Launch Broadcaster:
And it has cleared the tower.
Derrol Nail:
35 years ago, the 10th flight of Space Shuttle Challenger ended, when it broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff. All seven crew members, five NASA astronauts and two payload specialists, were killed.
Launch Broadcaster:
We have a report from a flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded.
Derrol Nail:
On this episode of the Rocket Ranch Podcast, we remember Challenger, her crew and their survivors, and how we carry forward the lessons NASA learned with the director of the Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program.
Launch Countdown Sequence:
EGS program chief engineer verifying no constraints to launch. Three, two, one, and lift off. Welcome to space.
Derrol Nail:
Michael Cianilli is the director of NASA’s Apollo Challenger Columbia program. During our conversation, he shares how he was received by the Challenger families, and how lessons learned from the Challenger accident still affect people both inside and outside the agency. He also remembers, like many who were alive then, exactly what he was doing that day and how the accident stayed with him when he eventually started working for the space shuttle program. Mike, thanks for joining us today.
Mike Cianilli:
And Derrol, thank you so much for the invitation to be here. I appreciate that.
Derrol Nail:
We’ll talk a little bit about the program, your involvement in the NASA Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program, in just a bit. But I want to start by going back to January 28th, 1986. What were you doing? Where were you when it happened?
Mike Cianilli:
Wow. It really brings you back. It was 35 years ago, as you mentioned Derrol, but it seems like it was yesterday in some ways. I was actually a freshman in college. I was going to the Florida Institute of Technology, and as circumstances would have it, as a freshman I just had got out of a physics test; and I stepped outside and I’ll never forget the moment I did. I stepped outside and almost simultaneous with that, another student came up to me and mentioned, “Look in the sky. Look in the sky. The shuttle had exploded.” I says, “Don’t ever joke about that.” That was my first… And I was pretty upset, I remember, of somebody even suggesting that. It just got to my core, and I chided him for saying such a thing.
Mike Cianilli:
And I remember walking from there over to where we picked up our mail as students and thinking about that, saying, “How could somebody be that callous to say something like that?” not really realizing. And then perhaps once walking in the mail room, I heard they had televisions playing, and you could hear the comments being made of contingency forces being deployed and things like that. And that’s when I really, the pit of my stomach, something was wrong, so I ran at full speed from the mail room back to my dorm room to get to the television set, which I could watch personally. And then that’s when I first saw the images. And I think, once again, I can join millions of other folks, I think I sat in stunned silence of just not fully taking a grasp of what had happened and praying that your eyes are deceiving you and this is exactly what just happened.
Derrol Nail:
And that’s what it was for so many people. It was uncertain at first. But in the end, as you mentioned, seven lives loss: Commander Francis Scobee; Michael Smith, the pilot; Mission Specialists, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair; and of course the two payload specialists, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe, the teacher. I want to continue with your story for just a moment and find out, you eventually went on, graduated, and then went to work for NASA in the space shuttle program. Did you carry that tragedy with you when you joined NASA in any way?
Mike Cianilli:
That’s a great question. I think there was something that was really, and again, probably many other folks could say the same thing, is it was really indelibly marked in my brain. It was a moment in time that you never forget. And I remember when I did have the honor to join NASA, to come to Kennedy Space Center and work on the space shuttle team, that’s something I never forgot. And I know during the processing of the different vehicles, on the vehicles when they ready for launch, and the launch countdowns, you never forgot that. I never forgot those moments of Challenger.
And I think it also had a distinct influence on some of my decision decision-making, as I’m sure it did many others, on making sure that you’re making the right decisions and that if any pressures are being applied, externally or internally, to be really careful and mindful of that and remembering back to the lessons of Challenger. And that’s a challenge, as every year goes by, we mark these solemn milestones, and now at the 35th anniversary of this event in American history, it’s even more important, I think in some ways, to really make sure we remember those events, remember them accurately, so we can take those lessons learned and really reflect upon them.
Derrol Nail:
And now you’re part of this program called the NASA Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program. What is that, and what does it seek to do?
Mike Cianilli:
So, this thing kind of organically progressed, and you spend your career learning the engineering aspects and the lingo and how engineering sees the world, then I had the honor to be in the ops world, as a NASA test director, an LRD, a land recovery director, and you understand better how the operations world approaches launching and processing. And then moving into more of the safety world, seeing how the safety aspects are… And I say that because there’s really, as all of us in different careers, different disciplines, they see the world differently. Right? How engineering sometimes see things is a little bit different. It’s almost like an accent for a language. It’s the same language, we’re launching the same rocket, but we have different perspectives and viewpoints at times. So, I think it’s important to see the whole operation together, in this case a launch activity, from the different points of view, perhaps understanding what the concerns and thoughts are and the vantage points that those different disciplines are.
So, the attempt is to put those different viewpoints together, focused on a program called the Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program, and really look back at our major accidents and incidences, which is Apollo 1, 1967, Apollo 13, space shuttle Challenger and space shuttle Columbia losses. And in addition to other near misses, as well, and the good times. We could learn also from the good flights. But taking a look primarily at the four times we’ve had major incidences, and really going back and looking what were the catalysts, what were the contributing factors.
So, we look at those, and it’s not just, Derrol, from a historical perspective, it’s really from a perspective of understanding them because, as we all know, history has a habit of repeating itself. And if we’re not careful, we’re certainly able to fall prey to the mistakes and errors of the folks that came before us. So, we want to make sure that we learn from the missteps we made in the past, and then as we’re going forward and doing our operations today and into the future, if we see those warning signs, if we see similar things starting to happen, we can use history as a guide and say, “Okay, it’s time to stop or to maybe revisit decisions, or looking at things so we can make those alterations and course corrections so we don’t follow that same path in a negative way.”
Derrol Nail:
And who are you sharing these lessons learned with?
Mike Cianilli:
Well, that’s the exciting part. The easiest answer is one word, and that’s everyone. The program focuses on different areas. So, we certainly want to make sure that the NASA team and our contractor partners and our commercial partners that are coming on board, that we strongly share this with them, so it becomes ingrained in the culture. Because we’re all working together, even if it’s commercial. These days, NASA is ingrained with our great new partners, so we want to make sure that we’re sharing this with all of our partners in the aeronautics and astronautics fields.
What’s interesting in the last couple of years, there’s been really a large amount of interest coming outside of NASA. And even outside of aerospace altogether. And it’s a wonderful opportunity for us in the NASA world to share these lessons to industries as far field as the maritime industry, sports industries, oil and gas, energy, medical industries, and other ones. And it’s amazing how much synergy there is between, how many connections we can make between what we do launching rockets and doing high-tech research, and share that with organizations that may do something completely different, but the core components can be transferred so they can learn from our missteps and hopefully have greater mission success and save lives in their endeavors, as well.
Derrol Nail:
But in other industries that you say you are sharing this with, you’re able to make these lessons come across. Wouldn’t they be saying, “Well, I don’t have any lives on the line, how does this apply?”
Mike Cianilli:
Yeah. No, you’re exactly right. I find it very interesting because when either I reach out or an organization reaches out to me, the first initial phases I always find very interesting because it’s the seeking of common ground. And just like you said, you may think initially, when you talk to the medical community and say, “Boy, you’re in medicine, we’re in launching rockets, what’s the connection?” But then when you dig a little deeper, it doesn’t take very long, the connections become very apparent.
So, I’ll give you a quick example for that. When you look at, say, a surgical team in an operating room, and you look at the surgical team that has high stakes, you have a patient that’s counting on them to save their life, you have very quick decision-making, very likely little room for error in your technique and execution of your tasks. You have a very close knit team of nurses and doctors and other professionals in the operating room that have to work together seamlessly and as a cohesive team, where communication is paramount. If you take that environment, Derrol, and you match it up to a firing room for a launch activity, you almost have a carbon copy. You have a team with high performance. You have a team that has perhaps different disciplines or tasks in that room, but they’re all coming together for the same goal, which is launch the rocket successful. Communication is essential to be clear and crisp and all understand each other. And you have to have a great team dynamic.
So, when you start peeling back and take off the, maybe the jacket and the tie in the firing room, and take off the lab coat or the doctors uniform, it becomes the same experience. So, our lessons really reflect very closely to what those folks deal with as well, and I say that because when you looked back at the Rogers Commissioner Report for Challenger, when you look back at the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report for Columbia, or even the Apollo 204 Report for Apollo 1, there’s so many examples throughout the reports where folks just didn’t connect the dots. People misunderstood in some ways what the other team or person was saying. Perhaps they thought the information was just information. It wasn’t asking for an action to be done, or take it further. It’s just making sure are we on the same page, because you’d be surprised how many times we just sometimes miss it by a little bit, and that can have catastrophic consequences.
Derrol Nail:
You know, it’s interesting to see the lessons of Challenger still being learned today, but the Challenger accident is now actually back in the public awareness, I think, a lot due to the recent Netflix documentary Challenger: The Final Flight, which is the title of it. Did you see that? And what were your thoughts about it?
Mike Cianilli:
Yeah. I certainly did. And what was amazing to me, of course, as we talked a little earlier, I had a personal connection watching the launch, and many of the folks listening, perhaps have very direct connections to it and could be anywhere in the world listening to it. So, we all had a connection to Challenger in some fashion. But there’s also, Challenger’s at the 35 year anniversary milestone at this point, so there’s a lot of folks that are working in the space program and alive today, that just, honestly, weren’t alive during the Challenger accident.
So, it being personal to me and others, I think what was very interesting for me was watching the comments that came out of that Netflix documentary and seeing the tremendously high level of public interest in the Challenger story and learning about the crew and learning about the mission and learning about the lessons. That really impacted me, Derrol. It made even more committed to saying, “We really have a responsibility to share these lessons learned with these folks that weren’t perhaps around, either working or born at that time, and we need to share those lessons effectively so they can take them and become even better and greater than the generation that came before them.”
Derrol Nail:
I can imagine that really helps with your overall mission. I want to shift over to the astronauts, because I know as you do this, you have to have, or you have had, a cooperation and a relationship with some of the survivors, the family members, the loved ones of the Challenger 7. Tell me, what can you tell me about how they’re doing now 35 years later?
Mike Cianilli:
I certainly can. I’ve had a lot of honors in my career that I’m very, very thankful for, and one of the greatest, if not one of the greatest honor of my career, has been to have had the honor of meeting and getting to know all of the Challenger families and Columbia families and Apollo 1 families. About six years ago now, I had the honor to lead the agency in creating what we call Forever Remembered. It’s the nation’s and the agency’s memorial to the fallen crews of space shuttle Colombia and space shuttle Challenger. And through that experience, it was a very emotional experience, right? Because you want to make sure you’re paying the greatest honor and tribute that you can to these heroes and friends and colleagues, and you also have to make sure that you’re telling the story as accurate as possible.
And through that experience, I had the absolute distinct honor of working with the families closely, and one thing that I can share with you that surprised me through this process, they gave back to me so much grace and so much healing back towards me, that I didn’t expect that. And it goes to just how absolutely amazing these families are. I could spend days telling you stories. But suffice to say what they still gave back to me, what they gave back to NASA, and what they gave back to the American people and the world in sharing very difficult stories, very, perhaps, difficult poignant reflections about their loved ones back to us, with the purpose of making sure that they’re still giving, they’re still giving of their loved ones even though it may be difficult, they’re still sharing those stories, they’re still going through those reflections so we can learn from them and we can take those lessons learned to be more safe and successful. So, that unbelievable generosity and graciousness with which they did, was honestly just humbling to the whole process.
Derrol Nail:
Wow. And I can only imagine, right? Because such a difficult thing to do to go through. Thinking back to the Challenger documentary and June Scobee’s part in that, you just… And all of the family members, but she had a prominent part of that, and it’s very difficult and powerful at the same time. So, it’s fascinating to hear that they handled that with such grace, and it’s impressive. Because I imagine, like anybody who goes through tragedy or loses somebody very dear to them, that the pain is always there.
Mike Cianilli:
And that’s true, and you can feel that. I think when you see June, and is a wonderful speaker she is in her family, a speaker that I think all of us could hope to be as good one day. Right? But you can feel the pain and you could feel that, and you can feel it with members of the NASA family today. And I sense it when I have the honor to go out and speak around the country or I speak at the Kennedy Space Center or virtually now, and I engage with folks, and you can feel it. The families, still, are impacted by it.
And one of the things I’ll mention quickly, as well, which I love the experiences when I have the honor to go out and speak, and you finished with your presentation, your speech, you come off stage and sometimes for some folks lined up that want to share some things with you. And I love that experience because in so many cases, Derrol, what the folks want to share with me is where they were, what they were doing, and what impact it had when Columbia or Challenger was lost. And they want to share that. And in many cases, these folks don’t have any direct connection currently to the space program, perhaps never did, but they feel so strongly connected to these seminal events in history. They feel impassioned to share those stories with me, which I always feel honored to hear, and what it meant to them.
And that just reminds me, all of us in the space program have a duty to do our job the very best, because it’s far beyond a job, as we know, we’re given the responsibility by the American people and their hard earned money to do the very best we can to advance American interests in space. And that’s a big responsibility, and when things don’t go the way we want them to, it has a very, very strong in potentially negative impact on other folks. And they’re also, it hurts them, and they’re victims as well, in some cases. So, we want to make sure that we have a lot of responsibility for the crews, for the families, but also the folks that entrust us with so much responsibility, and make us even more impassioned that we learned the lessons and do it right.
Derrol Nail:
That’s such a great point, Mike, that all of the people who are touched and affected by the mission that we carry forward is so important to get it right. And that leads me to my last question, which is even now, there is schedule pressure. We’re going to the moon in a few years. We’re currently going back, and we have an exploration program and it’s exciting. But we’re trying to hit certain dates. Do you hear from people at NASA about that schedule pressure?
Mike Cianilli:
Well, my hope is, what I try to do is create an environment with a program that people feel comfortable speaking up. And what’s very helpful with the program as well, Derrol, right to your point is, be it in NASA or even outside, but this case, as your question was inside, when you can share the past and show how missteps were made or how certain cases’ schedule pressure or other considerations came into being, or had influences on the overall system, when you can share those and when you’re talking to folks, a couple things can happen. Right? In some cases, you’ll see folks listen intently. Sometimes folks will nod their heads and say, “Wow, that’s happening to me.” Right? “I sense that’s happening to me.” And you want that environment because you want folks to share. When you look back at the accident reports, you’ll see everyone, you’ll see there’s a number of people that did not feel comfortable saying something at the time, either had an intuition, had a feeling something was going to happen based on their experience and judgment, but perhaps didn’t do something with that, for a host of reasons.
So, we want to create an environment saying it can be very difficult to step up and say something, especially when you don’t have all the facts, because in real life, we often don’t have… right? And life is a gray area pretty much, right? The black and white is easy to deal with in all of our lives. Right? We can do that pretty well. But I think most of us live, in all of our different lives, home and work lives, it’s a gray area. Right? There’s the nuances of life. And that becomes the harder part to navigate through. So. We try to share with folks our reflections of the past and really get into the Challenger launch decision, Colombia decisions, and say, “Here’s what was presented. Here’s what the folks had to go on, and here’s why sometimes making the right decision can be very hard.” Because you can have folks see from different perspectives, so it’s really hard to be observant of that and be cognizant. You’ve got a tough job and your job is to get as good as you could to do your job as best as you can.
Derrol Nail:
And I think that’s the incredible value of this program, is to keep these lessons learned, top of mind, not only for inside NASA, but also outside of NASA. So, thank you so much, Mike.
Mike Cianilli:
Derrol, thank you so much for the invitation, and we invite everyone to interface with the Apollo Challenger Columbia Lessons Learned Program. It’s for everyone. And I’ll end with this, is there’s a propensity or potential way of looking at it through a historical lens. It’s a historical story. In this case, it’s Challenger, an event that happened 35 years ago, and a reflection of that. And I would humbly suggest perhaps a different way to see that. Instead of looking at it as entirely an event historically that happened, I see the Challenger story as much a future story as it was a past story, perhaps even more so of a future story.
And what I mean by that is the lessons that the crew can still provide us, the lessons for the mission and the teams that launched and experienced this. These are real lessons that apply equally today to programs such as Artemis coming on board through all of our commercial providers and industries around the nation and the world. They’re as relevant today, if not more relevant, than they were 35 years ago. So, it’s really a future story. We’re excited about taking these lessons and applying it to real time and future projects and programs. Please make yourself known, and we’re happy to collaborate, and all go forward and do great things.
Derrol Nail:
Keep up the great work, and thanks for coming on the Rocket Ranch today.
Mike Cianilli:
Thank you so much. It’s been an honor.
Derrol Nail:
A special thanks to Michael Cianilli, director of NASA’s Apollo Challenger Columbia Program. If you’d like to contact him, well just send us an email at KSC-newsroom, that’s N-E-W-S-R-O-O-M@mail, M as in Mary, A-I-L.nasa.gov, or leave a comment on our Facebook post about the 35th Challenger anniversary. You can find that on our official Facebook account under the name NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. And to learn more about everything going on out here at KSC, go to nasa.gov/Kennedy. And give our other NASA podcasts a listen if you have the time. Find out what’s happening at all our centers at nasa.gov/podcast. A special thanks to our producer, John Sackman, and editor, Michelle Stone. And remember, on the Rocket Ranch, you got to keep looking up.