ExecutiveAvenger t1_ivx90fo wrote on November 11, 2022 at 7:49 AM

Reply to comment by Spaceguy5 in NASA leaders recently viewed footage of an underwater dive off the East coast of Florida, and they confirm it depicts an artifact from the space shuttle Challenger by marketrent

There certainly was also a design error with the joints since there really wasn't any redundancy. The new design solved this.

Spaceguy5 t1_ivx9lvs wrote on November 11, 2022 at 7:57 AM

I mean, redundancy and fault tolerance aren't absolutely mandatory for a design to be good, as long as it's a simple design used in design operating conditions with a low chance of failing. SRBs flown pre-STS-51L in design temps didn't have signs of burn through, only ones flown cold showed signs (which the fact those flown out of spec showed signs even before 51L should have set off alarm bells and gotten the situation resolved without loss of life)

But yes, it definitely was made a better design by adding that fault tolerance, and without adding too terribly much mass and complexity. And it makes sense that they'd add it in after experiencing that failure mode (even if it was caused by out of spec operation) just to give more peace of mind.