details were important. Effectually retaining sight of the shuttle system's unbending temperature limitations, O-ring sealing characteristics and operational and test data allow comprehension of the effects of human personality, organizational limitations, institutional culture, and, one may add, faulty operational practices on the disaster and recovery. McDonald methodically discusses competing explanations. He disposes of them without losing sight of how final arbiters ignored important data and declared "go for launch" when "no-go" was appropriate. Indeed, as he explains, Challenger was the first time he had to justify to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration the reasons for not launching a rocket versus convincing NASA why it was safe to do so.

The narrative and analysis chiefly contextualize within the work of the post-accident, presidentially appointed investigative agent, the Rogers Commission. Herein scholars will see the challenges that accident-investigation bodies face. In the Challenger's case, this included honest confusion, faulty memory, deplorable lies, cover-ups, and sustained demonstrations of pure integrity and bureaucratic courage by engineers, managers, astronauts, and commission members. The success of any technocratic endeavor depends on the depth of the questions asked and the courage of the answers, and, as McDonald recounts, the Rogers Commission and those within government, industry, and academe who redesigned the shuttle boosters asked and answered well. McDonald's description of the important return-to-flight process is insightful and relatable to the 2003 shuttle Columbia tragedy.

Both as memoir and as history, McDonald retains his passion for what happened, but he does not allow his judgment to cloud. Hansen's historiographical essay rightly stresses the importance of McDonald's contribution as the only serious work produced by one of the Challenger launch, post-accident, and return-to-flight principals. Aerospace and technological historians will find the book insightful for illuminating how and why the accident occurred, the interactions of government, industry, and academe, and the continued relevance of human agency within technocratic projects...