What impressed on my mind above all is that two things led to the Challenger disaster. Those two things were complacency and compromise. There were others, of course, but all of the decisions that led to the fateful day for the Challenger crew can be summed in complacency and compromise. The story here is more than just Challenger; but the space program and in specific begins with the fateful fire that took the lives of the Apollo I crew during what should have been routine testing. From here it expands to cover aspects most may not know in regard to the space program. Throughout the telling is the thread of complacency and compromise. Without spoiling the story, one such compromise occurred over fifteen years prior to the Challenger disaster. But it was done to gain funds and move the program forward. The administration of NASA and lead engineers gave up a significant and potentially life-saving component, all to compromise. A well-written book with human touch. I think it to be one of the best I have read in a long time.

Shocking, emotional, but more importantly, a compelling read unlike any other

More a history of the development of the Space Shuttle program with Challenger as the anchor point, Higgenbotham disassembles the myth of NASA as a dream factory. Instead, he shows it for what it really was, which was an assemblage of egos choked by bureaucracy and politics. This all lead to the Challenger disaster (and eventually the Columbia as well). The author’s writing style is fantastic, and you are never bored. I especially love the way he slowly develops the histories of each astronaut who died on the Challenger. It is good to learn so much about these people who died, honestly, for nothing. It makes me sick that Bill Lucas and Larry Mulloy got to live to extreme old age, defiant to the end in their role. Meanwhile, Allan McDonald, Roger Boisjoly, and Bob Ebeling lived with intense guilt even though they were the only ones who tried to stop it. This is the nonfiction book of 2024. Fantastic.

This book covers many details that I had never read about before. The author humanized the engineering stories as well as the faces behind the corporate managers who didn’t want to hear anything but good news. After reading the details and timelines, it is especially telling that NASA had clearly not learned their Challenger lessons as there were other “lock the doors” incidents.

What impressed me the most about the book is its unbiased account… Challenger was a failure of such magnitude that it would take down Republicans and Democrats equally, and cost many people their reputations and livelihoods. The author does excellent job in holding each person under the microscope and treats no one person or agency with kid gloves. Make no bones about it; this book is very technical. I found myself lost, repeatedly, until I said to hell with it and only skimmed those sections. Higgenbottom does his best and in order to tell the story, these things must be spelled out. But they are highly technical and I would have given up in frustration had it not been for the magnificent human story interwoven throughout. This is one of the best accounts I’ve read of Challenger. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know much of Apollo I, Discovery. and Columbia, until I read this book. Thank you to the author for giving such a comprehensive view of what happens behind the scenes when people have too much power and none of the character needed to admit when they were wrong. Brilliantly done .

I didn’t honestly know what to expect from this book except I loved Midnight in Chernobyl….so I thought I might like this book….because of the author. This book was packed full of information….and at times I skimmed parts that were a wee bit too technical…but needed to be there for another type of reader. That being said, it in no way stopped me from rating this book a five star…or above. I knew the outcome of this enormous tragedy…but this book focused me not only on the astronauts who lost their lives…their families…but to the citizens of the US that never knew there was a backstory of the magnitude, discussed in this book. Enjoy the read…well worth your time.

Readers interested in the U.S. space program, the history of space flight, the shuttle program, and/or the Challenger disaster will want to take a good long look at Andrew Higginbotham’s “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space.” It’s an excellent piece of reportage comparable to books and films such as “The Right Stuff,” “Apollo 13,” “A Man on the Moon,” and most recently “The Six” (about America’s first women in space.) Not only is it the story of Challenger, it is also an in-depth examination of America’s space program after Apollo and the political, bureaucratic, public relations, and funding challenges NASA faced as it considered its next steps, having reached the moon. Higginbotham not only details how the shuttle was developed and built—and the decisions that would play a part in the Challenger disaster—he also introduces us to many key players involved in the shuttle program, including astronauts such as Judith Resnick, Sally Ride, Ron McNair, and Ellison Onizuka, portraying how NASA transformed its astronaut corps from an all-white, all-male group of fighter/test pilots eager to prove they had the “right stuff,” to a more balanced and diverse group of men and women with backgrounds in engineering and science. Mr. Higginbotham writes well. His style is clear, straightforward, and eminently readable. He is particularly adept at describing the technical aspects of, for instance, rocketry, space flight, and spacecraft design simply so that it is easily understood. Bottom-line, I found this to be an excellent non-fiction tale very well told.