{"id":23889,"date":"2016-03-23T10:32:33","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T17:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/through-hardship-to-the-stars"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:04:57","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:04:57","slug":"through-hardship-to-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/through-hardship-to-the-stars","title":{"rendered":"Through Hardship to the Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/through-hardship-to-the-stars.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The night before the Space Shuttle Challenger was due to lift off, on January 27, 1986, Bob Ebeling tried to talk his boss out of approving the launch. Ebeling was an engineer for a NASA contractor, one of five who worried that the rocket boosters\u2019 \u201co-rings\u201d might turn brittle in the overnight cold, and that leaking fuel could lead to an explosion. Ebeling\u2019s supervisor refused to stop the launch, and the shuttle exploded the next day, killing 7 astronauts, including a school teacher. A Presidential Commission would later vindicate Ebeling and his colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>Over at NPR, Howard Berkes has written a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2016\/03\/21\/470870426\/challenger-engineer-who-warned-of-shuttle-disaster-dies\">moving remembrance<\/a> of Ebeling, who was wracked by guilt for decades. The morning of the launch, Ebeling drove to work to watch the event from a company conference room. He was accompanied by his daughter:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cHe said, \u2018The Challenger\u2019s going to blow up. Everyone\u2019s going to die,\u2019\u201d [she recalled.] \u201cAnd he was beating his fist on the dashboard. He was frantic.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/hardship-stars-122606752.html\">http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/hardship-stars-122606752.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The night before the Space Shuttle Challenger was due to lift off, on January 27, 1986, Bob Ebeling tried to talk his boss out of approving the launch. Ebeling was an engineer for a NASA contractor, one of five who worried that the rocket boosters\u2019 \u201co-rings\u201d might turn brittle in the overnight cold, and that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67934,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23889\/revisions\/67934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}