The 30-Second Demonstration That Changed the Challenger Investigation

1: On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart just 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew members.

The disaster stunned the nation and triggered an intensive investigation into what went wrong. President Ronald Reagan appointed a presidential commission to determine the cause of the disaster.

The hearings were broadcast on television nationwide.

According to Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer in  Conversations That Win the Complex Sale, “the people from NASA had an agenda.” Their aim, the authors argue, was “to make sure that they didn’t get blamed for the accident.”

Some commission members were from NASA, and “the people from NASA had an agenda,”

Their aim was “to make sure that they didn’t get blamed for the accident,” the authors say.

The committee also had independent members, like Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, who Erik and Tim call “one of the most brilliant physicists who ever lived.”

2: Richard had his own theory about what caused the disaster.

“He believed that it was too cold on the morning of the launch,” the authors note. “As a result, the rubber O-rings that sealed the booster rockets failed, causing a leak, and it was this leak that caused the explosion.”

However, any time Richard brought up his theory, the NASA committee members “would dismiss it and take the conversation in another direction,” Erik and Tim note.

Why? They had been warned about the risk before the shuttle launched.

Richard understood that his argument was not getting any real traction. So he decided to do something different.

What did he do?

As he entered the hearings one afternoon, he brought along a C-clamp,that you use to put pressure on something or hold something in place.

What else did he have? A rubber O-ring.

As he sat down, “he took the clamp and tightened it on the piece of rubber O-ring until the O-ring had an hourglass shape,” Erik and Tim explain.

“Then he asked for a cup of ice water,” they write, and dropped the O-ring and the clamp into the cup of ice water and waited.”

When it was Richard’s turn to speak, he took the clamp and O-ring out of the ice water and said:

“So, I took this stuff [holding up the O-ring and clamp], and I put it in ice water. And I discovered that when you put some pressure on it for a while and then undo it [he releases the pressure on the O-ring and hands it to another committee member], it doesn’t stretch back; it stays in the same dimension.

“In other words, for a few seconds at least, and more seconds than that, there’s no resilience in this particular material when it’s at a temperature of 32 degrees. I believe that has some significance for our problem.”

3: What do you think led the nightly news that evening?

Richard’s homemade demonstration.

“This was literally 30 seconds of testimony (you can see it here on YouTube) out of several hours of testimony,” they observe.

But as a result of Richard’s demo, “the American people rallied to Richard’s cause,” Erik and Tim write, “and his theory is now the accepted explanation for why the Challenger disaster happened.”

What if Richard had just used a spreadsheet and talked about how O-rings perform under pressure?

Would he have had the same impact?

“Almost certainly not,” Erik and Tim note.

Richard’s demonstration shows what they believe is one of “the most powerful techniques you have to deliver your message in a memorable way.”

So what did Richard do? “He used a prop to tell his story,” Erik notes.

Instead of simply explaining his idea, Richard made people see it.

More tomorrow.

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Reflection: What important idea are you trying to communicate that might be more powerful if people could see it rather than simply hear about it?

Action: Before your next important presentation or conversation, look for one way to make your central idea visible—with a prop, demonstration, image, or simple visual.