![]() ![]() Many of the plot points in the story of the Challenger investigation have been shifted around to make for a more dramatic story - but perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind as you're watching "The Challenger Tragedy" is that Feynman didn't solve the mystery alone. The docudrama shows him going back and forth between Kennedy Space Center, where the Challenger wreckage was laid out for inspection, and Marshall Space Flight Center, where he interviewed reluctant engineers about the way the shuttle was put together. In fact, the O-rings emerged as the main suspect just two days after the explosion, in part due to an NBC News report.įeynman focused on why the O-rings failed. "The Challenger Disaster" makes it look as if Feynman figured that out for himself. It's not much of a spoiler to note that the problem with Challenger turned out to be the rubber O-rings that sealed joints on the shuttle's solid rocket boosters. ![]() In a scene from Patrick Toselli / Science Channel via AP Feynman joined the presidential commission investigating the tragedy as a conspicuous outsider: Most of the panel's other members were insiders, or symbolic figures such as moonwalker Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride, America's first woman in space. "The Challenger Disaster" draws upon the late physicist's memoir - "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" - with a few dramatic embellishments. Hurt, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a flamboyant gay prisoner in "Kiss of the Spider Woman," takes on another challenge here: You might not think of him as the ideal choice to play the wisecracking, bongo-playing iconoclast - but he plays up the scientist's serious side, in a situation that forces Feynman to face official stonewalling as well as his own mortality.
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