What was the fatal flaw that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster?
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I want to add that, despite the claim that it led to a culture change at NASA, 17 or so years later the Columbia disaster occurred for much the same reason. Engineers had warned for decades that there was a chance that a strike from the frozen insulating foam falling from the shuttle’s external propellant tank could damage the shuttle. But there had been over 100 missions where it didn’t happen, so administrators got overconfident that it wouldn’t, and stopped listening. But that is the thing about modest probability events – do the action long enough, and they will occur.
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