Seven people died aboard the Challenger including the first school teacher to go into space. They were Commander Francis Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, mission specialists Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Judith Resnik, payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, and school teacher Christa McAuliffe. – More here [PatriotRetort]
“Uh-oh!”
— Pilot Michael Smith
I was on final approach to Honolulu Intl. Airport when they announced it over the intercom.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Not one person talked to anyone as they disembarked from the jet.
That was the strangest thing I ever heard on an emergency broadcast radio.
I was at work early that morning and a friend from our tech training group who had televisions, called me. Like Tsunami’s comment, we watched in silence, unbelieving.
Our family went to the big island a week later. Hawai’i was in mourning as they were having memorials to Ellison Onizuka. I’ll never forget that photograph of the launch spectators taken before the explosion.
Too bad NASA shitbags accepted a 1 in 10 catastrophic failure probability by pretending it was 1 in 10,000.
Yay big government!
Terrible tragedy, I saw the very first STS-1 launch in person.
Though some humor did come out of the disaster.
NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts
I had worked the evening shift the night before; I had arrived home, read a book for a bit before going to bed (the TV went off the air after Letterman’s show). I had WBUR on the radio that night for the overnight jazz show; I awoke to the NPR news report that the shuttle had exploded; I thought I was still dreaming.
Several years later I trained a new kid who had gone to school in Framingham; both he and his wife had been in classes taught by CM. He couldn’t talk about the incident without tears; she was a much loved and popular teacher.
RIP Challenger Crew.
I was in high school Geometry class, when they announced the explosion over the intercom. I remember a week or two earlier we had taken part in some kind of phone teleconference thing, where Christa McAuliffe was fielding questions from school kids.
I was rebuilding an engine for a guy I rented my shop from when they announced it. He was the captain of a volunteer fire department and the announcement came over one of his radios as we were talking. There wasn’t much to say after that. Just wondered what the hell happened.
They found out later that there was a fuel leak caused by O-ring shrinkage or slippage. I have looked at O-ring seals with suspicion ever since.
I was installing a home alarm system in some lady’s house in the San Fernando Valley.
We all stopped working to watch the launch on her TV.
It was like getting kicked right in the stomach.
It brought to mind how dangerous this endeavor is, and how large, heavy, and metallurgic-ally pure Brass, are the balls of those brave enough to climb on top of a rocket filled with the most flammable substances on Earth, then let some other guy light it off so they can ride it up into orbit at velocities exceeding 16 thousand mph.
I guess the thing that really got me was our failure to ensure the vehicle was safe. We are Americans, dammit! Had this occurred at Star City, I wouldn’t have been surprised; we all knew the soviets played fast and loose with safety, rockets or nuclear subs. How the fuck did we miss that defect? How the fuck did we not perform rudimentary maintenance?
Sure, there was the Apollo I disaster at the launch site (Velcro) that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee; this stuff happens when the envelope is being pushed. The Challenger mission was ‘routine,’ so safe a school teacher was assigned to it.
It was here that I lost my faith in NASA, if not the government. They have a lot of work to do before they will enjoy public trust and support again (hint: Muslim outreach and global warming BS is not going to help).
A few years back they discovered that the flight deck hit the ocean intact; those crewmen rode that bird to their deaths. They were not killed ‘instantly.’
Horrible.
The defect with the seal was identified by a contract engineer who told NASA it was too dangerous to launch in weather that cold. The big wigs at NASA decided to launch anyway. Thanks, Big Government!
If you think that’s funny then Fuck You
I worked for a large metro hospital. Full-time employees had to park off site and rode a shuttle to the back door. When my boss came into the office, she said, “The shuttle just exploded!” I asked if anyone was hurt and she looked at me like I had two heads.
She said, “The SPACE shuttle,” and I sat down hard and cried for five minutes.
The space program survived the loss of two shuttles and their crews, but could not survive another catastrophic disaster: The presidency of Barack Hussein Obama
I was watching the launch while waiting for hubby to come home for lunch. As the shuttle exploded, my oldest (almost 3-1/2 years old at the time) squealed out, “fireworks”. Hubby came home to me doubled over in tears. 🙁
Otherr dates I will never forget:
JFK assassination; RFK shot; RR shot
I worked in the chemical industry and the design of o-rings was a big deal. They kept dangerous fluids in pipes. We knew all about temperature and shrinkage and leaks. Very basic stuff. We were outraged that NASA engineers could made such a pedestrian mistake.
It’s kinda weird, but I recall encountering a lot more sick jokes in the weeks after the shuttle disaster than today. It just goes to show that sometimes people use humor to get through a tragedy, and that’s a very normal and human thing to do, for those who are not very closely associated with the event. So instead of saying, “Too soon?”, in this case we should probably be saying “Too late.”.