The Political Climate
To fully understand and analyze the decision making that took place leading to the fatal launch, it is important also to discuss the political environment under which NASA was operating at that time. NASA’s budget was determined by Congress, which was becoming increasingly unhappy with delays in the shuttle project and shuttle performance. NASA had billed the shuttle as a reliable, inexpensive launch vehicle for a variety of scientifi c and commercial purposes, including the launching of commercial and military satellites. It had been promised that the shuttle would be capable of frequent fl ights (several per year) and quick turnarounds and would be competitively priced with more traditional nonreusable launch vehicles. NASA was feeling some urgency in the program because the European Space Agency was developing what seemed to be a cheaper alternative to the shuttle, which could potentially put the shuttle out of business.
These pressures led NASA to schedule a record number of missions for 1986 to prove to Congress that the program was on track. Launching a mission was espe- cially important in January 1986, since the previous mission had been delayed numerous times by both weather and mechanical failures. NASA also felt pressure to get the Challenger launched on time so that the next shuttle launch, which was to carry a probe to examine Halley’s comet, would be launched before a Russian probe designed to do the same thing. There was additional political pressure to launch the Challenger before the upcoming state-of-the-union address, in which President Reagan hoped to mention the shuttle and a special astronaut—the fi rst teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe—in the context of his comments on education.
10 1.8 Case Studies