More than 30 years ago, NASA launched seven crew members to space on the space shuttle Challenger, but they never got there.
Seventy-three seconds after lift-off, one of the shuttle's fuel tanks failed, generating a rapid cascade of events that culminated with a fireball in the sky, eventually killing all the passengers on board.
While we all probably know this story, there's another equally tragic account from engineer Bob Ebeling that strikes a chord with us for a different reason.
The night before the disaster, Ebeling, along with four other engineers, had tried to halt the launch, according to an exclusive interview from NPR with Ebeling.
The five engineers worked for NASA contractor Morton Thiokol, who manufactured the shuttle's rocket boosters — the two rockets on either side of a shuttle that fired upon lift off.
They knew that this mission would involve the coldest launch in history, and that the shuttle's rocket boosters weren't designed to function properly under such extreme temperatures.
The night before the explosion, Ebeling said in the NPR interview, he'd told his wife: "It's going to blow up."
Thirty years later, he still suffers from guilt.
"I think that was one of the mistakes that God made," Ebeling says softly during the interview. "He shouldn't have picked me for the job. But next time I talk to him, I'm gonna ask him, 'Why me? You picked a loser.'"
Read the full exclusive interview between NPR and Ebeling here.
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