Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Think Like a Rocket Scientist

It is January 28, 1986, and the temperature at Cape Canaveral has dropped to 28 degrees Fahrenheit overnight. Engineers at Morton Thiokol have been on the phone with NASA managers since the previous evening, warning that the O-rings -- the rubber seals that keep combustion gases from leaking between the shuttle's solid rocket booster segments -- have never been tested below 53 degrees. They are asking to delay the launch. NASA managers push back. They have schedules to keep, budgets to justify, a presidential address that mentioned the mission. The engineers eventually relent and sign off.

Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, the Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart. All seven crew members die.

The Rogers Commission convened to investigate the disaster. Among its members was physicist Richard Feynman, who grew frustrated watching institutional testimony designed to minimize blame rather than find truth. The NASA officials spoke in a vocabulary engineered to obscure. The engineering presentations were layered with qualifications and organizational hedges. Feynman did not ask for a new simulation or another technical review. He walked down the hall, found a cup of ice water, and dropped a small rubber O-ring sample into it. The O-ring became visibly rigid and brittle within seconds. He held it up for the room to see.

The entire cause of the disaster, demonstrated in a paper cup of ice water.

That image -- one clear, honest question cutting through an ocean of organizational complexity -- sits at the center of what Ozan Varol argues in Think Like a Rocket Scientist. The book is not about rocket science. It is about how rocket scientists think. And the difference, Varol insists, is available to anyone willing to question the right things at the right time.