Ep. 328 An Impulse to Explore with Adam Higginbotham

Written By Megan Caballero
Ep. 328 An Impulse to Explore with Adam Higginbotham.jpg

We are joined by journalist and author Adam Higginbotham, whose new book is Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. Adam explains why he wanted to tell the story of the Challenger, and the importance of focusing on its crew. He also reveals how he kept all the people and puzzle pieces straight, and tells a wild story about an unpublished memoir that he discovered in his research.

The Stacks Book Club pick for July is Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. We will discuss the book on July 31st with Emily Raboteau.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

To support The Stacks and find out more from this week’s sponsors, click here.

Connect with Adam: Twitter | Website
Connect with The Stacks: Instagram | Twitter | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | Substack | Subscribe

To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.

The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website.

TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:10

Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host Traci Thomas and today I am honored to welcome to The Stacks Adam Higginbotham. Adam's new book is called Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. It is a thoroughly researched dramatic and absolutely devastating work of investigative journalism about the space shuttle tragedy on January 28, 1986. The book gives us a riveting minute by minute account of the events including a ton of new archival research that you'll appreciate no matter how familiar you are with these events. Adam is also the best selling author of Midnight in Chernobyl, another stunning book that was turned into the television series Chernobyl on HBO. Today we talk about Adam's research process, why he wanted to tell another story set in 1986, and why it was important for him to focus on the crew and astronauts involved in this tragedy. Remember, our July book club selection is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, which we will discuss on Wednesday, July 31st with Emily Raboteau. Everything we talked about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. Now it's time for my conversation with Adam Higginbotham.

All right, everybody. If you've been following me on social media, you know that I am very into this book. And this next author guest. I am joined today by Adam Higginbotham. His latest book is called Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. Adam, welcome to The Stacks.

Adam Higginbotham 3:01

Thank you for having me.

Traci Thomas 3:03

I'm thrilled. I loved this book. This is exactly the kind of book that I want to love. And that I love to read. But they're not always done. As well as this. I feel like this, you get an A -plus, from me. I just I'm like I'm like starstruck because I am so excited to ask you all my questions. But before I get to all my questions, we always sort of start here, which is, in 30 seconds or so, Could you just tell folks generally about the book?

Adam Higginbotham 3:31

Yes, I guess I can. Nobody's ever asked me to do that before. But yes. It is a narrative nonfiction account of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, which happened in January 1986. It follows each member of the crew of seven, who died that day, and their path to the launch pad that morning. And it explores the background to the accident, how it happened, how a small handful of rocket engineers at a government contractor named Morton Thiokol tried to stop the launch happening on the eve of launch. And then it follows the investigation and the hunt for the wreckage of the shuttle which crashed into the Atlantic. I think that's it.

Traci Thomas 4:22

I think that's it. I think you did a great job. I feel like you know the book. Wow. Okay, so your previous book was a book about Chernobyl also 1986 that also is the year that I was born. So if you want to write a book about my life, because I feel like you're the 1986 guy and I'm sure there's other interesting things that happen but nothing more interesting than my birth obviously.

Adam Higginbotham 4:43

Well let me put it this way. Traci, was it within the first three months of 1986?

Traci Thomas 4:49

No, so you have to progress, you have to get to July late July. Okay, but it's your next book so you can progress deeper by you know, by book five or six, you'll be in December. I don't know what happened. But I'm sure something.

Adam Higginbotham 5:02

When I was finishing up the the the final corrections on the manuscript, I did have an evening where I thought to myself, now I'm going to settle back, I'm going to relax, and I'm gonna have nothing to do with any of this time period or the subject matter. I'm going to just fire up Netflix. And I'm going to watch a documentary. So, you know, I turn it on, the algorithm gets going. And I see. And I see oh, there's a documentary series here about the assassination of Olof Palme, the Norwegian Prime Minister, who was who was shot at the very mysterious circumstances. And I started and I'm thinking, and then the first title card comes up, and it says, march 1986, and I was just like-

Traci Thomas 5:52

What were you doing in 1986?

Adam Higginbotham 5:55

It was the year I turned 18. So in January 1986, I was 17. So I was at school. And I do remember it very clearly, because I remember the day of the Challenger accident very clearly, because because of the time difference, it launched at 11:38, in Florida, so that is about 4:38 in English time at that time of the year. So I was at school, and I just got out of school. And this is a very 20th century story. I was, you know, there's no social media, there's no cell phones, I just went out with my friends after school. And I did you know, nobody had a phone, nobody got the news through any instantaneous means. So it wasn't until I got home that night, you know, about nine or 10 o'clock, that my mother had been watching the evening news told me what had happened. And I you know, I still remember how it kind of incomprehensible I found out that this has happened.

Traci Thomas 6:50

Writing about the story now, I mean, almost 40 years later, a lot of people don't know this story. Don't remember this story. You know, anyone younger than me wasn't alive for this story. Right? So were you interested in writing towards those people and telling the story? Or were you thinking of your audience more as people who were familiar with the story and sort of knew had heard the phrase O-rings before?

Adam Higginbotham 7:17

Well, it was it was that group of people, that was one of the reasons that prompted me to want to write the book in the first place, because like, although I remember it very clearly, you know, I gradually realized much as with the Chernobyl accident, you know, that there's a whole generation of readers that that weren't around and may be, you know, unaware that it happened at all, I think that's unlikely, but they certainly wouldn't know the details of it. And most importantly, really, they wouldn't understand quite what a turning point in American history it was. Because, you know, up to this point, NASA as an organization that seemed like something that was capable of achieving the impossible on an almost regular basis. And, and in a world after Challenger, and then especially after the Columbia accident, which happened in 2003, when NASA lost a second shuttle and a second crew of seven, you know, it doesn't seem so shocking that something like this could happen. But back in January 1986, this was, you know, this convulsed the nation.

Traci Thomas 8:25

It's so interesting, because I don't even remember the Columbia disaster. Like when I was reading the book, I got to the end, and I was like, This sounds vaguely familiar like this, this, maybe maybe I do, and I was in high school, then. Right, I would have been 17 or so. And it's just so interesting that it never got the same, like, play as challenger. It's not, you know, people talk about challenger as being the defining moment for certain generations, like the JFK assassination, or like, 911 For my generation. And I just think it's so interesting that the Columbia sort of, is the thing that maybe people remember but wasn't like a thing. Is that because there was no teacher in space, is that because it wasn't on TV in the same way people weren't, like, gearing up for it in the same way that they were the Challenger? Or is it because Challenger happened and so they knew it could happen.

Adam Higginbotham 9:21

I think it's much more the case that it's because Challenger happened and they knew it could happen. You know, that was something that I did talk to two people who were there on the day at the Kennedy Space Center watching it in person. You know, one of the most remarkable things about the news footage that you see from that time is that there's quite a long period when when people who are watching it from the ground, didn't know what had happened. And so there's there's both silence from people in the crowd, but there's also cheering because people think that what they can see when these two rockets that solid rockets start going in opposite directions across the sky. That's actually part of what, you know, the plan descent phase was. But once that had happened, nobody was ever going to make that mistake. Again, nobody was going to witness a catastrophe like this will ever think, Oh, well, this is obviously normal. It's just, you know, there's some glitch. So I think that's a lot of it. Because it was covered on on till it you know, it was covered live on television in a way that actually challenged it wasn't because Challenger was by that time, it had become the process of launching space shuttles had begun to seem so routine that the three national television networks had stopped covering the launches live. So they only-

Traci Thomas 10:43

They didn't cover challenger?

Adam Higginbotham 10:45

No, it was only CNN that was covering. And CNN had just started, as you know, it was a very recent invention at that point. And also, NASA's dedicated satellite channel was feeding the launch footage directly into hundreds of classrooms across the country, because of the teacher in space program. You know, there are at least two and a half million kids watching it live. So it seems quite likely that the majority of the people are watching it in real time were actually children.

Traci Thomas 11:18

That's so interesting. And so And because it's a different time period, like their parents could have had no idea at least for a little bit. And the kids are like being traumatized at home or at school, and the parents are at work. And they're not tuning in to CNN necessarily. That's so, that's crazy.

Adam Higginbotham 11:36

So a really a really sort of important and fascinating part of the story was how that news spread.

Traci Thomas 11:42

Right? Do you when you went into writing this book, I've heard you talk about I think somewhere else, you know, you said, you sort of wanted to explore this thing that everybody sort of remembered and was this huge moment? And I'm curious, like, going into it before you started doing all your research before you started conducting your interviews, what was the thing that you were most interested in sort of figuring out? And now on the back end, after having done all your research, written the book, what's the piece of this story that still sort of sits in your brain where you're like, I just can't get this out of my head?

Adam Higginbotham 12:17

There were two things that I really wanted to make sure that that I brought to the story. And one was, as I said, before, you know, the the stories of all of the members of the crew. So, you know, previous tellings of this story have concentrated quite understandably, you know, on the story of Christa McAuliffe, the teacher in space, but there were six other people on the crew. And I don't really think that that many people knew very much about them. So I wanted to, to explain where they come from they came from and what kind of people they were, and also to show really what the what the special program achieved before 1986. Because this is the other thing, this is the problem with looking at it solely in retrospect, is that people don't really realize, on one hand, how ambitious and and kind of unbelievable it was to do what they did in creating this reusable spacecraft that could take off from the ground like a rocket and then go into orbit, like a spaceship, and then, but then come back down and land on a runway, just like an airliner, and then, you know, be prepared to do it again, do it all again. And so that that of the time was was kind of staggering, that that was possible. But also the people were, you know, incredibly excited about it, when the first one landed, a crowd of a quarter of a million people turned out in the California to desert to watch it happen. And, understandably, you know, the all of the successes of the achievements of the program before challenger have really been overshadowed by both the Challenger accident and then the Columbia accident. And so it's really seen, I think, as a as a failure, you know, and just, it's, it's renowned for these two disasters, but I wanted to tell the story in a way that showed, you know, both both personally for, for, obviously, for the members of the crews, families, but also as a nation. And as a as an institution within NASA, what was lost in the accident. And I think that you can only really understand, you know, how shattering it was when you understand, you know, what, what we and they lost in the accident.

Traci Thomas 14:36

Yeah, I think there's three things that I love the most about this book. Two of them are the two things you just said, right? I loved learning the history of sort of the program and and you start with a disaster in the 1960s, like an accident where three astronauts are killed. And that's sort of where we start the book after the little apple or the prologue thing. And I loved that I loved seeing sort of the like, well For me, what I liked about seeing the history was also seeing the sort of institutional ego of NASA, I think that's like, become such a huge part of this story. And you frame it so well by setting it up of like, these people died. But then like, we did make it to the moon. And we save, we saved other disasters and like, we could do anything, right. And that that sort of ethos, like, carries out through the, through the institution, all the way, you know, even through Columbia, and I loved getting to meet the other astronauts, I can name all seven of them, which feels crazy to me something that I never would have been able to do before, right. And I think like, I was just watching a documentary, and I was looking, and I was like, okay, that sticks. Go be like, Okay, I did it. But the third thing that you do, which is what sets this book apart to me is that we all know what happens in the end of the Challenger story where most of us do. And if you don't, you know, there is a major malfunction, because in the prologue, that's sort of where you end with that. But by the time I got to the end of this book, or by the time I got to the muddiman, that by the time I got to the week of the disaster, I guess the section that starts with January 10. I was sitting, reading, being like, there's no way, there's no way they're going to send people to space. We go through the meeting with Morton Thiokol, and the call conference call the night before, and they lay out the case, and I'm like, there's no way they're gonna approve it. They approve it. I'm like, okay, then then McDonald's. Like, it's icy. Like, there's these other reasons, maybe they won't do it. I'm like, God, McDonald, they're not going to do it. There's no way they get to count out. I'm like, There's no way and it goes up in space. And I'm like, it's not gonna blow up. You took me all the way through this book, where I was like, I can't believe this. I just can't believe this. And I think that, I mean, that shows your skill as a storyteller. But I think there's a craft thing that you're doing. And I'm just curious if you can explain how you were thinking about writing it, because there was never a moment until it happened that I thought that the Challenger was going to explode in this book, even though you told us it was going to and I knew that it was going to.

Adam Higginbotham 17:06

That is kind of crazy, because you're not the only person that said that, that you just yeah, you're kind of carried through the narrative. And you're right up until it happens. You're thinking that it might not.

Traci Thomas 17:20

It might not happen. Have you ever seen Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet?

Adam Higginbotham 17:24

I haven't, you know.

Traci Thomas 17:25

Okay, this is like a very lowbrow comparison. But that movie at the end, when Juliet is on the altar, and Romeo's there. And in the movie he had the way he has it set up is that like her fingers start to quiver. And you see she's waking up, but he doesn't notice it. And then he kills himself, right as she's waking up. And every time I see that movie, I'm like, he's gonna wake up in time. And that's exactly how I felt reading this book. I was like, they're gonna say, no, they're gonna stop it.

Adam Higginbotham 17:58

I mean, it's amazing that you experience it that way. And, you know, and I'm, I'm obviously glad that other people have responded to it that way, because it means that they're engaged with the narrative. But I must admit that I didn't, you know, I didn't, I don't think you could do that intentionally. I didn't. I didn't do that intentionally. I mean, I, I, you know, I just wanted to make sure that, because you're telling a story where everybody knows what happens in the end, you know, you've got to make sure that you're engaged with, and you come to know, the protagonists well enough, and that they that and that they seem as real as they were, you know, and that and that, it rings true in that way. And I think that's, that's one of the things that makes you not believe that what's going to happen is actually going to happen is because you're kind of experiencing it in real time. And what and I must admit, you know, when I was, I mean, particularly when I was going through all of the interview transcripts, the investigative transcripts that were done by the investigators who were sent out on behalf of the Rogers Commission, to interview all of the 34 men, they were all men who were in that teleconference the night before the launch took place. While I was looking at what those people described, and what they said, I just couldn't kind of believe the way that they felt about what was happening and what was said in the meeting. And specifically, that it reaches a point where, you know, it all comes down to this vote by four senior managers at Morton Thiokol. And three of them agree almost immediately to change their recommendation which had been no go for launch to go for launch. And then there's just one there's one left but it's got to be a unanimous decision. And and that that he clearly it's clear to everyone else in the room that he doesn't want to change his mind that he thinks this is a terrible mistake, that he knows what the possible consequences are. If he's wrong, but he does it anyway. And when I was reading for the different accounts of that, I just kind of found that unbelievable.

Traci Thomas 20:09

I am like getting emotional hearing you talk about this, even though like I know, I know, I know, I can't believe he changed his vote. I can't there's a part where you talk about how everyone on the conference call before they do their little breakout meeting. There's things that are said, and everyone is like, well, I guess this isn't happening, because like, there's no way NASA can come back from from this conversation, like, the other people said, we're not going to do it if Morton Thiokol says not to do it. And then to it, I just can't believe they do it. Like, I don't know, maybe I'll just never believe it. I think something that's interesting about this event to me is it sort of feels like an unsatisfying story in a lot of ways like that, even with all the information and all of the answers. And we know what happened. And we know why. And we know who said what and what failed and all of this, they still don't feel settled around the story. I don't know if you have a sense of that at all. Or if you understand why I might be feeling this way. Not that you're my therapist.

Adam Higginbotham 21:13

But so you mean that you don't you mean that it doesn't make sense that they change the nature this way?

Traci Thomas 21:20

Well, I don't know what it is. There are certain like events and disaster type things. Because again, this is like what I really like to read, where I sort of feel like the corruption or or mistakes make sense to me. And I'm like, I understand how this happened. But even knowing all the information, I just still don't, I guess I just don't understand how this thing could have happened.

Adam Higginbotham 21:47

I mean, I don't know how much you recall about it before you started reading the book. But I think that the way that the way that it was reported at the time, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Rogers Commission, publishing their report, which they did in June 1986, you know, there are a lot of people who thought that the couple of middle managers at NASA who were responsible for pushing through the launch decision should have been prosecuted for criminal negligence. And, and there was a real tone in the reporting where people clearly thought that, that they had knowingly sent people to let deaths, that they that they understood the risks, and they decided to press a head regardless, and they were extremely reckless in doing so. You know, and he will talk to I talk to retired NASA engineers now who call who actually refer to those guys as murderers. But I think that, if you, if you think about it that way, it clearly seems inexplicable, because because that because the way that version of the story is told, relies upon supposing that these are guys who want to push through this incredibly dangerous launch, because they are interested in keeping their jobs and keeping their bosses happy. But if you follow that line of reasoning through then, so they know that there's going to be a catastrophic accident, and it's going to destroy the spatial like, kill seven astronauts, but they go through with it because they want to keep their jobs. I mean, that doesn't make any sense. Clearly, they're not if they're deemed to be responsible for what happens, they're not going to be keeping their jobs, right. Indeed, the entire agency might, you know, be so badly damaged, it will be dissolved. But I think that what I found is when I talked to people that knew those guys, and I read both what they said under questioning by the Rogers Commission, and by the investigators afterwards, and in interviews, have they they've done in the years since? You know, that's I don't think that's the case at all. I think that they, they thought that they were making the right decision. They thought that they understood the engineering questions at hand. And they really, honestly believed that they were making an accurate assessment of what they regarded as acceptable risk. They've done it many, many times before. They come across lots of engineering glitches and problems with the solid rockets and many other aspects of the Space Shuttle system. And they just thought they were right. They were arrogant. Definitely. Yeah. And the way that they talked about the decision that they made afterwards, definitely could have seemed careless and reckless. But I just think that they thought they were right. And they were wrong.

Traci Thomas 24:28

Right, because what was it Lucas, who said who said in an interview, like, I would do it again? If I had the same information. Knowing what I know now, I would do it again. I just watched that documentary last night actually. And you write it about it in the book, but even seeing him say it. I was like, oh my god, it's just it's like, huh, gave me chills. But I think like, did you do you get the sense in your research and your interviews and talking to people that folks felt betrayed by NASA that The astronauts, other astronauts who weren't on who weren't on the flight, obviously, but the families of the ones who were civilians more broadly, like, was there a sense that NASA betrayed a level of trust? Or did it seem like most folks felt like, they understood that it was an acceptable risk.

Adam Higginbotham 25:18

The astronauts definitely felt that they'd been betrayed by NASA. And they felt that way, because, you know, they just wanted to be advised of what risks they were taking. And several of them have said in the years after the accident, that the reason that they were angry is because NASA engineers knew about these problems with the O rings sealing rockets together, and that they knew that a leak in these joints was possible, and therefore a catastrophe was possible. But this was something that was an issue that was never raised in the postflight meetings that astronauts might have learned of. Astronauts did not sit on those meetings, generally speaking. And when they did, on the rare occasions when they did, that specific problem was not made to seem like it was much of a big deal. And, and so they were they were angry, because they understood all the other risks of flying the space shuttle, they knew it was an experimental spacecraft. And they just they've been kept in the dark about this one. And so that's what they were upset about. And subsequently, you know, several of them have said that, had they known about those risks, they would probably have flown anyway. Right? They just, they just wanted to be told to be able to make their own assessment.

Traci Thomas 26:38

Yeah. Okay, this might be a stupid question. This is the one question I have for you from from the book, which is, why don't we go to space? Why are we doing this? Like, once a month? Why were they trying to go so often? What were they doing up? They're just learning things?

Adam Higginbotham 27:09

Yeah, I mean, that's the it's the, I mean, behind all of the specific things that they were doing is just the, I think the, you know, natural human impulse to explore. And to do things that people haven't done before.

Traci Thomas 27:23

I don't have that impulse. I'm more of a house cat, myself. Like the thought of going to space is very upsetting to me. Just the idea of it, like watching videos of the launch is very upsetting. I just, it seems very dangerous. I don't like it. People floating up there? Terrifying.

Adam Higginbotham 27:42

Yeah. So I mean, in the broadest sense, I think there is that atavistic, you know, impulse to explore. And most specifically, you know, the astronauts themselves had trained for years, and incredibly intensively at great personal cost. To do this one thing, you know, that on a space shuttle mission would last a maximum of a week. So by the time they get down to Cape Canaveral, and go to the Kennedy Space Center, to get ready to climb aboard the space shuttle and launch, that's all they want to do. That's all they want to do. So, which is one of the reasons why some of them have said some of the surviving astronauts from that class have said, since you know, if they told me about the cold weather, and they told me about the problems with the rings on the morning of launch, I would still have gone ahead and done, I would still have taken the risk, because that's what I was there to do.

Traci Thomas 28:33

It just does not compute for me. Would you go to space?

Adam Higginbotham 28:37

No. I mean, you know, at this point, I'm, I'm a 55 year old man who holds the handrail when he goes down the steps into the subway. I'm you know, I'm not about I'm not about to climb on board a rocket where even the revised figures for catastrophic risk are a chance of one in 270. I don't like those odds.

Traci Thomas 28:58

I don't like any odds, I'm stressed walking down the street. I'm like, not gonna happen for me. Not interested, not curious. So you conducted new different you did different research and other folks, you found Roger Beaujolais. His book, his memoir, you were you were got access to that he was one of the engineers, senior engineers at Morton Thiokol, who was really part of the do not launch team do not launch. What was your approach? How were you conducting your interviews or research? Who did you speak with that maybe other folks had not spoken with in the last 37 years like what makes what what to you sets this book apart from other works about about the Challenger other movies and things like?

Adam Higginbotham 29:45

Well, I think the one of the main things is to try and is to concentrate on the stories of each member of the crew so you get a real sense of who each of them is. So in order to do that I spoke to you know, as many members of the surviving members there families and their friends as I could. But also I I, in terms of, you know, the sorts of stories that I write, I'm interested in, in building them around the, the arc of a handful of specific protagonists. And, and making sure that those people come alive on the page as much as possible. So it meant that I wanted to talk to the friends and family, the crew, but but also to find out as much as possible about that rocket engineers like Elon McDonald, and like Roger Beaujolais. And then I, I wanted to make sure that that I fully understood in a way that I could tell the story in detail, the work of the Rogers Commission, after the accident, and how the investigation proceeded, and what I wasn't really prepared for was how kind of dramatic and fascinating that story in itself was, because I must admit that I had assumed that in a part of the reason this was, was a great thing to research was that at the time, the accident happened, you know, national newspapers were probably at the zenith of their level of resourcing, and staffing. And so as soon as the accident happened, you know, newspapers from all over the country sent teams of reporters. And they catalogued everything they found, and published, you know, hundreds of 1000s and 1000s of stories about what happened. And then so when I came to, to go back into the newspaper archives, and talk to reporters who were there at the time, this represented this kind of incredibly rich vein of narrative detail. And part of that I assumed would be somebody, The Washington Post, or the LA Times would have dedicated a group of these reporters to a series that they published in 1987, or 1988, inside the Rogers Commission, how they really arrived at their decisions. And when I reached the point, at that point in the research, I was like, oh, wait a minute. Nobody ever did that. That's that convenient sort of 10,000 word account in a Newspaper Archive. That's not there. So then, so then I had, I sat down, and I went through all of that I started by going through all of the New York Times daily coverage, and built a timeline. And then I interviewed David Sanger, who was covering it for the times at the time. And Bill broad, who still writes well, they both are over the times, but they were young reporters working on the story at the time. And I also interviewed alkyl, who was the right hand man at William Rogers, who organized the whole Commission and its proceedings, and just discovered that there was this amazing behind the scenes story of of how they went about the work, how Rogers began to figure out that that NASA were not being completely forthright about the decision making process that led up to the launch. And then how they exposed that on the stand in front of television cameras.

Traci Thomas 33:05

And Fineman, what a story. I did research on him after I finished the book. I was like, I got to know more about this guy. He he had a sick wife when he was young when he was in doing Los Alamos and all of that. And she- I mean, I need to read his biography. I was like, really fell in love with him. I hit he and Roger Beaujolais were the two characters from the book that I just became so taken with their stories, I just really love to them. I mean, we don't get a ton of fine because he comes in so late. But I was like, I love this character, loudmouth anti establishment.

Adam Higginbotham 33:44

One thing that I said, I only discovered when I read the there's one really great biography of Fineman called genius. The one thing that that I discovered it, and that was that he was reluctant initially to take on the work of serving on the commission, because he already knew that he was dying of cancer, and that he knew that this was probably the last thing that he was going to get to do in his life. And I had no I'd never read that in any other coverage of of the Challenger investigation at all, and that, that just cast his behavior and everything that he does in a totally different way.

Traci Thomas 34:18

Yes, yes. So so totally. Okay. Speaking of astronauts on the onboard of the challenger who died, you come to some, you come to some interesting information that I've never seen before, which was that potentially, they were still alive. Some of them at least on the way down after the explosion, because there were these I guess, like, like, I was, I was imagining them. I was like, emergency masks on airplanes, but some sort of like, safety thing that only could be activated by an astronaut, I guess in this case. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it has would be done for you, you couldn't reach it yourself. And that it showed that the amount of oxygen or whatever that had been used was like, exactly two and a half minutes, which was how long it would have taken for the cabin to fall. And so maybe they weren't alive. But it was I always just assumed, you know, that they had just perished immediately. Right. Was that new information for you?

Adam Higginbotham 35:22

No, I did. That was reported pretty extensively at the time. But it is something about the accident that a lot of people don't know, because, you know, in the year since NASA has been quite reluctant to, you know, go into any detail about that. And some of that stuff. The details of the autopsy, for instance, you know, still remains confidential. But no, but But yeah, but But no, the the the x poster, excellent investigation, and the, the, the autopsy and the investigation of the condition of the switches, and the equipment that was recovered from the cabin, definitely indicates that the crew were at least some of the crew was certainly conscious, we're certainly alive after the spacecraft broke up, and at least one of them was conscious, for at least a short period of time, but it's impossible to know whether they were they were conscious about two and a half minutes.

Traci Thomas 36:28

Terrifying. Another thing, another detail in the book that is haunting me, is about, you know, not you talk a lot about, you know, from the beginning of the book, we talk a lot about all the information NASA has, and all the sensors and they have this if this goes wrong, they'll see it on their computer and Houston or wherever, like they, they're, they can see everything, they've got sensors, like a sensor for that. But throughout the course of this book, anytime a sensor shows a problem, a human being is like, I think the sensor is broken. Override, right? What's that about? Like, why do they have the sensors if f or they're just like, Oh, these sensors break all the time? Like they just never fix the sensors, the sensors just are a suggestion?

Adam Higginbotham 37:12

Well, no, it's it's, I mean, because there is a great I mean, one of the most fascinating people I've met during the course of reporting the book was Jenny Stein, who made them day when she was working at NASA was Jenny Howard.

Traci Thomas 37:27

Okay, that's, that's the story I'm talking about, she was like, these are broken. But then she saved everybody.

Adam Higginbotham 37:32

So she was so she was one of the few women engineers in in Mission Control in that the early phase of the, of the shuttle program, and she was on the booster desk, and therefore was responsible for overseeing everything that happened with the main engines of the shuttle, and with the solid rocket boosters, during the ascent phase. So it's during the first eight minutes of the mission when the time it takes to get into space. But she was someone who, you know, she was a kind of classic NASA type, because she, she lived her job. You know, she, she, she wanted to spend as much time as she possibly could to know the engines and the propulsion systems of the shuttle inside out. So she bought her own, you know, they didn't have personal computers at NASA at the time, because we're still using early 70s technology. So she went out. And she bought herself one of the first Apple computers to use to run her own data analysis. So she knew how the engines behaved, she understood the sensor systems. And she, she, she understood extremely well, which parts of the system were vulnerable to failure. And so this is one of the things you're talking about is that she knew that quite frequently. Some of the sensors attached to the main engines, you know, just gave false readings or went out and broke. And, and so and that was the nature of her job was that she's the person who had to make that judgment call about whether or not the information that she was receiving on the ground was an accurate reflection of what was going on inside the engines. So although in this specific case, she you know, she didn't she often didn't trust those specific sensors. It's not like every engineer on the ground division controllers go, oh, yeah, it's a sensor reading. We, we don't really need to regard you know, we can disregard that. We don't need to worry about that.

Traci Thomas 39:24

Yeah, I guess it's probably like, I don't know what they call that. Like. I there's a bias where it's like, anytime you see a thing, it's like a recency bias type thing where it's like, anytime you see it in a book like this, that means it's an important one, but we don't see all the times that they actually work right. I was just laughing because every time it's like there's a sensor sensor saying something and I was like, why do we need sensors? Burn them down! When you were doing all your research and all your interviews, how were you keeping everything straight? What's your system did you have like post it notes all over? Did you have like a written out timeline was it All in the computer, because it's a lot of people I know you know that. But Adam, there's a lot of people in this book, a lot of characters, a lot of names. And it's at a time where everyone's name is Dick, and Roger, like they all bill, they all have the same first name, like, how did you keep it all straight in your head? To actually tell the story? And to know who you wanted to talk to? Like, how were you researching it all, figuring it out?

Adam Higginbotham 40:29

Now, it's interesting you say that, because when I was approaching this for the first time, I did think to myself, well, this is gonna be a lot easier than writing that book about Chernobyl in whichever way in which everyone's got a Slavic name, you know? Because, yeah, sure. You know, it was it's, I often read Goodreads reviews. And so reading the reviews of that book, which were, you know, broadly, extremely positive, but a frequent complaint was, all these guys names sound the same, they're all They're all these confusing Russian names. So, so when I was right, you know, when I set out to write that in the first place, I actually deliberately, you know, adopted a policy of, of repeating the individuals job title, all very helpful, right, almost every time they were named, so that the reader could keep those people straight in their mind. And I thought, well, there's with this with the bills, and the Rogers and the decks, and, you know, there's gonna be no problem with that. But now you're now what you're telling me is, oh, no, this just this-

Traci Thomas 41:31

No, there was no problem for me. But you set it up for me, I, things that you do so well as a writer is that you actually really take care of your reader. Like, I didn't feel confused by the science stuff. And if you know me, it's good. You should know that the science stuff is my like, usually, when I see science things, I just my eyes glaze over. And I'm like, okay, physics, but I felt like you really distilled that. And I felt like I didn't know who everybody was. But I want to know how you kept everybody string. Researching, like, did you have a big poster board with everybody's names? Did you have a timeline for yourself? As you were crafting it to make sure like, okay, this person goes here, or this thing happened on this date, and this thing happened on this date, and they're connected. So I need to make sure you know, right, how are you organizing all the information?

Adam Higginbotham 42:17

It would be great if I had like a big pinball with? No, I don't, I don't have that. And don't do that. And and part of the reason for that is that I've know myself well enough at this point, that I understand that if I took the approach that I was going to set off, and I'd say, Okay, I'm going to research this subject, I'm going to figure out exactly what the story isn't about who all the characters are, and I'm going to plan it out. And then only when that is completely ready, am I going to sit down and start writing, because I know that that day would never come, I would just be happy to like, keep researching forever. If you know, if there was no, if I the deadline would just come and go, essentially. So what I what I do do is I you know, do an initial, when I'm thinking about the idea, I'll like read through the secondary material. And see if I can understand what the story is, and what aspects of the story are important to me in constructing the narrative and see that that I understand it in that way. And then I will go off and start reporting based on what I think the story is. Now, at that point, you're going to start encountering not only, you know, things that in that secondary material just aren't true or accurate. But also you're going to discover kind of interesting tributaries, and more importantly, individual protagonists, whose stories are sort of fascinating, who you you know, and so, so it's a, I guess, the fancy way of saying it would be that it's an iterative process.

Traci Thomas 43:50

Okay, that sounds fancy, fancy.

Adam Higginbotham 43:54

So it's, you know, I will, I will grow to understand what the narrative is, as I'm working on it. And so I'll go and I will write, I wrote, I've written both books, actually, in largely chronological order. So it means that I can, you know, you can write the first few chapters where you're writing about the background, and then you can you can find people who will help to illustrate that or you can build up protagonists within that framework, when you go back and rewrite and insert and then you will, you know, I will often find, you know, material is a research that that, that people have not come across before they will change the narrative or change the structure of the story. And that is exactly what happened with with Roger visualise memoir, because I had worked on the book for two years. She all during COVID. During that time, the all of the federal archives are closed. So I had known at the very beginning that I would need to get into those archives to to gather information, but almost as soon as I started work on the book, they closed. And it took two years to open again. And I wasn't when I found Roger bozos memoir, I was looking for something else. And it was only that, you know, I was following the Robert Keroh dictum of, of turn every page. So I, I'd gone down to the National Air and Space Museum archive, to look through some transcripts of interviews with senior NASA officials that this guy Joe Trento, who wrote one of the two books that was published about the accident in the immediate aftermath in that was published in 87. And I'd gone down to look through these transcripts. But I took care of that in like half a day. And then then there was only there were three cartons of material in Joe and Susan Trento archive. And I just thought, Well, okay, well, now I've got a, I've just got to go through every single piece of paper, the rest of these boxes, just in case. And it was only I discovered in a padded envelope. At the end of one of the boxes, there was the CD in a transparent jewel case. And I just I thought, well, this is, you know, this was put in here sometime in the 90s. Probably. And even if it was readable in a format that's available now, there's probably nothing interesting on it if there's anything so and it was only you know, during that process where I went to the archivist, I said, you know, I had suppose is I this is kind of ridiculous, but I've got found the CD, do you think you could take a look and see if there's, if you could read it if there's anything on it? And they were like, yeah, why don't you just go to lunch, and I'll hand it over to the IT people and they'll take a look at it and see if it's scanning for viruses. And so I went off to the museum shop it got a sandwich and came at half an hour later. And, and I said Elizabeth, do you see it like that? That CD? And she went, Oh, no, no, let's take a look down on the computer at the end of the room, you go down there and have a look. And I went and sat down. It was like, oh, yeah, there's a there's a Word document here. And it was 600 pages long. And it was all of yours. Right, Roger Beaujolais telling his whole story.

Traci Thomas 47:10

Incredible. Were you just like, holy shit? Or was it just like, that's like, gotta be- You're an investigative journalist. That's got to be like a huge moment for you. You've found, like a first person's account of the thing, exactly the thing that you want.

Adam Higginbotham 47:31

And the thing was that, you know, I drafted a lot of the first half or two thirds of the book by that point. And so I knew that obviously, Beaujolais because of his role in trying to stop the launch was was the central protagonists, but I didn't have very much access to information about him because he died in 2012. You know, and he given interviews and done lectures before he died, but he hadn't, you know, gone into a detailed account of, of his whole background before the accident of the, you know, so if that's exactly what it was. But then I made the mistake of saying to the archivist, I said, Do you think I could print this out? Because I was only there for two days. And this by this time, this is the end of the second day? And she said, Well, what is it? And I said, Oh, it's an unpublished manuscript of a memoir. She says, Oh, well, if it's a manuscript, no, you can't, because that's copyrighted material. So you can only print 10% of it. 660 pages. So, so I just had to like, go through it and scan it. And make as many notes as possible, because at this point, there was there's still a huge backlog of people wanting to get into these archives, so you had to make an appointment. So I was like, Okay, well, let's just let's go to the key dates and see, and, and so I got what I could out of it and then left. And it wasn't until a couple of weeks later, that I was talking to Brian Russell, who is one of the the surviving rocket engineers from Morton Thiokol, who was in that meeting the night before the launch. And I mentioned to him that I'd found Roger postulates memoir, at which point, Brian said, oh, yeah, Rogers memoir. Yeah, yeah, no, I've got a copy of that. I was like, I'd already been to Brian's house and spent like an entire day talking to him. He hadn't mentioned Rogers memoir at all, because, you know, only a handful of people had been entrusted with copies of it. And they've done so on the basis that they wouldn't show it to no one else. So in the end, I figured out that there were there was more than one copy.

Traci Thomas 49:38

Were the 60 pages that you printed out- was your first gut instinct. Were those the best pages or when you got a full copy were you like, Oh, thank God, I got this because this is where the real juice is?

Adam Higginbotham 49:50

No, I mean, the 60 pages always interested in with you know The obvious turning points in his story, like so when he arrives at Morton Thiokol Um, you know, when he first discovers that the problems with the outer rings are a lot worse than he's ever seen, but you know, those kinds of things. So definitely those were useful, but it was really the wider context of his story, the kind of person he was the way that he reacted to individual events in his life, what kind of personality he had that kind of thing. You know, you needed to read the whole thing you needed to see, you know, the way he was with his with his wife and kids, for example.

Traci Thomas 50:28

Yeah, one of the things I always like to talk to writers about is how you write when you sit down to actually write the book, or as you're writing the book, where are you writing? How often? How many hours a day? Do you listen to music? Do you have snacks and beverages? A candle? Do you have rituals? How does Adam Higginbotham make the magic happen?

Adam Higginbotham 50:51

Well, I like the idea that you think it's magic.

Traci Thomas 50:54

It is. This book is good, Adam. This is a really good book. I read a lot of books, I love this one.

Adam Higginbotham 51:02

I can write a maximum of 500 words a day. Okay. So I have to be very disciplined about it and approach it like going to work. And I figured that out. Because, you know, years ago, when I was writing long magazine features, I figured out that you know, whatever the deadline was, I could write, I could write 1000 words on a Monday. But then when I came to my desk on Tuesday, I produced nothing of any use at all. I mean, I could sit there and write as much as I like, but none of it would be any good. And in the end, I've worked out that the average target was 500 words a day. So that means that I would sit down on my desk at nine o'clock in the morning, and then I wouldn't be able to get up until I'd written 500 words. So that's the that's, that's really all I'm trying to do. I'm trying to and some days, it is it possible to write five other words, and I just sit there and sit there and sit there, you know, so I could sit there until three o'clock in the afternoon and not have a single usable syllable that then write the 500 words between three and five. Because that's, you know, I've just got to get it done. Because, frankly, otherwise, the prospect of actually writing an entire book seems so overwhelming, that, that I'd never be able to do it, you just got to do it in little bits.

Traci Thomas 52:24

What about snacks and beverages?

Adam Higginbotham 52:29

I have a joke with my wife that anything that she puts between them in the space between the keyboard and the computer screen will disappear by the end of the day. So please do avoid doing that. Because otherwise by the end of the process, I'll be the size of a house.

Traci Thomas 52:46

So you're not a snack guy.

Adam Higginbotham 52:47

I'm not a snack guy. I have one cup of coffee in the morning. And that's it. Really. I mean, that's the to the extent that I have a process. That's it's 500 words a day. Whatever happens at least five days a week.

Traci Thomas 53:00

Okay. I like that. What about a word you can never spell correctly on the first try?

Adam Higginbotham 53:10

Massachusetts.

Traci Thomas 53:12

That's a hard one. That's a that's a really hard one.

Adam Higginbotham 53:16

Yeah.

Traci Thomas 53:18

You're from England.

Adam Higginbotham 53:19

Yeah, So I have an excuse.

Traci Thomas 53:21

No, no, that's not what I was gonna say. You have no excuse. No, I'm a terrible speller. So everyone has an excuse. Just being alive is an excuse not to know how to spell in my book. But you're from England. Are you a football guy?

Adam Higginbotham 53:33

No, I my interest in watching football, which was obsessive when I was a child evaporated at around the same time that my interested in becoming an astronaut. It was about 12. So ask me, you know, anything you like about the 1982? World Cup? Expert. Okay, I still have all the players but know

Traci Thomas 53:57

Who was your team as a kid?

Adam Higginbotham 54:00

Manchester United, because I grew up in a part of England where, you know, all local football teams were just dreadful. No chance.

Traci Thomas 54:08

Okay, I'm sad about this; I was really hoping you were gonna be soccer football guy because we're I'm really we're really my family. We're into it. We're City people. We're City people, which I know now. It's not good. But I'm new to it. But I really like it. And every anytime I have anyone on the show who's from England, I'm like, who's your team? Who's your team?

Adam Higginbotham 54:25

No, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Traci Thomas 54:27

It's okay. The book is good enough that I'll forgive you. But like if you'd wrote and written a mediocre book, I'd be like, okay, interviews over. Okay, what's the next thing? Do you have the next thing? Do you know what you want to write about next, or what you want to explore next, or not yet?

Adam Higginbotham 54:42

I don't. I'm still in this book at the moment, kind of. I can tell you that. I mean, never say never. But I'm gonna try and avoid writing anything more about 1986.

Traci Thomas 54:55

Well, until you do my book of course. We're in contract already. I know I was I always like to think when folks write like, multiple books kind of in the same same world of things that I'm into. I'm like, Oh, I wonder, I wonder what I wonder what he'll do next. Because I'm excited to read. And I'm like, I wonder what the thing will be that will excite you enough to sit down and do the research and write again, but I will be thrilled to read it no matter what it is.

Adam Higginbotham 55:22

Well why don't you tell me?

Traci Thomas 55:24

I don't know. Well, it's hard, because I don't know. The things that I always want to read about are like cults and stuff, but you don't really do cults, you sort of do like, like institutional failure events. So maybe, like maybe Princess Diana, that might be interesting, right? Because that's sort of like an institutional failure of the crown. Right? Go in and do that. Right? What else would be interest and that's 10 years, 11 years later. So you have a little time you could learn about the 90s move forward. I'm trying to what else is good in the 90s. I've just read three waco books last year. So that's sort of I feel like been taken care of Wait, three waco books came out and three books came out last year. And that's the kind of stuff I'm really into. So I wrote three and interviewed all three, three of the authors. Yeah, but I could do I can always do another Jonestown book, but I feel like that's slightly different than what you do. I feel like you are like more. They like people who knew better should have done better not like people who have a cult, had a cult. Right?

Adam Higginbotham 56:24

Yeah. Like I I must admit that I would like to write about something where everything goes right.

Traci Thomas 56:31

Oh, no, I don't want to be that. No, thank you. No, thanks.

Adam Higginbotham 56:38

I would Yeah, that's that's I would-

Traci Thomas 56:40

What even would that be?

Adam Higginbotham 56:42

I don't know. You know, it just just a story of heroism, not heroism and disaster.

Traci Thomas 56:47

Ohh, okay. Yeah. I think you're on the right track with whatever you're doing now. But you know what, Adam, I'll read it. I will read it. And I probably will like it. But I would prefer a disaster. I love it disaster. Let me ask you, I have just two more questions for you. One is for people who love challenge or what other books would you recommend to them that you think are sort of in conversation with what with what you've done? It doesn't have to be the same topic. It could be similar style, similar kinds of books.

Adam Higginbotham 57:18

I am a big fan of a book written by Rachel Slade, who actually reviewed this book for the New York Times called Into the Raging Sea, which is just a terrific book about the sinking of the Pharoah, which was a merchant ship that went down in the hurricane. It's a really amazing book into the raging sea. It's called. But you know, as you as you may be able to tell, I'm interested in when things do go wrong. So another book that I'm, that I'm a huge fan of, is a book called A Voyage for Mad Men, which is I'm trying to remember the author's name, I think it's Peter Nichol.

Traci Thomas 58:10

We'll link to it in the show notes. We'll get the correct author.

Adam Higginbotham 58:14

So it's called A Voyage for Mad Men. And it's about the 1968 Observer newspaper, single handed ran the world yacht race.

Traci Thomas 58:27

I don't know about this, either.

Adam Higginbotham 58:28

Oh, start with this one. It's just a brilliant store. And it's like, it's it's got a it's got a cast of half a dozen men who who participate in this race before, you know, GPS and satellite tracking and cell phones. And they each set off from the south coast of England to sail circumnavigate the world, single handed. And each of the participants in the race has their own crazy story. It's that it's just an it's a it's a fantastic story. And it's brilliantly taught. So I would, I would definitely say that I can't wait. And I'm trying to think of something else that doesn't see orientated. Oh, Final Cut, which is a Hollywood book about the making of Heaven's Gate. It's called Final Cut dreams and disaster in the making, and Heaven's Gate by Steven Bach. And it is just it's one of the best books ever written about Hollywood is about how Michael Cimino made this catastrophic Western at the end of the 70s it's a brilliant book.

Traci Thomas 59:35

I'm so I'm so excited. You've just added three good books. I cannot wait to read. Okay, last question. If you could have any person dead or alive, read challenger, who would you want it to be?

Adam Higginbotham 59:47

Roger Beaujolais.

Traci Thomas 59:50

Good pick. All right, Adam, thank you so much. This was such a joy for me. i As you know, love the book. I'm so happy that we got to talk And for people at home, you can get the book now it is out in the world. I read most of it off the page. I listened to some of the audiobook the audiobook narrator does a fantastic job. It's just I cosign this book and all of its forms. Adam, thank you so much for being here.

Adam Higginbotham 1:00:16

Thank you, Traci. It was great to talk to you.

Traci Thomas 1:00:19

And everyone else we will see you in The Stacks.

Alright, y'all, that does it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to Adam Higginbotham for joining the show. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Eva Karens for helping to make this conversation possible. Don't forget The Stacks book club pick for July is Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler, which we will discuss on Wednesday, July 31. With Emily Raboteau. If you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack and subscribe to my newsletter at TraciThomas.substack.com. Make sure you're subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave a rating and a review. For more from The Stacks follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram, Threads and TikTok and at thestackspod_ on Twitter and you can check out my website at thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Megan Caballero
Previous

Ep. 329 What Does It Mean to Be Unseen with Mateo Askaripour
Next

Ep. 327 Lots of Big Nights in Our Future with Katherine Lewin