Netflix has produced an excellent documentary: "Challenger: The Final Flight." Here is a preview:
This is the story of a huge, over-funded government bureaucracy that did what bureaucracies always do: cut corners, broke its own rules, twisted arms, caused a disaster, got caught, and ran a cover-up based on deliberate deception of the government and the public.
The senior bureaucrats at NASA regarded the launch's deadline as more important than the lives of the crew. When this self-serving preference blew up in their bureaucratic faces, they ran for cover. They mumbled. Then they lied.
The documentary gives the background of the memorable scene when Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman blew up NASA's cover-up in one graphic and memorable TV evening news sound bite. Ka-boom!
We get to see the expression of the man who was running the cover-up immediately after Feynman did it.
The documentary ends with the scrapping of the space shuttle program in 2011. No one remembers this because the public no longer cared. The boondoggle was no longer news.
The main thing that the public remembers is the 1986 explosion. This documentary will make that event even easier to remember.
I recommend this documentary. As you watch it, think: "This was NASA's 40-year public relations boondoggle that cost $209 billion, overran its original $90 billion budget estimate by over 100%, never met its promised flight schedule, never produced its promised profit, produced little of scientific value, and is missed by no one outside of NASA."
After you have seen the documentary, you will be ready for this: https://www.garynorth.com/public/21353.cfm
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