Columbia Reaction

[ascan1984]

I was reading Mike Mullane's last night and in it was a powerfull description of his reaction over the year and beyond of the challenger disaster. It made me think. How did people in the space program react to the columbia disaster in comparrison to challenger. I apollogise if this question may cause offence. It is not intended to. I was devistated and still am as we all are by the columbia disaster even though i do not work with the program.

 

[qso1]

Hard to really judge because of the fact that one cannot really go take the pulse of the Nation as it were unless the pulse taker can travel around and interview large numbers of people to gauge the effects.<br /><br />Second hand info from the media, the coverage that I recall was roughly the same as for Challenger. CNN covers human spaceflight as objectively as I've seen in recent years and they covered it about as extensivelly as Challenger.<br /><br />I say about as extensivelly because a part of me tends to believe that maybe the Columbia accident did not recieve as much coverage. That could be just me however. Both are tragedies equal in their human loss.<br /><br />But it should be remembered that these flight crews would ask that the program go on once the reason for the disaster has become known and corrected. I often hear we have become a risk averse nation and it seems to be true. But as long as humans undertake inherently dangerous activities, the risk will always be there. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[edkyle98]

I worked at KSC when Challenger failed. My reaction then <br />was the typical "it can't be" astonishment. When I woke <br />up that morning in February three years ago and saw the <br />news about Columbia, my reaction was "Well, it was only <br />a matter of time".<br /><br /> - Ed Kyle

 

[mogster]

The more recent Columbia accident didn't receive the same UK media coverage that Challenger did years ago. If you took a street poll from people in the UK I wouldn't be surprised if more than 75% weren't aware that the Challenger reentry accident had occurred. I base this on the level of space program knowledge my friends, family and work colleagues have. <br /><br />I think the film of Challenger exploding is what people remember, the Columbia burnup didn't have the same strong visual element and so was less interesting to the media. Sad but true.<br /><br /><br />

 

[CalliArcale]

I dunno, the amateur videos of it breaking up were haunting. Not as haunting as that one early picture of a crewman's scorched helmet, lying by itself in a forest. NASA squashed subsequent images of the crew and their clothing, out of respect for the dead and their families, but that one image, the only one that got out, really is haunting.<br /><br />You're right, though, that the Challenger video is more powerful. All seems well, especially with the live-recorded audio announcing the particulars of the ascent. I've got a DVD of the Rogers Commission results and all of the videos of the event. It's.... You don't breathe much while watching it. You just feel this huge pit open up in the bottom of your stomach. It's so much faster than the Columbia one. With Columbia, it was this slow realization that things were not right. With Challenger, you knew instantly that things were bad because you could *see* it. <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>