Word: launchful
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...nearly a month before the Challenger launch, no important shuttle manager or technician had a single day off. Ten and fourteen-hour days were commonplace. One NASA doctor even told McConnell that heroin, cocaine and hallucinogens were "readily available" on shop floors...
ABOUT HALFWAY through the book McConnell begins his excruciatingly detailed description of the three days preceding the doomed launch. Unfortunately, this blow-by-blow account of the accident is ??? engaging than the shuttle's shadowy history...
...memorable scenes from the second half of the book is his portrayal of a teleconference which took place the night before the launch between engineers at Morton Thiokol, makers of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, and NASA officials. Thiokol's engineers spent almost an hour explaining why they believed that cold temperatures at Cape Canaveral would impair the performance of their now infamous O-rings. The Thiokol engineers voted unanimously to recommend against launching...
McConnell's book ends as it began, with an account of the launch which took place despite significant misgivings. Reading about the disaster for the second time, the reader feels a certain rage at the arrogance and idiocy that caused it, and cares enough about the astronauts--who had no inkling of the O-ring difficulty--to grieve for them. None but the most iron-hearted cynic could enjoy a space shuttle joke after reading this book...
...thundered into space last week, the tall, slender rocket looked like hundreds of satellite boosters launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Despite a drizzling rain, the blast-off put a marine observation satellite into orbit without a hitch. The launch pad, though, was not in California or Florida. It was on Tanegashima Island, and the rocket bore on its side, in prominent black letters, a single word: NIPPON...