• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Twenty-five Years Ago, 7 people lost their life.

guyver01

guyver01

Lifer
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/28/gallery.challenger.life/index.html?hpt=C1

January 28, 1986

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States, at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC).


740px-Challenger_explosion.jpg
 
750px-Challenger_flight_51-l_crew.jpg


STS-51-L crew:
(front row) Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair;
(back row) Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik.
 
Some experts, including one of NASA's lead investigators Robert Overmyer, believed most if not all of the crew were alive and possibly conscious during the entire descent until impact with the ocean

🙁
 
RR said:
Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But, we've never lost an astronaut in flight; we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy.' They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."

There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, 'He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.' Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'

Thank you.

President Ronald Reagan - January 28, 1986
Click to expand...
:thumbsup:, brave crew members.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEjXjfxoNXM
 
Last edited:
guyver01 said:
Love him or hate him... Ronald Reagan was a great orator.
Click to expand...

Ironic since it was under Reagan the space shuttle program was told it must become "commercially viable" and it was the bean counter he appointed as NASA adminstrator that was directly responsible for the disaster.

The engineers had it right. They launched only because of political pressure.
 
  • Myth 1: Challenger Exploded

    Photograph by Michele McDonald, Virginian-Pilot/AP
    A cloud of vapor engulfs the space shuttle Challenger in a picture taken on the morning of January 28, 1986. The disaster claimed the lives of all seven astronauts on board, including high school teacher Christa McAuliffe, and brought NASA's human spaceflight program to an abrupt but temporary halt.
    Now, on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, the story of what exactly happened to Challenger remains clouded by faulty memories and misinformation.
    For example, one commonly repeated myth is that Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
    "The shuttle itself did not explode," said Valerie Neal, space shuttle curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. "I think the origin of that myth is that it looked like an explosion, and the media called it an explosion."
    Even NASA officials mistakenly called the event an explosion as the tragedy unfurled. For example, NASA public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt said at the time that "we have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded."
    Investigations would later reveal, however, that what actually happened was much more complicated, curator Neal said.
    The space shuttle's external fuel tank had collapsed, releasing all its liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. As the chemicals mixed, they ignited to create a giant fireball thousands of feet in the air. The shuttle itself, however, was still intact at this point and still rising, but it was quickly becoming unstable.
    "The shuttle orbiter was trying very hard to stay on its path, because it sensed something very irregular was happening underneath it," Neal said.
    "Finally it broke off the tank and—moving so fast but without its boosters and tank—it couldn't tolerate the aerodynamic forces.
    "The tail and the main engine section broke off. Both of the wings broke off. The crew cabin and the forward fuselage separated from the payload pay, and those big chunks fell out of the sky, and they further broke up when they hit the water."
    —Ker Than
    Published January 27, 2011
  • Myth 2: Challenger Crew Died Instantly

    Photograph by Steve Helber, AP
    The seven-astronaut crew for the space shuttleChallenger's fatal mission smile for the cameras as they leave for the launch pad 25 years ago, on January 27, 1986.
    Another myth—popular perhaps because it is, in a way, comforting—is that Challenger's seven astronauts died instantly when the shuttle "exploded."
    But the shuttle crew was not blown up, nor did they die when the shuttle broke apart. Although the exact cause of death is unknown, many experts now think the astronauts were alive until the crew cabin hit the Atlantic Ocean at more than 200 miles (321 kilometers) an hour.
    "They were still strapped in their seats when they were found," the National Air and Space Museum's Neal said.
    What's less clear is whether the astronauts were conscious during their final moments. A NASA medical report concluded that "it is possible, but not certain, that the crew lost consciousness due to an in-flight loss of crew module pressure."

    (Also see "Space Shuttle Columbia Disintegrates, Crew Lost.")
    Published January 27, 2011
  • Myth 3: Millions Watched on Live TV

    Photograph by Richard Drew, AP
    In the hours and days following the disaster, footage of the Challenger accident was "replayed incessantly" on the major television networks, Neal said. This could explain why many people "remember" witnessing Challenger's destruction live on television, when in fact what they probably saw was a replay.
    "It's false that most people saw the disaster live on TV," Neal said.
    For one thing, most of the major TV networks did not broadcast the launch live. For another, the launch occurred on a Tuesday at 11:39 a.m., eastern time, when most people across the country were at work.
    The handful of people who did see the tragedy unfold on live television were watching it on NASA's channel via satellite dishes—technology that relatively few people had at the time—or on CNN.
    Published January 27, 2011
  • Myth 4: Cold Caused the Disaster

    Photograph from Reuters
    Icicles hang from the space shuttle launch tower at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a picture taken during an inspection on the morning of the Challenger disaster.
    Temperatures on the day of Challenger's launch were the in the 30s Fahrenheit, or below freezing Celsius—the coldest ever recorded for a shuttle launch, shuttle historian Neal said.
    A common myth is that cold temperatures were the reason for the failure of a rubber o ring, which helped seal a crucial joint in the shuttle's right solid rocket booster (SRB). But blaming the o ring failure on the cold is an oversimplification, Neal said.
    "Temperature alone wasn't the problem," she said. The engineers "had seen evidence of partial o ring failures before on launch days that were not as cold."
    Investigations later determined that the root cause of the accident was a leak in the SRB joint, which had allowed superheated gas to escape and burn through the booster and the external tank, causing structural collapse.
    "The post-flight analysis indicated that the cold temperature was certainly a contributing factor. But so was the [SRB] joint's design and [NASA's] decision-making process. It was like a perfect storm of combined circumstances."
    Published January 27, 2011
  • Myth 5: Shuttles Now Have Ejection Seats

    Photograph by NASA/AP
    Startled birds seem to surround the space shuttleChallenger as it rises on a column of exhaust vapor from Kennedy Space Center in Florida—moments before the shuttle's destruction 25 years ago.
    Another Challenger myth Neal has heard repeatedly is that NASA ordered ejection seats built into the other shuttles following the disaster. But ejection seats wouldn't have saved all of the Challenger astronauts, and their presence may even have been dangerous to the crew.
    Ejection seats "are heavy and cumbersome, and they are themselves a safety hazard, because they have pyrotechnics in them," Neal said. And even if ejection seats had been installed in Challenger, she added, "they would have only been there for the commander and the copilot, the ones actually flying the shuttle."
    Following the Challenger accident, NASA did require that the other remaining shuttles be outfitted with a bail-out system, which consists of a ten-foot-long (three-meter-long) "escape pole" that can be deployed during emergencies.
    Astronauts can "hook on to the pole, slide out to the end, drop off under the shuttle wing, and then parachute to safety," Neal explained. A major limitation of the bail-out system, however, is that it is designed to work only in very specific emergency situations.
    "The orbiter has to be horizontal, and it has to be in stable flight at a certain speed and altitude," Neal said. The bail-out system "would not have been of any value in the Challenger situation, because the shuttle was pointed straight up and accelerating" when the accident happened.
    (Related pictures: "Space Shuttle Discovery's Milestone Moments.")
    Published January 27, 2011
 
While it says it was a myth that many watched it live, I *did* see it live. I was in elementary school and since there was a teacher going to space we watched it. All of us sitting in the hallways with TV's on carts showing it.
 
Printer Bandit said:
They died because some engineers slacked off.
Click to expand...

The engineers were aware of the issue and brought it to the attention of management. NASA management pressured them due to the bad publicity they would have gotten for scrubbing a high profile mission until they gave an ok. One report claims that the higher ups at NASA told the engineers responsible for determining if it was safe to launch to "stop thinking like engineers and start thinking like managers".

It's a case study now in pretty much every engineering ethics course out there now. The point of the case study is that if you have a valid concern about safety you shouldn't give in to pressure about money/publicity/etc.
 
techs said:
Ironic since it was under Reagan the space shuttle program was told it must become "commercially viable" and it was the bean counter he appointed as NASA adminstrator that was directly responsible for the disaster.
Click to expand...

The shuttle program under-delivered and was always significantly over budget. Politicians should have been demanding that it become commercially viable all along. The blame for this disaster rests on the shoulders of NASA's management. The engineers were correct and management ignored them.
 
The space shuttle didn't break apart.... the boosters exploded. The launch was green lighted despite warnings about the o-rings shrinking. The ones responsible are living out their lives.
 
IndyColtsFan said:
The shuttle program under-delivered and was always significantly over budget. Politicians should have been demanding that it become commercially viable all along. The blame for this disaster rests on the shoulders of NASA's management. The engineers were correct and management ignored them.
Click to expand...

That's a conflicting statement. Management ignored the engineers because they were under orders to make the shuttle commercially viable.(or maybe that was your point?)

In fact, the shuttle was never going to be commercially viable. When NASA looked around after the end of the Apollo program for a new mission they knew they couldn't get funding for a Mars program. So, they went with the shuttle idea. To get Congress to go along, they promised commercial viability, which they knew to be impossible. Plus they had to agree to meet the needs of the military.

It wasn't until Reagan came along that they tried to make it commercially viable, an impossible task. Also, the military saw an opportunity under the hugely increasing military budgets to get their own shuttle program, so they started demanding increased capabilities from the shuttle, without having to give NASA any money to meet these demands.

All in all, a clusterfuck that killed 7 people.
 
I remember being in a science class taking a test. One of the kids in the class was listening to the radio with ear-phones and a hoody-jacket to hide them. He interrupted the class to tell about the shuttle. The teacher kicked him out to the dean's office and told him that he would fail that test. The next day he took the remainder of his test under the orders of the dean.
 
I remember I was a freshman in high school in the middle of science class when our principal popped on the PA system and very emotionally reported the death of all 7 astronauts. Christa McAuliffe had just spoken at our school a couple of months before, and she spoke of two two young children being excited but scared about her mission.

When I heard the news, that the first thing everyone in our class thought of, and everyone started tearing up. It's still an emotional memory for me after all these years 🙁
 
techs said:
That's a conflicting statement. Management ignored the engineers because they were under orders to make the shuttle commercially viable.(or maybe that was your point?)
Click to expand...

That was my point, but one launch wasn't going to make or break it and launching at the expense of safety would never help them achieve commercial viability (if you assume it could be commerciall viable in the first place). At the end of the day, in this particular case, the commercial viability of the program had little impact on their decision to make this particular launch. The publicity of having the first teacher in space and the fact that launch had been moved already was what caused them to launch.

In fact, the shuttle was never going to be commercially viable. When NASA looked around after the end of the Apollo program for a new mission they knew they couldn't get funding for a Mars program. So, they went with the shuttle idea. To get Congress to go along, they promised commercial viability, which they knew to be impossible. Plus they had to agree to meet the needs of the military.
Click to expand...

Yes, obviously it was never going to be commercially viable and I think NASA knew it as well but nevertheless, made outlandish projections to secure funding. IIRC (too lazy to verify), they claimed they were going to have 1 to 2 launches per MONTH when the program was fully established.

It wasn't until Reagan came along that they tried to make it commercially viable
Click to expand...

NASA always promoted the commercial viability of the shuttle even before Reagan and had pie-in-the-sky projections of ultra-cheap satellite launches, obscenely low $/lb cost figures to push cargo to orbit, and provided completely incorrect guidance on the number of shuttle launches per year. I don't think Reagan saying "Look, you guys told us that this thing was commercially viable and you need to deliver" was a wrong course of action.

Keep in mind that the shuttle program didn't even have a single orbital launch until Reagan was already in office (4/81 was the first launch, IIRC). So in fact, it was during the Reagan administration that the actual reality of the shuttle program's financial pitfalls became evident. After several years of running way overbudget, missing launch dates, etc, the government was correct in holding NASA accountable and pushing them to cut costs. While tradeoffs could have been made, NASA's management chose to make the unacceptable tradeoff of safety for making the launch date. They had seen the o-ring issues on previous flights and had dismissed the engineer's claims as being too conservative. Unfortunately for them, the root cause was a faulty design in the SRB joint where the o-ring resided and that, in combination with various other factors (such as the temperature), caused the disaster.

My own opinion on the shuttle program hasn't changed over the years. I think NASA should've pursued other programs.

At any rate, I was in high school when the disaster happened and will never, ever forget it.
 
Last edited:
Im too young to have seen it when it happened, but I have heard all about it.

Last year I had the opportunity to listen to the single Morton-Thiokol engineer who raised a red flag prior to the launch. He subsequently lost his job. It was definitely very interesting to hear him speak
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top