This was a fascinating docuseries to watch and really shed some light on how messed up NASA was and how horrific it was for everyone to lose such valued members of their family, friends, and even, teacher.

The Challenger space craft was a flight that was meant to go to space but sadly never got there. On its launch a few minutes in the whole ship exploded and unfortunately all crew onboard that day died. This docuseries looked into the time before and coming up to the launch, the people who were onboard, and what happened afterwards as well.

What I found fascinating was how awful NASA came across and how there were so many moments that could’ve easily saved this crew if they just stopped and realised what was wrong. The issue that caused the shuttle to explode was the same issue that had been seen on aborted flights months prior, these things were documented but were swept under the rug and kept out of sight of the higher ups because, I believe, NASA didn’t want to lose their funding.

At the start of the docuseries we hear about how NASA was promising all these things were going to come out of their space programme and from the beginning it was obvious that these promises could not be met. So instead of taking more time and care to work out the issues NASA was experiencing, they instead ploughed on with their projects and put the funding and the face of NASA first, rather than caring for its workers.

Now, this is horrible and ended up with seven people sadly losing their lives but I do understand it. Pressure is a horrific thing and when you promise so many bits that just aren’t happening you start to feel that pressure a lot more. This isn’t an excuse for them but I feel if they were more honest with what they were doing and how, yes they haven’t met their promises, but they’re doing all this great work instead, these lives could’ve been saved.

It just saddened me at the end to see that this wasn’t an isolated incident and the exact same thing happened a couple of decades later to a different crew. NASA should’ve learnt from their mistakes and should’ve made it better, made sure they put the safety of every person first and forgot about their egos and their greed to be whatever they wanted to be. It’s a dangerous business going into space but that does not mean we should allow the deaths of people to happen, especially when these deaths could’ve been avoided.

This is a fascinating docuseries and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in these sort of shows or want to know more about the recent history that you may not have learnt about previously.

What do you think?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding