Anniversary of the Challenger Explosion

[knight1fox3]

Approaching the 30-year mark.  Anyone feeling old yet?

Re-watching the video is darn-right chilling:  http://www.miamiherald.com/news/article56681918.html

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/news/nation-world/national/article56594538.html

 

[Ken PE 3.1]

Sitting in social studies in 6th grade, seems so long ago.

 

[matt267 PE]

Waiting for my half day of kindergarten to start seems so long ago. 

 

[kevo_55]

I think I was in 5th grade.

All of 5th grade classrooms were in the hall and the teachers set up the TV to watch it. To be honest, I didn't understand what happened when it exploded. The teachers just shut it off and we went back to class.

There must have been 100 kids sitting down in the hallway watching that tv.

 

[goodal]

I remember the explosion pretty clearly because I was big into astronauts at 6.  I had a toy shuttle that I would pretend to fly around the house.  After the explosion, my mom says she saw me throwing it up and watch it fall to the ground over and over.  She asked what I was doing and I said "playing astronaut."  

 

[Road Guy]

It was pretty horrific, My parents were teachers and my dad had made it to the last 500 group before he was cut (when they did the open call for teachers) it just made the whole thing a little more creepy feeling...

Wonder if NASA engineers were PE's instead of just "really smart rocket scientist" if they would have been able to better communicate the problems they suspected to management?

 

[MetsFan]

I was in Kindergarten, but I don't remember watching it live.  I remember seeing it in the papers the next day.  

 

[P-E]

Yikes I was starting high school.   

I think I was home sick that day. 

 

[snickerd3]

I think I was in first grade if I remember correctly.

 

[thekzieg]

I was also definitely alive for this...apparently.

 

[envirotex]

Yikes I was starting high school.   

I think I was home sick that day. 

Me too.  Home sick that day and I was watching it on TV because of Christa McAuliffe.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

I was also definitely alive for this...apparently.

I don't remember it when I was a kid.  I was in Kindergarten at the time.

 

[mevans154]

I was a Senior in High School.  It is in the "Year in Review" section of my yearbook.

 

[envirotex]

Wonder if NASA engineers were PE's instead of just "really smart rocket scientist" if they would have been able to better communicate the problems they suspected to management?

Along those lines...http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/28/464744781/30-years-after-disaster-challenger-engineer-still-blames-himself

 

[roadwreck]

I watched this yesterday.  It goes a little more in depth then just stating that the O-rings were to blame (ultimately they were).  But there was a a bit of good luck, and bad luck involved that day (the O-ring failure should have resulted in the shuttle exploding on the launch pad). 

 

[Dark Knight]

^^^ Very good report. Thanks for posting it.

 

[goodal]

I heard an NPR report with one of the guys that tried to get them to cancel launch because they knew it was too cold and that the O-rings would fail.  It was very sad.  He's 89 now and you could tell he still beats himself up over not being able to convince NASA to scrub the flight.  He said that if God ever made a mistake it was allowing him to be the one to try to get the flight canceled.

 

[DVINNY]

I was also in 5th grade, and watching it live in class.  It was devastating at the time, that's for sure.   Although, not quite at the level of 9/11, it is still one of those events/moments that you remember where you were when it happened.

 

[SNAPE/SMOTT PE]

Even with this and other incidents that happen in the space program, my dream job is still to be an astronaut. Something my mom would argue with me about growing up, because she thought it was too dangerous. I told her that I had a higher change of dying from a car accident. She would still tell me it was dangerous, and anytime anything bad happened, reminded me of those dangers. I'd rather die doing something I love, than never do that thing out of fear.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

When you compare the number of total astronauts/cosmonauts versus the number who have died in launch accidents to the number of people who die in car accidents versus the number of drivers, I'd say you're far more likely to die in a spacecraft accident.  But that would be purely because of low sample size on the former.  When you replace the space traveller population with air travel, air travel beats drivers by a large margin.