Red-Haired Ash Reads

This book is about the history of the dangers of the space program and how it led to disasters like the Challenger explosion in 1986, the Columbia disaster in 2003, and a few other disasters. While I knew of the Challenger disaster, it was before I was born and I never really looked into what happened. I do vaguely remember the Columbia disaster in 2003 but I was only 11 and my family didn’t really talk about it. 

This starts all the way back with the Apollo 1 disaster that led to three astronauts being killed from a fire that started. It talks about all the little things that went wrong and how the decisions from higher ups affected the safety of the astronauts because they didn’t want to spend more money or take more time to make something safe. Then it was just a rinse and repeat of how this kept happening and eventually led to the X-15 Flight 3-65-97, Challenger and Columbia disasters. 

One disaster I had never heard of before was the X-15 Flight 3-65-97 test flight in 1967. It was an experimental space plane that was carrying seven experiments. The craft broke up and crashed 10 minutes after launch, killing the pilot. I found this disaster to be really interesting since it was new to me but also because it’s never mentioned when space disasters are discussed, which is a shame since it is still a disaster. 

Overall, this was a fascinating look at the space program, the dangers of space exploration, human greed, and the investigations that happened afterwards. I am curious about the author’s thoughts on all the recent issues with the SpaceX flights now. 

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