Challenger: 20 years later

Status
Not open for further replies.
B

BReif

Guest
Today is the 20th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy. I will never forget where I was and what I was doing when the news came on. <br /><br />On this day, NASA honors them, and all fallen astronauts, and so should we. We should remember the high ideals that they flew for, and died for, and never allow their memories to be tarnished by losing the dream of spaceflight.<br /><br />There is a place and a forum for debating the usefulness of the space shuttle, the ISS, and our future in space. If there is one thing, though, that the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia stood for, that was manned space exploration. I beleive that they would want us to continue the dream, to continue to push back the frontiers of space, because they knew and understood how important that is to the future of humanity. <br /><br />So, we honor them, and their memories by continuing to fly, striving to fly safer, and never giving up on the dream that they embraced and stood for, and died for.<br /><br />May God bless them, and those who survive them and still mourn them.
 
V

vogon13

Guest
I was watching Price is Right and a disheveled Dan Rather came on with the news.<br /><br />WAFN.<br /><br />Cried all day.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
D

drwayne

Guest
I didn't see it live. I was in graduate school, and was in the habit of keeping a late night schedule.<br /><br />When I got up, they were talking about it, and then they showed a replay. I must have watched replays 20 or 30 times that day, each time a part of me thinking it wouldn't happen this time.<br /><br />My father worked for IBM during the Apollo days, so I had been around things perhaps more than I wanted to be at that age. Because of that, somehow, I thought Apollo 13 was the pattern - things happen, heros fix them, and everybody comes home. I almost accepted that as an axiom - that the way things work.<br />That thinking just added to the utter shock.<br /><br />I got in my car to go to the Physics building, and turned on the radio - the song playing was "We May Never Pass This Way Again"<br /><br />Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>"1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything."  Admiral Jackie Fisher</p> </div>
 
N

nolirogari

Guest
I was there, in Florida that cold day- in college at the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. I was just off of a flight and walking from the flightline to "A" building for a math class. In 1986 there were far fewer buildings on campus than there are today and knowing what time the vehicle was to launch I stopped and watched the horizon toward the Cape. Sure enough the familure smoke trail and bright flames of the SRBs poped up and began to climb. It was a clear day with unlimited visibility. Then came the billow of smoke that was just very wrong. Next the stray SRBs could be seen zigzaging in every direction. My first thought was "RTLS Abort" and I decided to skip math and run for the TV in the University Center. That was too crowded and so I hiked up to the Avion, student newspaper office. It was then that I learned, with the words that mission control had lost data, the cold fact that during SRB boost, there was no RTLS mode.<br /><br />At first I was in that empty feeling that pilots always get when you've lost a fellow aviator... then I was angry. You see I'd been at the press site for mission 61A and had the chance to meet Christa McAuliffe- a bright and wonderful person who put her life in the hands of the science of flight. She trusted us- our industry, our science. She was not a pilot, but a passenger and now she was gone and I felt as if my industry, my science was at fault. That has always bugged me- after thousands of hours and thousands of passengers brought safely home by my own hands- it still bothers me.<br /><br />So, Dr. Zooch rockets will stand down for the day. In memory of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger and the crew of mission 51L on January 28, 1986 Dr. Zooch Rockets will sell no space shuttle kits on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2006. The shuttle kits sold by me on e-bay have been removed for the day and the link to buy the shuttle kits has been ordered removed from drzooch.com and klydemorris.com for the day. No one other than the few who read
 
B

bpcooper

Guest
Noli, thank you for that account. I can relate, as I am at ER and in fact on the Avion today. I have sent you a private message. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>-Ben</p> </div>
 
R

rubicondsrv

Guest
"I am at ER "<br />I will be there next year. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
B

bpcooper

Guest
Well, if you need any info or opinion, just ask (DEHbeaver0@aol.com). I think you'll like it here. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>-Ben</p> </div>
 
N

nolirogari

Guest
BTW- BPCooper, I love your launch photos! Great web site- now maked as a favorite on my computer. Keep up the great work.
 
B

bpcooper

Guest
Thanks! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>-Ben</p> </div>
 
L

lunatic133

Guest
I was about a month and a half old. I've tried remembering it, but I got nothing. According to my parents, my cousin had recently been born, and we were driving out to visit. We didn't have the radio on in the car, and my aunt told us when we got there. I found pictures, years later, of that day. Eerily, the little baby-suit thing I was wearing quite resembles an EVA suit.<br /><br />Interestingly, my room mate's friend randomly came over tonight and started talking about the movie "A Guy Thing," which I saw with friends three years ago Wednesday to "take my mind off it." (didn't really work)<br /><br />They deserve to be honored for their sacrifice, and I think that we must continue. It was being overly risky that killed them, but being overly risk averse will kill their dreams, and that is in many ways just as bad. Just some food for thought before I go to sleep.<br /><br />I always hated this time of year...
 
F

fatal291

Guest
I was yet to be born 20 years ago seeing how I am 17..<br /><br />It sucks because I can't fully understand how much Apollo Changed things due to the fact I was raised during the Shuttle age (1988).. still sad tho because I saw Columbia
 
D

drwayne

Guest
Well, my perspective is this. We had never had an in-flight accident before Challenger. The closest we had seemingly come previously was Apollo 13, and that was a triumph in the end.<br /><br />Challenger was the first. It destroyed the idea/illusion that many of us had about our people always coming home from spaceflight.<br /><br />Anything after Challenger was not unprecidented. That changes things.<br /><br />Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>"1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything."  Admiral Jackie Fisher</p> </div>
 
V

vogon13

Guest
Chernobyl was to occur in a few months, AIDS crisis was really in the news.<br /><br />Challenger accident was a tremendous shock to our belief in our ability to control things.<br /><br />Major plane crash in LA in August (IIRC) didn't help. Photo of the jet on the way down was really awful.<br /><br />(think that was the Cerritos crash)<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
V

vogon13

Guest
1986 was not a good year for me. I remember too much of it all too well.<br /><br /><br />I remember b/w picture and a color shot some mom took of her kids birthday party with plane going down in background. Color shot might have been of a different crash.<br /><br />There was a PSA (?) BAe 146 downed by a disgruntled employee somewhere in that time frame too, maybe. That was an awful occurence.<br /><br />I think the Colorado Springs 737 crash was later (children witnessed that crash and had horrific descriptions of the impact)<br /><br />Since my seeing the Chicago DC-10 aircraft (from another aircraft in the takeoff line) moments prior to it's crash, I have been a little funny about aircraft accidents. A coworker survived the DC-10 accident in Sioux City, and another was in a 747 that lost a cargo door south of Hawaii. A physician I saw as a child was killed in a Piper Cub crash. We've also had 2 light planes make forced landings on our farm in my lifetime. While hunting, my cousin discovered an overlooked light plane crash roughly 25 years ago.<br /><br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
N

nolirogari

Guest
For those born following the Apollo era- I'd suggest that you get the Spacecraft Films Saturn V set and then watch disk #3 the Quarterly Reports. Watched carefully, that series shows the amazing build-up and work done by nearly 200,000 regular workin' class folks to get the Saturn V to the pad. Along side all of that was a similar effort to get the IB to the pad and similar efforts to get the LEM and CSM to the pads. Overall nearly a half million people worked on Apollo in one way or another. In just 6 years we went from a sub-orbital Redstone ride to being ready- they thought- to reach out and touch the moon. Then came the fire of Apollo 1. I was in 4th grade then, and just taking an interest in spaceflight as opposed to Batman. I knew this was a huge thing and most of the nation was right there, in heart, with the NASA family. Only a few vote grubs, like Walter Mondale, saw it as an opportunity to bleed funds from the program and use that blood money to better their political positions. The rest of us- even 4th graders- were pulling for NASA to get back at it. It was my first real lesson in aviation accidents- you take a loss, you find the problem, you fix the problem and you fly more safely next time. You also keep in mind that the pure fact is it will one day happen again.<br /><br />In the early 1970s I was in my Jr. High School during most of Apollo and watched as the Mondales and media wormed the myth into pop-culture that NASA was just a waste of HUGE sums of money which, if given back to the vote grubs, would cure all of the ghettos, feed all of those hordes of starving children who were wilting in the gutters of every street in America and also make jobs for everyone who wanted a job. No foolin'- that was the popular attitude. With the public mostly brain-washed, the vote grubs eventually got their way and pulled the plug on Apollo, the Saturn rockets and that massive- well functioning machine that you see being created on the Saturn V DVD. The highest estim
 
B

BReif

Guest
Nolirogari: You have said it better than I could. I am in total agreement with you.
 
T

tplank

Guest
Just a view from a non-rocket scientist, non-aviator.<br /><br />I am just barely old enough to remember the Giant Leap for Mankind. Watching it on the old Zenith B&W television made a big impact on me though. I was like so many kids of that day hooked on space from that day forward. I built models and read everything about it I could.<br /><br />In that day, NASA was very generous about sending astronaut photos and other materials to kids who wrote to them. I kept every scrap they sent me and read it all at least ten times. This definitely inspired my working hard at Math and Science and while my career choices went another direction, I’ll always be grateful for the inspiration.<br /><br />Among those materials was early plans for the Space Shuttle. It was very exciting to think about a “space plane”. There is just something natural that the concept appeals to, I think. I suppose because most of us have at least been in a plane and can relate to it. Anyway, the Shuttle was such a glimmering hope to me in my teen years.<br /><br />As the Shuttle entered service, I was entering the workforce. Quickly it seemed “routine” to those of us not in the industry. We knew there were huge risks of course. But this was NASA and NASA was going to deliver the goods. You just had that feeling in your bones.<br /><br />I was sitting in my office on that fateful day when my boss walked in. He said, “Hey, did you hear about the Space Shuttle blowing up?” I got this huge grin on my face because Jim always had great jokes: everything to him was either a straight line or a punch line. I replied, “No. Tell me about it.” Another guy walked in from the hallway and was listening when he said, “No. Really, it blew up.” Both of use were laughing because we knew he was setting us up for the killer punch line.<br /><br />I’ll never forget that precise moment where I realized that Jim was not joking. “Everybody on board died”, he added. The looks on the faces and the energy draining from my body still m <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>The Disenfranchised Curmudgeon</p><p>http://tonyplank.blogspot.com/ </p> </div>
 
C

CalliArcale

Guest
I remember where I was.<br /><br />I was ten. My family had flown out to Montana to visit my grandparents and partake of the excellent skiing at Bridger Bowl Ski Area. In late January, it's typically cold and the slopes aren't crowded; with school in session and temperatures often below zero with harsh winds, only the most dedicated (or insane) were partaking of the slopes.<br /><br />We went to the Alpine chairlift, which at that time was the longest lift in the ski area, going from the base all the way up to the treeline -- probably a couple thousand feet of vertical drop. It had a "midway" where you could get back on to get back to the top without skiing all the way back down to the base. This was popular because the top part of Bridger is more interesting than the bottom part. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> (Alpine has since been reconfigured; the midway was deleted and a new starting point was built a few hundred yards below where the midway access used to be. They also modified another lift and added a quadlift. Good changes, but still somewhat odd to me because I haven't been out there much since the changes.)<br /><br />I come from a family of six. My two littlest brothers were too young to ski and were waiting back at my grandparents' house, so there were four of us out there. As we approached the lift, we paired off. There was no line to speak of, and the lift attendant looked bored already, even so early in the day. To my joy, he was listening to the launch on the radio. We dawdled long enough to hear the countdown get to zero and Challenger clear the tower, then got ready to ride the lift. My mom and I got on first. Since there were so few skiers, the attendant had my dad and brother wait a few chairs so the weight wouldn't be too concentrated on the cable. (The lift can handle it, but it bounces unpleasantly.) And yes, by the time my dad and brother got on, Challenger had been lost.<br /><br />It's a long lift. We went ten minutes thinking <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
 
V

vogon13

Guest
Thunderbirds couldn't have saved either shuttle . . .<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
B

bushwhacker

Guest
Wow Zipi.. I;ve never seen that one before. Thanks for the link
 
C

clint_dreamer

Guest
I was only 5 but I do remember it very clearly. I was watching with my dad and when the accident happened I didn't know anything had gone wrong but my dad was immediately shaken up. Once he explained it to me I was extremely sad, however a new found respect for NASA was born as it never occured to someone like me that going up into space was so dangerous. I still cannot watch the video of the accident as it was one of the first tramatic things that ever happened to me. I can't imagine how the families of the Astronauts felt at that time, but my heart still goes out to every single one of them.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts