When the Challenger area shuttle exploded slightly over a minute after its launch in 1986, it pierced the desires of hundreds of thousands about who watched the tragedy unfold stay 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 House,” Adam Higginbotham gives 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 fireplace 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 come back to a standstill” through the launch of the Columbia shuttle in 1981 — with the warning indicators of technical flaws that had been ignored or outright ignored over time.
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 can be shocked after they understand the vivid account of the Challenger launch doesn’t happen till nicely after midway by way of the e book.
Higginbotham gives 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.”
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