E-book Assessment: ‘Challenger’ is definitive account of shuttle catastrophe and missteps that led to tragedy

Books

Adam Higginbotham writes the historical past of the 1986 area shuttle Challenger catastrophe in “Challenger.”

By ANDREW DeMILLO, Related Press

Could 13, 2024

When the Challenger area shuttle exploded a bit over a minute after its launch in 1986, it pierced the desires of hundreds of thousands about who watched the tragedy unfold dwell on tv. It additionally finally uncovered the weaknesses of an area program that had been revered by many.

In “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Catastrophe on the Fringe of Area,” Adam Higginbotham supplies essentially the most definitive account of the explosion that took the lives of the seven-person crew. He additionally meticulously explores the missteps and negligence that allowed the tragedy to happen.

Bookmarked between two different tragedies that struck NASA — the 1967 Apollo launchpad hearth that killed three astronauts and the 2003 Columbia shuttle catastrophe that killed seven — Higginbotham’s e-book traces the historical past of the nation’s shuttle program main as much as the Challenger explosion.

Higginbotham manages to mood his account of the thrill the shuttle program generated — recounting how “on a regular basis life appeared to return to a standstill” throughout the launch of the Columbia shuttle in 1981 — with the warning indicators of technical flaws that had been missed or outright ignored through the years.

In clear and accessible language, Higginbotham explains the mechanics of the shuttle and its issues with out sacrificing any of the tempo that carries readers ahead. The tempo is so brisk that readers shall be shocked after they understand the vivid account of the Challenger launch doesn’t happen till properly after midway by means of the e-book.

Higginbotham supplies simply as dramatic of a retelling of the aftermath of the shuttle’s crash, from the seek for the wreckage and astronaut stays to the investigation and hearings on the catastrophe.

The e-book delivers a compelling, complete historical past of the catastrophe that uncovered, as Higginbotham writes, how “the nation’s smartest minds had unwittingly despatched seven women and men to their deaths.”