...a superb diagnosis of one of NASA’s darkest moments ... It is a compelling and exhaustively researched chronicle of the calamity that traces its full arc — the evolution of the enabling culture that allowed it, the terrible day itself and its enduring legacy ... the narrative comes to life in a fresh telling fueled by meticulous detail and exacting prose. While familiar, the story is rendered dreamlike so that readers can’t help but hope, as it unfolds page by page, that somehow the outcome this time will be different.
Higginbotham is an intrepid journalist and skillful storyteller who takes care to humanize the dozens of major and minor players involved in NASA’s many successful, and occasionally catastrophic, space missions ... Quick, devastating.
Adam Higginbotham provides the most definitive account of the explosion that took the lives of the seven-person crew. He also meticulously explores the missteps and negligence that allowed the tragedy to occur ... The pace is so brisk that readers will be surprised when they realize the vivid account of the Challenger launch doesn’t occur until well after halfway through the book ... Compelling, comprehensive.
Higginbotham has to work doubly hard to make it all comprehensible ... The experience of reading Challenger is a bit like blasting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stretch can be heavy going, requiring the full thrust of Higginbotham’s prose to propel us through the technical and institutional nitty-gritty while also familiarising us with a wide cast of characters ... May lack the feverish radioactive pulse and vast dramatic scope of Midnight in Chernobyl, but once it gets over the initial hurdles it’s still one hell of a ride.
Hefty, compelling and propulsive, Challenger overflows with revelatory details ... Proves Higginbotham is a master chronicler of disasters, demonstrating an unflinching ability to pierce through politics, power and bureaucracies with laser-sharp focus.
Gripping ... His account of the engineering issues is lucid and meticulous, and his evocative prose conveys both the extraordinary achievement of rocket scientists in harnessing colossal energies with delicate mechanisms and the sudden cataclysms that erupt when the machinery fails. The result is a beguiling saga of the peril and promise of spaceflight.
