From Wikipedia:

Cecil Houston, the manager of the KSC office of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, set up a three-way conference call with Morton Thiokol in Utah and the KSC in Florida on the evening of January 27 to discuss the safety of the launch.

Morton Thiokol engineers expressed their concerns about the effect of low temperatures on the resilience of the rubber O-rings. As the colder temperatures lowered the elasticity of the rubber O-rings, the engineers feared that the O-rings would not be extruded to form a seal at the time of launch. The engineers argued that they did not have enough data to determine whether the O-rings would seal at temperatures colder than 53 °F (12 °C), the coldest launch of the Space Shuttle to date.  During this discussion, Lawrence Mulloy, the NASA SRB project manager, said that he did not accept the analysis behind this decision, and demanded to know if Morton Thiokol expected him to wait until April for warmer temperatures.  Morton Thiokol employees Robert Lund, the Vice President of Engineering, and Joe Kilminster, the Vice President of the Space Booster Programs, recommended against launching until the temperature was above 53 °F (12 °C).

When the teleconference prepared to hold a recess to allow for private discussion amongst Morton Thiokol management, Allan J. McDonald, Morton Thiokol’s Director of the Space Shuttle SRM Project who was sitting at the KSC end of the call,  reminded his colleagues in Utah to examine the interaction between delays in the primary O-rings sealing relative to the ability of the secondary O-rings to provide redundant backup, believing this would add enough to the engineering analysis to get Mulloy to stop accusing the engineers of using inconclusive evidence to try and delay the launch.  When the call resumed, Morton Thiokol leadership had changed their opinion and stated that the evidence presented on the failure of the O-rings was inconclusive and that there was a substantial margin in the event of a failure or erosion. They stated that their decision was to proceed with the launch.

When McDonald told Mulloy that, as the onsite representative at KSC he would not sign off on the decision, Mulloy demanded that Morton Thiokol provide a signed recommendation to launch; Kilminster confirmed that he would sign it and fax it from Utah immediately, and the teleconference ended.  Mulloy called Arnold Aldrich, the NASA Mission Management Team Leader, to discuss the launch decision and weather concerns, but did not mention the O-ring discussion; the two agreed to proceed with the launch.

Dunno about you, but it sounds a lot like NASA, especially Lawrence Mulloy, practically twisted Morton Thiokol’s arms until one of them (Joe Kilminster) relented and signed off on the launch. Mulloy even lied by omission at the end there to get his way. I wonder how he could sleep at night after this stunt.

The issue was that they knew there were issues with the shuttle and had been warned by several engineers about launching in the cold weather they were having at the time, but NASA ignored them and sent the Challenger on its way anyways. It’s been awhile so I forget the details of exactly what it was that was wrong, but I think it was the metal in some screws that wasn’t able to deal with the differences in temperatures and the engineers said shit would go wrong if they didn’t replace them and nobody listened. It was a very preventable disaster that only happened due to laziness and impatience on NASA’s part.

• it was the rubber in the O-ring seals that couldn’t handle the differences in temperature.

Yeah, I think you are. Good that you see it yourself.

Just me not catching my phone autocorrecting cars to Cara for some reason. I’ll fix it, 2 sec.

The mere thought of my boyfriend having to bike 90km to work on the highway is equal parts funny and terrifying, lol.

You got it from both sides, you poor thing haha.

I think it is so funny that people seem to forget that Gen X set the stage for internet culture when most millennials were teens and preteens.

Absolutely love that millennials are once again taking all the blame for actions that the whiny generation also partook in and indeed cultivated with glee before behavioral regulations online became a thing. When that happened, millennials were also being blamed for being too soft.

We rarely eat red meat in our household, but we do have a car. They fucked our local public transportation system so badly we ended up not having a choice 🤷‍♀️

Just came from another discussion about cars killing the same number of people as guns do in Chicago, so by that logic: cars are good for the environment too.

Throwing insults is not a discussion, by the way.

denying that fear is exactly the kind of car-induced sociopathy that I’m talking about.

Lol.

Claiming that people driving cars are sociopathic is a bizarre claim. Claiming that cars are worse than the concept of a mass shooting is insane. I reiterate: I hope you never find yourself in a mass shooting. Seeing a car drive by on the road cannot make you remotely as scared as being trapped in a building, knowing someone is shooting, but not knowing where they are, how many there are nor how close they are to getting you or your loved ones.

You cannot compare driving cars in a city to that. That is insane.

I do not understand your mindset, but I very much do hope you will never know what it is like to be trapped in a mass shooting.

You are definitely speaking form a position of privilege.

Usually, people don’t get behind the wheel with the intent to kill. We can always discuss the ramifications of drunk driving, speeding and other reckless behaviors that some drivers exhibit when they put the lives of others in danger. It is a discussion that is worth having and it is very important.

However, you cannot tell me that carrying a gun around and waving it in someone’s face is anything other than an attempt to threaten a life. Guns were built explicitly to kill. That is their only purpose. That is why people mostly focus on gun violence. There is intent behind the deaths of every person involved in a shooting while with car crashes, it is rarely the driver’s intent to murder anybody.

It doesn’t mean that car crashes don’t matter and don’t deserve attention, but you comparing the two as if they are the same is frankly ignorant and smells of gun apologist.

I mean, you can just buy dvds. They are cheap af. If you know where to look you can also find bluray discs for cheap. My boyfriend and I sometimes go to websites for used dvds and blurays and they don’t cost 30 to 40 euros there.

You can also go to the library and borrow dvd and bluray movies. It’s free and you can discover some films you would have otherwise never seen. I do that a lot and my boyfriend and I enjoy this setup. It is a lot cheaper and nicer than having subscriptions to two or three shitty streaming services that are filled with trash and none of them have the movies we want to watch. Fuck that shit. Physical media all the way. It is so easy and cheap to go back to physical if you really want it. It is probably cheaper than subscribing to services where you basically pay for air and own nothing.

Say no more, my friend. I’m the same xD I have some messages I need to reply to that I just can’t and sometimes it takes days to answer, other times months (embarrassing) and yet other times I can reply immediately. So I completely get it haha.

Aw man, I’m sorry to hear that! It really is a hit or miss when it comes to people’s experiences getting diagnosed. I have also met people where it was relatively easy for them to get through the eye of the needle and I’m low key envious of them haha.

There probably is something to it if both your sibs have it as well! And yeah, when I was a kid, ADHD basically didn’t exist and was called something else (DAMP) and it was only a diagnosis given to very disruptive boys. I think the first time I head about ADHD was when I wad like 19 or 20 and back then the understanding of it was that it’s what happens when rowdy boys get too much sugar so they need medicine to make them quiet.

I didn’t really know about how ADHD typically presents in women and girls until a year and a half ago when my spouse told me that he thinks I have it, so yeah.

In that sense I really feel you with having been too old to be caught early and taken seriously and such.

I hope that, if you seek a diagnosis again, you will have better luck with the professionals assessing you. I have heard that there are good and kind people out there who want to help, so if one has the energy, time and money to look for a good egg, then it is probably worth it for peace of mind!

Have also heard about the whole meds thing that that is why they don’t want to diagnose adults. The few times I have talked with people about it irl they also immediately bring up the meds as if that is my motivation, but it really isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, if it turned out that there was a pill that could help me with some of my issues, I would most likely want to take it, but for me, the main motivation was always to have proof that I’m not just making things up. That I’m not crazy or making excuses. Its always been an issue of mine that I feel like I have to justify my feelings and experiences and I automatically assume no one ever believes me, so having paper proof that it is real is something I really wanted.

And people always go “then what next?” And I’m always like: then I’ll go back to my life? What else?

People always thinks it’s the meds, but for me at least it’s the peace of mind.

I know you’re kind of joking, but the story was written during a time where girls would often be married off to older men they didn’t know and the story was meant as a comfort/encouragement to these young girls that he may be ugly and old and not really what you dreamed of, but maybe he turns out to be an actually kind person who can give you a good life and you can learn to love him despite his looks.

When I heard about this case back in the day, all I could think about was that scene in the Mr Bean movie where he fucks up the painting of the old lady and tries to fix it.

That’s totally fair. I’m not a native English speaker myself, but some of the English I have learned has been through corrections from friendly souls around the internet so I wanted to pay it forward. I’m not judging or attacking you as I don’t expect anyone to be perfect in any language. Not even their own. Just wanted to help out 🤗

I feel like a tourist on a safari trip with this whole saga. A colleague of mine told me about this situation and now I can’t look away.

When all is said and done, I definitely think it would be a good idea to have game libraries both physical and digital where people can play old games as they stop being profitable to developers.

I have vague memory of there already being such consumer made game libraries for old Gameboy titles back in the 2000s but those sites were taken down. It would be great to have some sort of system in place because this licensing bullshit is exactly why I ended up completely leaving streaming as a whole (for movies and shows) and went back to physical media in january/February of this year. I borrow dvds at the library now. It is fucking fantastic. I had forgotten how much I missed going looking for movies I’d like to see in places like Moby Disc and Blockbuster. It’s so comfy and when you find a movie you’ve never heard of before and you bring it home and it’s really good, it just feels so special.

I think games should have that too. I stopped playing games in 2015 because I just saw no end to having to fork out money all the time to keep up with the tech and getting new titles and gradually seeing how it was more and more an online thing instead of a physical thing so I just stopped. Didn’t like the direction games were taking. Seems like it is reaching a breaking point finally.

Libraries are so important for culture.

*lukewarm.

Sorry, I’m not in this fight, but my inner grammar-nazi just couldn’t help herself.