30 Years Ago Today

[NSSD70ACe]

30 Years ago, Cape Canaveral, FL. Where were you?

The Space Shuttle Challenger, while in the process of lifting off, suffered a failure in the Orbiter's O-Ring seal in the starboard solid rocket booster, causing a structural failure in the tank and explosion. All 7 crewmembers were killed in the disaster, but were believed to have survived the initial explosion and died on impact when the crew cabin hit the water. They were:

Michael J. Smith
Dick Scobee
Ronald McNair
Ellison Onizuka
Christa McAuliffe
Gregory Jarvis
Judith Resnik

May they rest in peace.

[J T]

Sitting in the kitchen at my parents house chatting with my mom when it happened. We were both

[dmitzel]

Was in high school that day (Class of '88) and remember the TV on in the school commons showing the live coverage of the disaster. We all stopped to watch in awe... having been born after any previous NASA fatal accidents, and the Shuttle program was so "routine" (more like scheduled airline flights than missions) we were all caught off guard that it could happen. Of course, being 16 at the time you think you'll live forever - not mature enough to realize how fragile life is.

[SousaKerry]

That would have been 4th grade. We went to another teacher's room to watch it with her class as there was a teacher on board. We watched as the thing exploded live. Later in the day they had us all in the auditorium watching the news.

Of coarse being in 4th grade and being the school hating 10 year old that I was, I am sure I was wishing that my teacher was going up and that she would have exploded too. I can't even remember that teacher's name now.

[Garry K]

Seeing as I'm an old electronics technician, my first thought when the space shuttle blew up was that some technician probably found some problem, but was overruled when they suggested holding the launch until the problem was corrected. And that's basically exactly what happened, what with some O-rings not sealing properly in the cold.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shu ... r_disaster:

Forecasts for January 28 predicted an unusually cold morning, with temperatures close to 31 °F (−1 °C), the minimum temperature permitted for launch. The low temperatures had prompted concerns from Thiokol engineers. At a teleconference on the evening of January 27, Thiokol engineers and managers discussed the weather conditions with NASA managers from Kennedy Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center. Several engineers (most notably Roger Boisjoly) re-expressed their concerns about the effect of low temperatures on the resilience of the rubber O-rings that sealed the joints of the SRBs, and recommended a launch postponement. They argued that they did not have enough data to determine whether the joints would properly seal if the O-rings were colder than 53 °F (12 °C). This was an important consideration, since the SRB O-rings had been designated as a "Criticality 1" component, meaning that there was no backup if both the primary and secondary O-rings failed, and their failure would destroy the Orbiter and kill its crew.

Thiokol management initially supported its engineers' recommendation to postpone the launch, but NASA staff opposed a delay. During the conference call, Hardy told Thiokol, "I am appalled. I am appalled by your recommendation." Mulloy said, "My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch — next April?" One argument by NASA personnel contesting Thiokol's concerns was that if the primary O-ring failed, the secondary O-ring would still seal. This was unproven, and was in any case an argument that did not apply to a "Criticality 1" component. As astronaut Sally Ride stated when questioning NASA managers before the Rogers Commission, it is forbidden to rely on a backup for a "Criticality 1" component.

NASA claimed that it did not know of Thiokol's earlier concerns about the effects of the cold on the O-rings, and did not understand that Rockwell International, the shuttle's prime contractor, viewed the large amount of ice present on the pad as a constraint to launch. For reasons that are unclear, Thiokol management reversed itself and recommended that the launch proceed as scheduled.

And then of course, I didn't care for the media almost exclusively focusing on the "teacher" who was killed, almost to not even mentioning the other dead crew members.

And I didn't mourn the dead crew. I figured they knew what they were doing and they knew the risks before they got strapped in. Sort of like race car drivers. When I was young, I used to mourn my favorite drivers who got killed, folks like Jim Clark, etc. But then I realized those drivers knew the risks, and since they accepted the risks to pursue what they loved, then at least they went out the way they wanted to go out.

Garry K

[hoborich]

Hard to believe that was 30 years ago. I was home. And I still have it on VHS tape, somewhere in 47 years worth of hoarded stuff.

Last summer I ran the old Red Fox/Fred Sanford line on my daughter, "Someday all this is going to be yours".

[OSRR]

Wasn't even thought of yet. In fact.. I'm not sure my parents even knew each other at the time.

[C&O6084]

I was working at Mororola/ComSerCo in Riverside, California. While working on a huge calTransd project, 1100+ radios, me and a shop buddy were listening to the JPL radio feed from Pasadena on UHF when the signal suddenly stopped. raced to the lounge and turned on the TV in time to see debris coming down.

Company always sent a radio tech to the data repater near Edwards AFB for landing backup; it was my turn to go.

And, 19 years and a day before that, was the Apollo 1 fire. I was 7, so I don't remember much in real time other than news reports of NASA taking the command module apart one bolt at a time afterwards to find out what caused it.

[Jochs]

I was home from school, during a snow day. I was in the 8th grade, and this week we had the whole week off because of bitter cold and lots of lake effect snow.

I was watching tv and they broke into the program I was watching with the news.
At the time, they had us believing that the astronauts didn't survive the explosion, but it was later revealed that they were alive until their crew cabin hit the water.

[pbmaxno15]

I was sitting in my 7th grade language arts classroom. This was a very traumatic event for the staff, especially for our 6th grade science teacher, who had been a finalist for the Teacher in Space program.

[Jetlink]

I was in fourth grade. Our class was in the library which was in the old high school building next door to our elementary school. A couple of the aides started whispering back and forth. Pretty soon I managed to eaves drop in on what they were talking about and started telling the other students. When we got back to our classroom our teacher ran down and got the TV/vhs machine on a cart. we were lucky because at the time it was the only one in the building. We managed to tune in a station even with out an antenna and started watching the news. A few other teachers brought their classes into our room to watch too as our teacher had the only TV in the building.