28th January 2011 - Challenger's 25th Anniversary

[Davros]

I was working at Toys By Roy in Southglenn Mall that day. Within hours we had sold out all of our Estes Rocket Space shuttles to kids from the local high school many of whom asked how to get it to blow up.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I was a sophmore in college and remember walking by a tv and watching it blow up.

The TV blew up?

(joking)

*rimshot*

 

[JiNX-01]

I learned about the shuttle explosion from my city editor.

She had called me just before noon (back then I worked 'til about 1 a.m. and didn't go to bed until 2 or 3 a.m.) to tell me about it.
She didn't say it was during the launch so I thought it had blown up on the pad (I admit, it didn't even occur to me that the crew might be on board). As soon as I hung up, I turned on the TV and learned it was so much worse than I could ever have imagined.

I remember Reagan's brilliant address to the nation.

I went to Kennedy Space Center in August 2003 and saw the memorial. There was a cloth covering a panel pending the service for the Columbia crew. It's one of the saddest places I've ever visited.

 

[Kirby]

I was working at Toys By Roy in Southglenn Mall that day.

Southglenn Mall in Littleton, Colorado? I worked at Prints Plus in Southglenn.

 

[scotpens]

I was working at Toys By Roy in Southglenn Mall that day. Within hours we had sold out all of our Estes Rocket Space shuttles to kids from the local high school many of whom asked how to get it to blow up.

That’s just sick. Way too soon.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ You think that's bad...I heard my first shuttle joke the day the disaster happened.

 

[JiNX-01]

^ You think that's bad...I heard my first shuttle joke the day the disaster happened.

That's sickening. How did you handle it?

 

[Peach Wookiee]

It's odd... I don't remember it... But I do remember the TV movies... And I tear up when I hear President Reagan's speech from that night.
I remember the destruction of the Columbia, though...

 

[Sector 7]

When the Challenger disaster happened, I was in a mall away from home. There was a tobacco shop I always visited whenever I was in town. The owner had the TV on and I was watching the launch live while wishing my best friend a happy birthday on the phone. I remember feeling so alone... realizing that everyone close to me was miles away...

 

[MHT1138]

I was in 4th grade. Our regular teacher came to pick us up from art, she told us that The space shuttle had blown up. One of my classmates asked if the astronauts had died? when she said yes, he asked even the teacher? My older brother was home sick that day and watched the disaster live. I remember watching the news about how Christa McAuliffe's 5th or 6th class watched it live as well, which must have been devastating.
Years late I attended an education conference where Barbara Morgan, who was the alternate teacher and who did all the Training with McAuliffe. spoke. It was so interesting to see her pictures and hear her talk about the experience and little bit about the disaster as well.

 

[J.T.B.]

I was in 10th grade, in a geography class. The classroom was actually in the shop area, for some scheduling reason, and I remember it had a tile floor instead of the carpeting like the majority of classrooms. The teacher, Mr. Palmer, was out of the room as we studied or took a test or something. When he came back in, he said "Did you hear about the space shuttle?" As if we could have heard anything sitting there in class. We all said no, what about it? He said something about it taking off and "Then it blew up." There was a kind of general murmur and then a girl named Amy said "Were they killed?" Palmer said "Of course they were killed! It was like they were riding a bomb!" As I remember, we went on with class shortly after that. IIRC when the class let out I went by a classroom that had a TV and watched a bit, and then in one of the later classes we watched the coverage.

^ You think that's bad...I heard my first shuttle joke the day the disaster happened.

I remember hearing one in the first couple of days, too. It was a play on the "Gimme a light. I meant a Bud Light!" commercials that were popular at the time. And it wasn't too long before news outlets started running pieces about the jokes, with the general consensus among psychologists and the like that it was a coping mechanism for some people.

--Justin

 

[Neroon]

I've been avoiding recounting this.... why , I can't really say. I never knew anyone on the flight. I had no investment other than my abiding interest in the US Space Program. But it was still painful. I was at work on my very first job, trying to research problems with software used over in the accounting area. And then the word spread as someone mentioned a radio report.

Years later I met Christa Macauliffe's mother, and could scarcely get a word out of my mouth. She just smiled in that graceful way and said "thank you".

 

[Holdfast]

Thanks for all the great replies; I read them all.

 

[Jadzia]

I was too young to know anything about it when it happened, so for me it has always been part of history. As I learned little details of the event, my thoughts about it unravelled something like this:

- rockets are dangerous things.
- technology is fallable.
- the astronauts must have been aware of the risks, and must have thought the mission was important enough to accept those risks.
- wondering why putting people into space for a few days is so important, and wondering if those risks are justified for what little appears to be being gained..

 

[tomalak301]

I can't believe it's been 25 years since Challenger, and also this stretch starts a bit of a week of tragedy in terms of the space program, with Apollo 1 and Columbia. However, we can have threads for those later because this is about the Challenger.

I was 1 year old, so I've learned about it over time. However, I think the thing I associate it the most with (And I mean no disrespect in saying this) was Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Before the Movie, they Dedicated the film with this quote:

The Cast and Crew of Star Trek wish to dedicate this film to the men and women of the spaceship Challenger whose courageous spirit shall live through the 23rd century and Beyond...

I've always been a proponent of the Space Program but understand that exploration comes with risk. May Challenger never be forgotten and the Space Program find a way to endure again.

 

[RandyS]

I was a sophomore in HS. I'm on my way out of the cafeteria when my best friend Bob shows up and says "Hey, the shuttle blew up!"

I was 16 and a freshman in high school, and I had a similar experience. I was in the first period of the day, and one of my teachers from the later periods stuck her head in the classroom door and yelled at the top of her lungs exactly what Bob did.

 

[ThankQ]

I was in 2nd grade. This was the first "You remember what you were doing" moment of my life.

For those of us old enough, you'll also remember 1986 was the year of the (underwhelming) return of Comet Halley. I was already starting to show an interest in science, particularly astronomy (cosmology really, but in 2nd grade, astronomy), and I'm certain that these two events in tandem are what solidified science and cosmology into a lifelong obsession for me.

Watching the video can still make me cry.

Time Magazine put out a special issue in Feb '86 devoted to the mission and crew. I had that thing until the seams and staples wore out. I was recently rummaging through a used bookstore and came across a copy of that issue. I just had to buy it. Looking through it again, it really was only good for the crew bios. We know so much more of the technical specifics now that it has little value there.

the astronauts must have been aware of the risks, and must have thought the mission was important enough to accept those risks.

They were aware that there were risks, but not how risky it really was. As it turned out, the incredible event wasn't the disaster itself, but that they'd gotten through 24 missions without catastrophic failure.
-------

For those of you who haven't, you must read the Feynman addendum to the Rogers Commision report. You can find it here:

http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.html

The origin and consequences of the erosion and blow-by were not understood. They did not occur equally on all flights and all joints; sometimes more, and sometimes less. Why not sometime, when whatever conditions determined it were right, still more leading to catastrophe?

In spite of these variations from case to case, officials behaved as if they understood it, giving apparently logical arguments to each other often depending on the "success" of previous flights. For example. in determining if flight 51-L was safe to fly in the face of ring erosion in flight 51-C, it was noted that the erosion depth was only one-third of the radius. It had been noted in an experiment cutting the ring that cutting it as deep as one radius was necessary before the ring failed. Instead of being very concerned that variations of poorly understood conditions might reasonably create a deeper erosion this time, it was asserted, there was "a safety factor of three." This is a strange use of the engineer's term ,"safety factor." If a bridge is built to withstand a certain load without the beams permanently deforming, cracking, or breaking, it may be designed for the materials used to actually stand up under three times the load. This "safety factor" is to allow for uncertain excesses of load, or unknown extra loads, or weaknesses in the material that might have unexpected flaws, etc. If now the expected load comes on to the new bridge and a crack appears in a beam, this is a failure of the design. There was no safety factor at all; even though the bridge did not actually collapse because the crack went only one-third of the way through the beam. The O-rings of the Solid Rocket Boosters were not designed to erode. Erosion was a clue that something was wrong. Erosion was not something from which safety can be inferred.

And the great closing, for which you need to read the entire addendum to fully appreciate:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

 

[Davros]

I was working at Toys By Roy in Southglenn Mall that day.

Southglenn Mall in Littleton, Colorado? I worked at Prints Plus in Southglenn.

That's the one. I was the only person they moved over from the Southwest Plaza store when they closed that one down.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ You think that's bad...I heard my first shuttle joke the day the disaster happened.

I remember hearing one in the first couple of days, too. It was a play on the "Gimme a light. I meant a Bud Light!" commercials that were popular at the time.

That's the same one I heard!

 

[pookha]

i was at work and someone said the rocket blew up.
for a moment i didnt make the connection and then it hit me.
there seemed to be a quiet consensus that all the people who had radios put them on the same news channel so all could hear the reports.
some people went out for lunch to a drug store that had tvs.
i knew the only way i was going to get through the day was to avoid seeing it until i got home.