Deadline has learned that The Discovery Channel will simulcast Science Channel’s first foray into scripted television with the TV-movie, Challenger Disaster.
Discovery and Science channel hope to give Challenger Disaster the biggest possible audience by coming their average viewership of 1.3 million viewers and 304,000 viewers respectively.
Challenger Disaster details Feynman’s participation in the Presidential Commission put together to investigate the Challenger explosion. William Hurt plays Feynman – the Caltech physicist/Nobel laureate who, in a televised hearing, demonstrated that the Challenger’s O-ring was not sufficiently pliable, submerging a piece of it in a glass of ice water, causing it to grow stiff and bend, and Feynman to note, “I believe that has some significance for our problem,” according to press reports. At the investigation’s conclusion, Feynman’s report, “Appendix F – Personal Observations on the Reliability of the Shuttle,” was presented to POTUS, independent of the commission’s report.
Challenger Disaster airs November 16th at 9/8c on both Discovery and Science channels.