This 18-minute video introduces students to the complex and often misunderstood causes of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, one of the most important cultural events of the 1980s. It examines the rhetorical context for one of President Ronald Reagan’s most memorable speeches. This video is useful for lessons on the U.S. space program, the culture of the 1980s, and as a unit in a business class on organizational culture. The video could also accompany and contextualize lessons that rely on President Reagan’s address to the nation after the accident as a primary source.
Lessons From the Challenger Tragedy
Normalization of deviance, the process of becoming inured to risky actions, is a useful concept that was developed to explain how the Challenger disaster happened.
Those who saw it never forgot: the Space Shuttle Challenger launched on January 28, 1986 only to break apart 73 seconds later, killing seven astronauts, including the first “teacher in space” – Christa McAuliffe.
We revisit the tragic event – and the 2003 Columbia disaster – through interviews with key participants, and explores the forces that lead groups within large organizations to make dreadfully wrong decisions.
View full episodes at PBS.org/RetroReport.
Related: Challenger, Columbia and the Nature of Calamity by Clyde Haberman
- Lesson plan 1: The Space Race: The Challenger Tragedy
- Read transcript
- Book a producer
- Producer: Bret Sigler
- Editor: Bret Sigler