Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age

by Richard C. Cook

The Reagan Administration pushed hard for NASA to launch shuttle mission 51L, before it was ready. 73 seconds into the launch, the shuttle exploded, killing seven people and leaving a nation traumatized. Richard Cook, the lead resource analyst at NASA for the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), was the first to warn of possible catastrophic failure. His memo, which detailed astronaut concerns and warnings from the shuttle builders at Morton Thiokol, were ignored by top NASA officials and members of the Reagan administration. In the aftermath of the explosion, NASA launched an investigation to "discover" the cause of the disaster. Though within NASA there was absolute certainty about the O-ring joint failure, they began a cover-up by publicly proclaiming that the cause of the explosion was unknown. A Reagan administration Commission perpetrated the same lie. And when Richard Cook realized that the Commission was not interested in revealing the truth, he acted as a true patriot and hero and leaked the original O-ring warning documents to the New York Times. His article set off a cascade of disclosures about the events leading up to the disaster, including revelations by Morton Thiokol engineers that they had tried to stop the launch.

544 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2007

About the author

In 1960, Richard C. Cook moved with his family to Williamsburg, VA, where he spent his formative years in the restored colonial capital. In 1970 Cook graduated from the College of William and Mary, the alma mater of Thomas Jefferson, receiving a degree with honors and election to Phi Beta Kappa. He then came to Washington, D.C., to study the Gurdjieff Work and serve as an analyst with the federal government.

Cook continued his study of the world’s spiritual teachings over the next forty years, working with several realized masters, including Hugh Ripman, Abdullah Dougan, Pir Vilayat Khan, Sri Chinmoy, Swami Satchidananda of Kerala, India, and Sri Shivabalayogi. His spiritual name is Ramcharandas, which means, “Servant of the Feet of God.” He works within the lineage of the ascended master Babaji.

With the federal government, Cook first worked on the policy staff of the U.S. Civil Service Commission followed by the Food and Drug Administration.

Having been promoted to the Jimmy Carter White House, he served under Esther Peterson, President Carter’s special assistant for consumer affairs. He witnessed first-hand how the Federal Reserve crashed the U.S. producing economy by bringing on the recession of 1979-83. This was the start of the takeover of the economy by the big bankers and Wall Street. One result of the recession was Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan in the election of 1980.

Cook then relocated to operate a farm he had purchased in West Virginia. Returning to Washington in 1985, Cook went to work for NASA as an analyst on the space shuttle program. While at NASA he warned of a possible disaster due to faulty O-ring joints in the solid rocket boosters. The disaster came to pass with the loss of Challenger and seven American astronauts in January 1986. Cook then told the investigating commission and the press that NASA had known of this problem for years. For his testimony Cook received the Cavallo Foundation Award for Moral Courage in Business and Government.

Transferring to the U.S. Treasury department and working there for over two decades, Cook saw how electronic funds transfer created even more wealth and power for the banking system, laying the groundwork for the gigantic financial bubbles and crashes that have dominated the economy for a generation. Upon retirement in 2007, Cook wrote articles predicting the crash of 2008. He has also advocated for a basic income guarantee and in 2011, speaking on the Riviera Maya, Mexico, introduced his Gaia Plan for a guaranteed income for all people.

Cook has published several books in recent years, including "In the Footsteps of the Yogi" on his experiences with Sri Shivabalayogi; "Challenger Revealed" on his time as a whistleblower with NASA; and "We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform" on how to change the financial system. In his latest book, "Return of the Aeons: The Planetary Spiritual Ascension," Cook confronts the central topics of our day: the “end times” and the predicted “apocalypse.” He says that a Planetary Spiritual Ascension is real and that it applies to all human beings, not just a select few. He says planet earth has already moved to higher consciousness within the galaxy and that any man-made structure that relies on the human ego for its source of authority will perish.

Cook says further that the Divine Beings known in ancient times as the Aeons are here and available to guide us, including the Divine Mother and Jeshua ben Joseph, a.k.a., Jesus Christ. He says he is in regular communication with these and other Divine Beings and that they have given him the messages he now conveys to humanity.

Cook and his wife Karen now live in Roanoke, VA, where they teach Ascension Meditation and Healing at the Lifestream Center, 2006, Windsor Ave., Roanoke, VA 24015. He is also an ordained minister with the Sanctuary of the Beloved and Order of Melchizedek, a non-denominational healing and teaching order.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think indicting the whole Reagan Administration in the title is misleading, although Reagan's push for the militarization of the shuttle system for his "star wars" initiative certainly had a hand in the pressure on NASA to churn out flights in spite of known problems -- the o-rings on the SRBs being just one of them.

The book was fascinating, but I found myself questioning Cooks's motives. He had a fairly unstable career, was always broke, never clicked at NASA HQ, and in my opinion, got in over his head. Was what he did afterwards for noteriety? My mind went there because it had a New York Times/Pentagon Papers leak/All The Presidents Men familiarity to it. On the other hand, he blew the whistle when no one else would, and his courage to do so was commendable. If he hadn't written the o-ring memos as a budget analyst, then leaked them along with others, the investigation would perhaps not have gone as far as it did. His coverage of the Rogers Commission investigation and the Congressional hearings that followed was riveting at times, like a good thriller. In launching Challenger 51-L on that freezing January morning, NASA management VIOLATED every process and safety procedure imaginable, but it was never publicly revealed why. It surely seems that this was a great cover-up without any real accountability in the end, except for the few reassignments and "retirements" of the NASA and Thiokol managers involved.

This is a story that needed to be told. It makes me sad to think that in a way, the 7 crew members died in vain, especially Christa McAuliffe because she believed that NASA would not do anything that was unsafe. She was in the right place at the wrong time. The disaster was absolutely preventable, and their deaths did little to change the extremely flawed human operations at NASA.

[Julia Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since the early days, NASA's philosophy had been "prove we can fly" until Challenger, when it became "prove you can't." This was one of those books where I'd read a while, put it down to digest a while; read some more, put it down because I'd become angry, only to pick it up again.

Two quotes:

"But now it was obvious that the problem (o-rings in cold weather) was never taken care of and that the decision to 'fly as is' while the capture feature was being tested and retrofitted on the SRBs was a tragic mistake. Why couldn't NASA just say that? How simple it would have been. We were wrong. We'll fix it. Then move on. That's what NASA did with Apollo 1. Why not now? What was wrong with these people?"
p. 256

"Neil Armstrong then expressed amazement that a vehicle designed to fly on winter mornings over twenty years was not able to handle conditions 'down around freezing certainly if it is going to be operational in that category.' Sally Ride concurred, and cited the Werner von Braun philosophy that "it is supposed to be 'prove to me that it works under these conditions.'" She "pointed out, there was 'no data and no tests that indicate, that give you any confidence that the joint would be expected to operate at 31 degrees.'"

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book mentions the Reagan Administration, the actual fault lies in the NASA senior management team. The incentives of the management was clearly not aligned in developing the safest solutions to their Solid Rocket Booster developement program. Very good read.