[somenameforme]

Let alone on launch. It's amusing that NASA is supposed to be this highly conservative safety-first environment, yet went with a design featuring two enormous solid rocket boosters. We knew better than this even during the Saturn era was very much a move fast and break things period of development.

[bluGill]

There is nothing wrong with solid rocker boosters for that application. The issue is they failed to figure out figure out the limits and launched when it was too cold. (they also should have investigated when they saw unexpected non-fatal seal issues)

Solid boosters are more complex and so Saturn could not have launched on time if they tried them. So for Saturn with a (arbitrary) deadline not doing them was the right call. Don't confuse right call with best call though: we know on hindsight that Saturn launched on time, nobody knows what would have happened if they had used solid boosters.

[somenameforme]

I wasn't referencing Challenger in particular. I'm speaking more generally. SRBs are inherently fire and forget. This simply increases the risk factor of rockets substantially, and greatly complicates the risks and dangers in any sort of critical scenario. In modern times when we're approaching the era of rapid complete reuse, they're also just illogical since they're not meaningfully reusable.

[bluGill]

The SRBs were resued. Like everything on the shuttle there was far more rebuilding needed before they were reused, but they were resued.

[somenameforme]

Yeah, but that qualifier you put there means I think you need to frame it as "reused." They dragged a couple of giant steel tubes out of the ocean after a salt water bath and then completely refurbished and "reused" them. It's technically reuse, but only just enough to fit the most technical definition of the word, and certainly has no place in the modern goal of launching, landing, inspecting/maintaining (ideally in a time frame of hours at the most), and then relaunching.

The only real benefit of SRBs is cost. They're dirt cheap and provide a huge amount of bang for your buck. But complete reuse largely negates this benefit because reusing an expensive product is cheaper, in the longrun, than repeatedly disposing (or "reusing") a cheap product.