Hacker Cinema
The Challenger Disaster
2013 · Film · 90 min
Directed by James Hawes
When the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, it was the most shocking event in the history of American spaceflight. The deaths of seven astronauts, including the first teacher in space Christa McAuliffe, were watched live on television by millions of viewers. But what was more shocking was that the cause of the disaster might never be uncovered. The Challenger is the story of how Richard Feynman, one of America's most famous scientists, helped to discover the cause of a tragedy that stunned America.
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8 comments on Hacker News
There is a good movie about the Challenger disaster and the follow up investigation from the pov of Feynman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Challenger_Disaster
Normally I would agree if an engineer directly knew what they were doing was bad and didn't say no but in the case of MCAS: pilots had no idea it was there. Yes, it also wasn't properly redundant and that is bad but had the pilots known it had existed in the first place and understood it was operating off a single data source they would have acted accordingly and a lot of people would still be alive. Door plug I can't speak to.
Hiding MCAS to avoid recertification was well above the paygrade of an engineer at a bench poking a circuit.
Also, if you want a short version of how this stuff goes very wrong even when engineers do say something, the challenger disaster[1] movie is great. Chase it with the NASA documents[2] for the long version.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvv2-7iOD_8
[2]: https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/genindex.htm
Edit: typo
A good TV movie (starring William Hurt and Brian Dennehy) is: "The Challenger Disaster" (2013) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2421662/
I re-watched this year with my kids (a few days after Hurt's death) and we all liked it.
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Films
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- I Am Mother 2019: Post-apocalyptic robotic "rejuvenation" of the human race
- Gravity 2013: Fairly accurate dramatization of what space is really like
- Real Genius 1985: Silly film of college hackers before the 1995 film Hackers
- The Abyss 1989: Aliens under the sea, somewhat related to the 1998 film Sphere
- Innerspace 1987: Fun scifi version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids!
This is a good opportunity to plug the under-the-radar TV movie from a few years ago about Richard Feynman and the Challenger investigation.
Slightly hard to find digitally but it's the first "episode" here: https://smile.amazon.com/The-Challenger-Disaster/dp/B00GQUM7PO
William Hurt does a great job in it and its pretty interesting!
(Be careful because there's also a worse seeming/rated movie with the same name that came out recently.)
Pretty sure an actor played him in the movie about the challenger disaster.
https://imdb.com/title/tt2421662/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2421662/
The Challenger Disaster(2013) : Factual drama exploring the truth behind the space shuttle Challenger's 1986 disintegration.
Your comment reminded, specifically this part " When the inevitable human fatalities are realized, we will see that everyone involved had done their best:" reminded me of the speech given by someone in charge of the investigation at the start of it..
>I appreciate you all coming together at short notice. We have a huge, vital task ahead of us, upon which might depend the future of manned space flight in this country. Now, I intend for this investigation to follow an orderly and proper procedure. We are not going to conduct it in a manner that is in any way unfairly critical of NASA. Because we believe, and certainly I believe, that NASA has done an excellent job. And I believe that the American people think so too. Anyone?
Of course, it turned out to be not so pretty...
> When the inevitable human fatalities are realised, we will see that everyone involved had done their best:
Have you seen the movie called "the challenger disaster". If not, you should see it. It might helps to gain a bit of perspective about these things.