Hubris Greed Politics vs. Genius.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
— Richard Feynman, “Report to Congress on Challenger Investigation 1986.”

Indepth chronicle of Dr. Richard Feynman’s investigation into the Space Shuttle Challenger’s 1986 explosion.

When I first heard about the TV movie, THE CHALLENGER DISASTER, I shrugged it off, thinking it would be a shallow, politically-correct tribute to the people who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger’s 1984 post-liftoff explosion. Surely it would not be about the ensuing investigation into the disaster and surely it would go nowhere near one of my heroes, physicist Richard Feynman’s integral role in unveiling the mystery behind the explosion, and there wouldn’t be a chance in hell it would mention O-ring failures…

I was beautifully wrong. As it happens, this movie is all about my hero Richard Feynman, based on a section of his entertaining and informative book, What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), and delves deep into how Feynman alternately intuited and was fed cryptic info to unlock the mystery behind the Shuttle explosion due to O-ring failure! Movie portrays him as quite the hero – to which he himself would have reacted with utmost chagrin – as he doggedly pursues the truth against a political juggernaut where the word failure was not an option.

On January 28, 1986 (the 25th shuttle mission), Space Shuttle Challenger did not liftoff from Kennedy Space Center on just another routine mission, but on a public relations circus, crowing to the world the munificence of the American government and the progressiveness of the U.S. space program by including civilian schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe among its seven astronaut crew. 73 seconds after liftoff, the shuttle exploded, killing all onboard.

A Presidential Commission was quickly assembled to investigate, made up of bureaucrats, lawyers, astronauts (Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon, and Sally Ride, first American woman in space), and for technical credibility, called on 1965 Nobel Prize winner for Physics, Richard P. Feynman.

The incomparable William Hurt stars as the iconoclastic Feynman, immersing himself in the role with his unkempt hair, earthy attitude and quirky dignity. (Feynman was an atheist – but his soul defiantly surfaces in Hurt.) Joanne Whalley is supportive wife, Gweneth. Feynman is hesitant at first to involve himself with Washington in any way for all its “political” obstruction – fears which are realized almost immediately when he arrives ready to work and the investigation committee seem committed to stagnating in bureaucratic quicksand. Feynman becomes the most outspoken and seems to be getting the most work done because he is the only true “independent” on the committee, as everyone else has affiliations with the institutions they are investigating.

Bruce Greenwood is General Kutyna, who is sympathetic to Feynman charging forward against difficult odds, who cannot reveal incriminating information himself due to his allegiance to the military and other astronauts, but who feeds Feynman clues without Feynman even realizing it, banking on Feynman’s brilliance to unravel his clues.

Brian Dennehy is Mr. Rogers, head of the commission and a born bureaucrat; at first, almost an opposing force to the truth, seemingly grinding the investigation into gravel when it wants to move forward. Later, he would verbalize the paradox the commission faced: “We have a major difficulty – the people who best understand the shuttle are the people giving evidence – but they have the most to lose by explaining it clearly.”

No one – not NASA, not the numerous contractors, not the government – wants to take any blame, yet no one wants to rat out their colleagues either. It makes everyone look bad, and not just to grieving Americans; to “enemies” of the United States who have a vested interest in the space program vis a vis the weapons program failing, and to those who simply wish to laugh in the face of the self-proclaimed greatest superpower on Earth.

…either the guys at the top didn’t know, in which case they should have known, or they did know, in which case, they’re lying to us.
— Richard Feynman, from “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”

At the time of the inquiry, Feynman was also battling liver cancer, spreading throughout his body and occasionally incapacitating him. There was nothing his doctor could do except stopgap dialysis.

Ultimately, cause of the Shuttle explosion was whittled down to the compromised “O-rings” – rubber seals that were supposed to expand to stop the outflow of gasses from the Solid Rocket Boosters, but which were affected adversely by extremely low temperatures on launch day. Due to the politics of NASA being forced to launch another Shuttle to retain their funding, they barged ahead with what they knew to be an unsafe condition. It was not a unanimous decision, and many techs gave evidence that they advised against the launch. Feynman was instrumental in pinpointing these factors during hearings, culminating in his now-infamous practical real-time experiment – performed while cameras were rolling and while sitting at his place on the panel – of putting an O-ring in his ice water to prove it was not resilient at cold temperatures.

I am so glad this movie was made. Up to now, scientists like Hawking, Sagan, Michio Kaku, have had their deserved time in the sun. But Feynman has been one of my heroes for years (unfortunately dying in 1988 before I really got to know him through his books), and he’s never really received his due from mainstream media. Now we see how respected and loved he truly was. There is even a new 2013 documentary, FEYNMAN: THE CHALLENGER, which breezes through Feynman’s life, work and philosophies, featuring many interviews with Feynman himself, narrated by none other than Bruce Greenwood. They keep calling Feynman “America’s most respected physicist.” Well then, give him a little more sugar, Hollywood bastards!

The tragic dichotomy here is that I have utmost respect and sympathy for NASA also. The organization is constantly misunderstood, maligned and defunded by the public and the government. After proving their utility in rocket science (i.e. weaponry), the United States didn’t have much use for them after the Apollo program. To avoid being discarded, they’ve had to prove time and again their credibility, even though sometimes they have nothing to offer the budget hawks except pure research. They even had to come up with a slogan, which they KNEW was unworkable in any real-world environment, to placate the whining government red-tapers: “Faster Cheaper Better.” (The rejoinder to that credo is as famous as the credo itself: That only two of those conditions can be achieved at the expense of the third; i.e. you can have it faster and cheaper, but it won’t be better, you can have it cheaper and better, but it won’t be faster, and so on.) After promising an unattainable quantity of Shuttle launches and under threat of their funds being siphoned to the military, they had to launch that cold day in 1986. With fingers crossed instead of 100% safety guarantees.

The deaths of the seven astronauts is as much to blame on the mouse-minded government as the officials at NASA who greenlighted the launch. May those responsible – you know who you are – take that burden to your venal graves.

As the credits roll, we see real footage of Feynman giving his O-ring testimony over his ice water. Giving a new meaning to super cool.

Sadly, this would be Feynman’s last adventure. Two years later, he would die of cancer.

After President Reagan is presented with the official Challenger report, with Dr. Feynman’s notes included as an Appendix, General Kutyna walks with Feynman. He laments and apologizes for the time Feynman had to spend away from his family, knowing he had so little time left, “This took your time…” Feynman, the atheist, the pioneer in quantum electro-dynamics (QED), philosophically replies, “I guess there is a kind of afterlife. The few bits and pieces that we do… might get remembered.”

END

“Sorry mate. I’m Ray Winstone. If I don’t beat someone up in a movie, I get cranky.”

Chest-beating.

‘Cause I’m a man, I got my pride,
Don’t need no woman to hurt me inside.
I need love, like any other –
So go on and leave me! Leave me for another!
— “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad,” Bad Company.

I think 44 INCH CHEST is trying to set some kind of record for saying the word “cunt.” That’s why I love it so. It’s British. It’s brutish. It’s cuntish.

Busting at the gray-skied seams with testosterone, 44 INCH CHEST is as blackly humorous and yet as feverishly dramatic as only a cockney London thrasher could be. It’s about honor, loyalty, fidelity and flesh-tearing revenge. It’s about the measure of Manhood. How far would you go to prove your measure?

The formidable Ray Winstone stars as Colin Diamond, a principled, loving husband and father, who has just lost his wife, Liz (Joanne Whalley) to another man. Movie opens with Colin lying seemingly dead on the floor of his self-wrecked house, while Nilsson’s Without You flutters on the soundtrack.

Shattered, almost unable to speak coherently, let alone make life-changing decisions, Colin gathers four friends in a ramshackle rendezvous den to work through his pain – and to decide how to kill the man who stole his wife; the man who is even now locked in a cupboard before them, an armoire, a “44 inch chest,” if you will.

John Hurt, as cockney vicious as a starving pitbull, is cantankerous Old Man Peanut, who just wants blood – and to keep his arse away from suave-gay Meredith, played by Ian McShane with pimp swagger and cynical detachment; Tom Wilkinson is amiable, pragmatic Archie, who still lives with his mum; and Stephen Dillane is Mal, the impetuous muscle, “Let’s kill ‘im now – just give me the word, Colin!”

If you end up in a room with THESE guys staring at you… it was nice knowing you…

The amazing thing about this movie that reads like a stage play is that none of the characters have backstories! They just appear in this room, driving their brutal dialogue down Tasty Street, and we surmise they are gangsters, but they could very well be just a bunch of schoolmates. The way they stand up for their wronged compatriot could be applied to any profession; it is simply what Real Men would do under the circumstances. They never question why they are there and none of them is impatient to leave for other pressing appointments; we sense instinctively they would follow Colin into hell.

We see the capture of “Loverboy” (Melvil Poupaud) from his waitering day job – Mal headlocking him into a van while distressed patrons look on. They eventually drag him out of the cupboard, bloodied and beaten, and plant him on a chair where they berate him and threaten him, awaiting Colin’s ultimate decision.

“What you did to me is NOTHING compared to what she does to me psychologically.”

As the story delves via flashback into Colin’s harried night, his wife’s confession and his decidedly unmanly reaction – he bashed the name of her French lover out of her – the bloodlust of the friends is stoked, and we seem to be tilting toward hell after all. Revenge will be sweet.

As the night wears on and Colin enters into fantasy scenes in his head (which include his wife appearing and tending to Loverboy, while his friends size her up in front of him, swapping roles, accusing, bantering, badgering), we realize that each of the friends is a different facet of Colin’s personality (the bellicose, impatient Old Prick, the boastful, cocky Muscle, the stalwart Good Friend and the personality that is completely insular, removed from the world of women – the Gaylord) and that they “complete” him – but not in a good way, as their constant profane, baleful repartee serves to confuse him all the more.

We realize also that Colin seeing his wife touching Loverboy’s wounds so intimately (as Peanut says, “They might as well be doing it right in front of him!”) is his mind trying to purge itself of that image, of the pain of knowing this went on behind his back… forgiveness may just be sweeter.

Eventually, after gripping monologues, morbidly humorous asides, and swearing the likes your drill sergeant wouldn’t believe, with the aid of his friends and his fantasies (some might call it “therapy”) barrel-chested Colin goes further than he has ever gone before, to make a decision that proves the true measure of his manhood…

END