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Thank you. and more. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. It's January 27, 1986, at 6 p.m. in Titusville, Florida, a few miles from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Al McDonald, the director of Morton Thiakall's Space Shuttle Rocket Program, is staying in Titusville at a colleague's house.

He's in town for the latest mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which is expected to be the most watched launch in the shuttle program's history,

thanks to the presence of Krista McColliffe,

the high school teacher who's about to become the first civilian in space.

There's so much anticipation around the launch that McDonald couldn't find a hotel room.

Everything for miles around Cape Canaveral is booked.

But McDonald is not sharing in that excitement. Instead, he's sitting alone at his colleague's

kitchen table, holding his head in his hands. He's just received a call from someone at

Thiacol's headquarters in Utah, urging him to postpone tomorrow's launch. According to the weather

forecast, overnight temperatures at Cape Canaveral are expected to plunge below freezing, and that's a big

problem. McDonald's company Thiacol is responsible for manufacturing the thin rubber O-rings that

seal the joints on the shuttle's two rocket boosters. And based on their testing, Thiacol engineers have determined that the O-rings that seal the joints on the shuttle's two rocket boosters. And based on their testing,

Thiacol engineers have determined that the O-rings become unreliable

at temperatures below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

If even one set of them were to fail during launch,

the entire shuttle could explode.

...