Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

by Adam Higginbotham

Challenger by Adam Higginbotham tells the story of the 1986 Space Shuttle disaster in a ‘nonfiction thriller’ style (Higginbotham also wrote a pacy book about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster). This is a great way to get an understanding of what happened, given the technical engineering details of creating a reusable, plane-like spacecraft, and the complicated decision-making process at NASA. There had been many warnings about the rubber O-rings (the direct cause of the accident) but they were not heeded.