Comment by pdonis

> "it was the O-rings" explanation seems universally believed and sanctified by no lesser authority than the Nobel prize laureate Richard Feynman.

If you read Feynman's account in the book What Do You Care What Other People Think?, you'll see that he realized afterwards that he was prompted to make the demonstration he made at a NASA press conference--putting a piece of O-ring material in a glass of ice water, clamped with a C-clamp, and then taking it out and releasing the clamp to show that the material did not spring back--to get public attention focused on problems with the joint in a way that could not be ignored. But, as has been pointed out downthread, when the joint was redesigned, the new design did not change the O-rings at all. So the specific issue that was shown in Feynman's demonstration was not the issue that actually needed to be fixed. It was just a convenient way to show the public that there were problems with the joint, with a simple demonstration that everyone could understand. Trying to show the actual problem--that the entire joint design was fundamentally flawed and needed to be changed--would not have worked in a context like that.