The Failures Feynman Found

The lessons that we never seem to learn

When the space shuttle Challenger exploded after launching on Jan 28, 1986, people immediately started asking how did this happen? Congress formed the Rogers Commission to look into the matter, and they asked Richard Feynman, a Nobel prize winning physicist, to join. He said no.

They did eventually convince him to be a part of it, and he did discover the cause of the accident: an O-ring that did not expand when it was below freezing, as it was the day of the disaster. The commission produced a report, testimony was given to Congress, Feynman famously dunked the O-ring in a glass of ice water.

This answered the question of how the shuttle exploded, but not necessarily why.