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My father found faulty catastrophic failure in the code that could've happened anytime. Which it almost did twice before. In order to fix it the code needed to be rewritten which wasn't going to happen on the old platform they where using. The other teams found other possible catastrophic problems. The risk assessment team over ruled my fathers decision to shut it down right away. Though it was phased out.

Thanks Steve. Here is my personal story regarding the shuttle program.

I was a 28 year-old-engineer working for the Stealth Technology group for the aerospace company, Martin Marietta Aerospace - Orlando, Florida (Now Lockheed Martin). Our facility was located in the southwest part of town and maybe 50 miles away from the launch site in Cape Canaveral.

I was walking through the courtyard between the main engineering building and the engineering lab I worked in. I was returning to my office following lunch.

I passed two men talking in the courtyard, and I heard one of them say, "That's what is left of it" while he pointed to a lone cloud in the sky. I thought nothing of it, thinking his comment was related to a repeat of the weather event that had delayed the launch the day before. The previous morning had been a very cold day for Florida and the launch was postponed as a result.

A few seconds later, I entered our engineering complex and heard many people crying. That's when I learned what had happened with the Challenger launch. That was a very upsetting day, and for the next few weeks, our company was actually blamed for the accident as one of our divisions in Metairie, Louisiana was the contractor for the shuttle's external fuel tank.

One of my co-workers, named Chris Crisman served on the review board for the shuttle incident and two other events. Within a few weeks, there were three significant failures involving the U.S. space program, the shuttle, an Atlas-Centaur, and a Delta rocket. Chris was a specialist in non-destructive testing and helped analyze potential causes of all three events due to possible material failures - ie voids between laminations.

My family and I witnessed a dramatic launch a few weeks earlier. I think it was shortly before Christmas and the final shuttle lunch until the program resumed a few years later. It was a night launch and had Utah Senator Jake Garn on board. With the night sky, we could see the flame from the rockets all the way until it was just west of Spain.

A couple of days I will likely never forget, one memorable, the other devastating.