On January 27, 1986, the night before the space shuttle Challenger exploded, engineers at the company that built the shuttle warned National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists that the shuttle should not be launched because of predicted cold weather. Fuel seal problems, which had been encountered in earlier flights, were suspected of being associated with low temperatures. It was argued, that the evidence was inconclusive. The decision was made to launch, even though the temperature at launch time was 29 F.
The data in oring.dat consists of temperatures (degrees Fahrenheit) and an indicator of O-ring failures for 24 space shuttle launches prior to the Challenger disaster. (data from "The Statistical Sleuth" F. Ramsey and D. Schafer).
For additional information and discussion refer to
Dalal, Siddhartha R., Fowlkes, Edward B., Hoadley, Bruce. 1989. Risk Analysis of the Space Shuttle: Pre-Challenger Prediction of Failure. Journal of the American Statistical Association 84: 945-957
Lavine, Michael 1991. Problems in Extrapolation Illustrated With Space Shuttle O-ring Data. Journal of the American Statistical Association 86:919-921.
Dalal, Siddhartha R.,Hoadley, Bruce. 1991. Comments on ``Problems in Extrapolation Illustrated With Space Shuttle {O}-ring Data'' Journal of the American Statistical Association 86:921-922.
August 4, 2000