Challenger spaces-craft disaster. What was the impact of events related to the teacher in space program?

Question

Also what exactly was going on that may have caused NASA to ignore safety considerations the way they did?

Answer 1

The Challenger accident effectively ended the Teacher-in-Space program as it had been originally conceived.  The follow-on programs instead allowed people in certain occupations to be considered as candidates for full-time astronaut positions, effectively upping the rigor and expectations of such candidates.

There have been many book-length discussions of the factors leading up to the loss of Challenger.  The most concise, complete summary I can offer is that "production pressure" (the stimulus to produce what was promised) led NASA and some of its contractors to subtlely circumvent some of the controls that were nominally in place to prevent a decision to launch until a substantial flight safety assurance was achieved.

Answer 2

It killed the Teacher in Space Program.

The Challenger disaster happened because of NASA's arrogance.  When called the O-Ring malefactor said we haven't tested those O-Rings at that temperature you shouldn't fly. (source:  History Channel)  As a result the Teacher in Space Project died, NASA wanted to only use fully trained astronauts.  In fact the first teacher in space didn't go up until 2008.

According to Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher_in_...

"The Teacher in Space Project (TISP) began as a NASA program announced by President Ronald Reagan on August 27, 1984. The goal was to inspire students, honor teachers, and spur interest in mathematics, science, and space exploration. More than 11,000 teachers applied for the program[1]; in 1985, NASA selected Christa McAuliffe to be the first teacher in space with Barbara Morgan as her backup. McAuliffe died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster (STS-51-L) in 1986.

After the Challenger accident, Reagan spoke on national television and assured the nation that the Teacher in Space program would continue. "We'll continue our quest in space," he said. "There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue."

That was not to be, however. NASA eliminated the Teacher in Space project and other efforts to send private citizens to space. In the 1990s, the Teacher in Space project was replaced by the Educator Astronaut Project. Instead of training teachers for five months to be a spaceflight participant who would return to the classroom, the Educator Astronaut program required selectees to give up their teaching careers, move to Houston, and become full-time NASA employees.

Morgan was selected as a NASA Mission Specialist in January 1998, about 12 years after McAuliffe's death. She was assigned to the crew of STS-118, aboard the orbiter Endeavour (the orbiter that replaced Challenger six years after the 1986 accident) which launched on August 8, 2007. Although it was once reported that Morgan would teach some of the same lessons that McAuliffe planned to teach more than 20 years before, Associated Press reports that "Morgan has no plans to give a lesson from space." Shuttle commander Scott Kelly told a journalist, "I don’t have a teacher as a crewmember. I have a crewmember who used to be a teacher"

According to Wikipedia:  Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shutt...

"Forecasts for January 28 predicted an unusually cold morning, with temperatures close to 31 °F (−1 °C), the minimum temperature permitted for launch. The low temperature had prompted concern from engineers at Morton Thiokol, the contractor responsible for the construction and maintenance of the shuttle's SRBs.

Due to the low temperature, a significant amount of ice built up on the fixed service structure that stood beside the shuttle. The Kennedy Ice Team inadvertently pointed an infrared camera at the aft field joint of the right SRB and found the temperature to be only 8 °F (−13 °C). This was believed to be the result of supercooled air blowing on the joint from the liquid oxygen tank vent. It was much lower than the air temperature and far below the design specifications for the O-rings. However, the 8 °F (−13 °C) reading was later determined to be erroneous, the error caused by not following the temperature probe manufacturer's instructions. Tests and adjusted calculations later confirmed that the temperature of the joint was not substantially different than the ambient temperature.

Later review of launch film showed that at T+0.678, strong puffs of dark grey smoke were emitted from the right-hand SRB near the aft strut that attaches the booster to the ET. The last smoke puff occurred at about T+2.733. The last view of smoke around the strut was at T+3.375. It was later determined that these smoke puffs were caused by the opening and closing of the aft field joint of the right-hand SRB. The booster's casing had ballooned under the stress of ignition. As a result of this ballooning, the metal parts of the casing bent away from each other, opening a gap through which hot gases above 5,000 °F (2,760 °C) leaked out. This had occurred in previous launches, but each time the primary o-ring had shifted out of its groove and formed a seal. Although the SRB was not designed to function this way, it appeared to work well enough and Morton-Thiokol changed the design specs to accommodate this process, known as extrusion.

Unfortunately, while extrusion was taking place, hot gases would leak past, a process called blow-by, damaging the o-rings until a seal was made. Investigations into the matter by Morton-Thiokol engineers determined that the amount of damage to the o-rings was directly related to the time it took for extrusion to occur, and that cold weather, by causing the o-rings to harden, lengthened the time of extrusion.

The morning of the disaster the O-ring was too cold to seal in time. The secondary O-ring was not in its seated position due to the metal bending. There was now no barrier to the gases, and both O-rings were vaporized across 70 degrees of arc. However, aluminium oxides from the burned solid propellant sealed the damaged joint, temporarily replacing the O-ring seal before actual flame rushed through the joint."

Answer 3

The "impact" was that the space program actually stopped for too long, as far as I'm concerned.  Those 7 people knew what they were doing way before they got into that machine.  I personally feel that NASA didn't "ignore" any safety feature, as has previously been stated.  

The "Challenger disaster" was indeed a tragedy, but I feel it was a tragedy for all the other 7 astronauts and not just the teacher, Christa McAuliffe.  For none of them actually got to go into space, the "thing" exploded before they got there.