I think they changed the tiles for “environmental” BS reasons.
It never should have happened.
I also watched on tv when the Challenger blew up.
We were in school and the teachers wanted us to see since
Christa McAuliffe was on board.
It blew up, they removed the tv and wouldn’t talk about it.
It was weird, so it stands out in my memory.
that is awful. I am sorry.
IIRC, it was the glue or foam they used to adhere the tiles to the shuttle Columbia that they changed because the lefty thumbsuckers threw a tantrum over it somehow being ‘environmentally unsafe’. So, NASA went green and lost some of the spray foam at liftoff. The rest is a tragedy in history. I had a supervisor’s aide (AKA, a butt-kisser) tell me a few years earlier that his father was a security supervisor in Mission Control when the Challenger’s tank blew. He told me the details of what his father saw. He said they knew from the telemetry that some of the astronauts were alive and conscious in the cockpit and crew compartment all the way down, until impact. I thought he was telling a fish story, until the details slowly leaked out about the disaster, and it corroborated everything he told me.
Challenger blew because they launched outside the contract temperature limits, and the solid rocket booster O-rings failed, allowing hot gasses to impinge on the liquid fuel tank.
Had been below FReezing the night before launch, and the the vehicle was cold soaked - O rings shrink in cold weather.
The solid rocket booster contract called for, IIRC, minimum launch temperature of 59°F.