What was the fatal flaw that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster?

Question

What was the fatal flaw that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster?

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Answer 1

There’s a great book on this by Diane Vaughan, where she argues that the original fatal flaw was not the defective o-ring but actually how NASA was run at the time. She argues that some engineers knew the o-ring was an issue but that pressures to launch and weird internal hierarchy made it so that this issue when reported was deemed an “acceptable risk.” A good lesson for not just NASA but many companies and organizations charged with building things that can put human lives at risk. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo22781921.html