Even with the numerous technological improvements these disasters seem to be inevitable. The cause of the accidents may not be the fault of the technology though. The Columbia crash, for example, should be blamed on the ignorance of the upper-level managers and NASA scientist. They had considered hundreds of problems, literally, that might threaten the craft's safety, but they decided to launch it anyway. There were also many previous damages that the Columbia obtained in its twenty-two years of use, such as snapped pins and broken foam. Individuals within NASA felt that if it caused no problem the first time it must be safe.
             On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds into its flight, killing the seven members aboard, including a teacher. This accident was believed to be caused by, believe it or not, the temperature that day. Due to the cooler temperatures than experienced on previous launches the O-rings, which seal two field joints together, were changed. Scientist said that the two different O-rings were not significantly different. So if NASA would have been patient and delayed the launch of the Challenger to a warmer day the lives of the astronauts, and one very unlucky teacher would not have been needlessly lost.
             Besides the two more commonly known accidents of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, there have been a number of other accidents around the world that have claimed many lives. On March 18, 1980, a Russian spacecraft exploded on the launch pad while being refueled killing fifty. None of the astronauts were killed only the unexpecting engineers and mechanics. Another accident occurred June 1971. This disaster was very mysterious at the time when three astronauts were found dead in the Soyuz II after an automatic landing. Further investigation suggested that the cause of death was loss of pressurization in the shuttle during re-entry into the Earth's atmospher
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