How Richard Feynman Found the Root of the Challenger Disaster
SMRTR summary
Forty years ago, NASA's Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just over a minute after launch, killing all seven crew members including teacher Christa McAuliffe. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman joined the presidential commission investigating the disaster and discovered that rubber O-rings sealing the rocket boosters had failed in the cold temperatures, allowing hot gas to escape and cause the explosion. During a hearing, Feynman demonstrated this by dropping an O-ring sample into ice water, showing how the rubber became rigid below freezing.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Nautilus.
Read the original article