Lessons for Life on the Anniversary of a National Disaster
Psychology Today | 29.01.2026 05:41
Forty years ago, on January 28, 1986, “exactly 73.621 seconds after liftoff at 11:39 a.m., the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing all seven persons on board. With the destruction of Challenger, America’s dream for a quick and easy conquest of outer space died. A more obvious casualty of the Challenger disaster, the reputation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was severely tarnished. NASA’s aura of invincible professionalism was suddenly replaced with an image of bureaucratic bungling and institutional fallibility” (Harrison, 1993, 161). The presidential commission to investigate the disaster (Rogers and colleagues, 1986) concluded that the disaster was brought about by flawed decision-making.
