No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative about the Challenger Accident and Our Time

When the Challenger space shuttle exploded in 1986, killing all seven crew members, the U.S. Air Force may not have been surprised--its experts' confidential report issued just three months earlier had concluded that the shuttle was one of the most dangerous technological systems ever built. In a gripping narrative that comprises a strong cautionary tale, Jensen, a Danish professor of literature, views the Challenger disaster as a prime example of the crippling bureaucracy of large organizations. Documenting a series of hair-raising technical failures, accidents, mishaps and near-disasters that plagued NASA from the late 1950s onward, Jensen shows how infighting between government agencies, bureaucratic inertia and NASA's fear that the armed forces would withdraw support for a civilian space program all contributed to the Challenger tragedy. Although Jensen relies on secondary sources and on the Presidential fault-finding commission led by physicist Richard Feynman, this is nevertheless a significant study of the Challenger disaster and of NASA's corporate culture. (Jan.)