Just about 20 years ago, I was doing my breakfast dishes, getting ready to go to class, and Wendy Tokuda came on the local NBC affiliate to report the explosion. My tv was an old 14 inch b/w set. And still it was stunning to see.
Mission Control: Engines throttling up, three engines now at a hundred and four percent.
Capcom: Challenger, go at throttle up.
Challenger: Roger, go at throttle up.
A little burst of static accompanied a big burst of fire in the sky near Cape Canaveral 20 years ago today. The space shuttle Challenger had exploded just 73 seconds after launch:
Mission Control: We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded. Flight director confirms that.
The explosion killed all seven members of Challenger’s crew: astronauts Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, and Ron McNair; engineer Gregory Jarvis, and teacher Christa McAuliffe. An investigation revealed problems with the booster design, and with the way NASA made decisions about shuttle safety. The problems resulted in the first loss of American astronauts during a spaceflight.
Hours after the disaster, President Ronald Reagan recalled the crew and its mission:
Reagan: Perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun — we’re still pioneers. They — the members of the Challenger crew — were pioneers. The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted — it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored 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 their journey and waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of Earth, to touch the face of God.
From Stardate.
Do you remember where you were?
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