I watched one documentary on that. It wasn’t just the o-rings. Yes the o-rings failed but the hole filled up shortly after it opened. They think it was reopened at altitude by the very high cross winds that further stressed the joints. This is when it burned into the external tank.
The meeting I sat in on discussed that all solid rocket boosters that were recovered and evaluated. The engineers and inspectors recorded MULTIPLE incidences of ‘blow by’ hot gasses through the O-rings.
There were two sets of O-rings. A primary and a secondary 0-ring. Many times there was evidence of partial blow by of the primary o-ring. Sometimes complete blow-by of the primary o-ring and partial blow-by of the secondary o-ring.
The engineers thought that the shuttle would blow up on the launch pad due to hot gasses blowing by the rigid o-rings. When it cleared the tower one remarked to his co-worker something like, “WE SURE DODGED A BULLET DIDN’T WE?” Then is blew, over a minute later.
Sorry but cross winds at that altitude? no wind up there at that altitude and compared to the speed of the shuttle when it blew any wind would be minimal. Crap the shuttle was going about 2,000 miles per hour (total guess) but a 100 mpg cross wind would be nothing. Sounds like CYA blaming it on the wind.
Investigations in incidents like this list every possible contributing factor. The wind might have contributed something like 0.001% but the 0-ring at 33F contributed 99.999%
NASA/Thiokol knew this beforehand that there was a probably a 33% chance it would be destroyed. The bureaucrats decided to launch anyway.
Nope, it was the cold temperatures on the 0-rings. Hard as rock didn’t seal. Kind of like a leaky faucet, except with very high pressure gasses at extreme temperatures.