Mark Fennell

It was a shock, it was a loss, but also for NASA.

It's a massive dent in the public's confidence and the perception of the space program.

Now, you're probably listening to this wondering, what on earth does this have to do with rubber?

Well, initially when people started asking the question, what went wrong, a lot of the attention focused on the temperature, didn't it?

But ice wasn't the whole story.

A solid rocket booster separation.

Yes, the connection is the rocket boosters that Thiokol worked on.

The joints were sealed together using something called an O-ring that was made from synthetic rubber.

And the thing to remember here is that rubber, even synthetic rubber, it's bendy, it's elastic, it's reactive.

But that is not the case if it's cold.

Yes, so this is the important part.

Before the launch, Morton Thiokol engineers raised a red flag.

They were warning that those O-rings made of rubber, they wouldn't work properly in the cold.

Now, remember, those solid rocket boosters were being reused, right?

And time and time again, launched into the sky, dropped into the ocean, retrieved, cleaned up, used again.

And these engineers had noticed something.

They'd noticed that the O-rings, they weren't looking good.

A full year before the Challenger disaster, they theorised that cold temperatures were actually exacerbating this problem.

So when they see the forecast for the Challenger launch day, they call a meeting with management to warn them.

that if the launch goes ahead, it could be disastrous.