It's hard to summarize Challenger by Adam Higginbotham (Sharon Says So book club). It was intense, informative and thought provoking. Lots of engineering detail and history, but so necessary for context. I didn't find it dry or boring. Excellent narration. I know hindsight is 20/20, but over and over again, NASA had cautionary tales of what not to do, opportunities to maintain fail safes with too many acts of hubris and concern for optics. The only reason we know the full truth is because a couple of engineers at rocket contractor Morton Thiokol admitted that they advised NASA not to launch the fateful morning of January 28, 1986 because of poor performance of the O-ring seals in low temps. The temperature that morning was 36 degrees - 15 degrees cooler than any previous launch - and they told NASA they couldn't advise if below 50-something degrees. But NASA pushed them to prove it wasn't safe to launch for the first time - they had always focused on proving that it was safe to launch. Then the contractors reversed their advice - they caved to pressure and it cost lives. No one was ever the same - certainly not the families of the 7 lost astronauts. Unfortunately, in 2003 there was another disaster, owing much to the same flaws in management and politics. History always has a way of repeating itself.
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