The climactic scene of The Challenger Disaster is a three-way conference call. Over 15 minutes of screen time, the contractors who built the space shuttle Challenger’s solid rocket boosters attempt to convince NASA officials that the cold temperatures in the forecast for the scheduled morning of the launch will affect the rubber that holds the rocket together at the joints.
In the heat of a back-and-forth speakerphone debate between three groups of men in dress shirts huddled around their respective conference tables, an engineer finally lays it all out to NASA’s key decision-maker: “If we lose the seal for a tenth of a second, the hot-firing gases could blow by the seal and erode the O-ring, which we have seen happen.