Shuttle O-Ring Story
Rudimentary examination of the Space Shuttle O-Ring data using simple linear regression. Sufficient to prove faults under low temperatures.
On 28 January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart, 73 seconds into flight. All seven crew members died. The cause of the disaster was the failure of an O-ring on the right solid rocket booster. (O-rings help seal the joints of different segments of the solid rocket boosters.) It is now known that a leading factor in the O-ring failure was the exceptionally low temperature (about 31° F) at the time of the launch.
by Serge Berger & Derek Bevan
