I was in the 5th grade, home sick with the flu.  I also had a huge wallpaper of the space shuttle Columbia, I've always been a huge Space Program/Nasa fan.

I remember that day very well. It was my day off from the FD. My wife had gave me a new 35mm camera, telephoto zoom lense and tri-pod for Christmas.

I was looking forward to the launch so I could photograph it from our back yard. (about 45 miles N of the launch)

Somewhere in one of my albums are the pictures of before and after. Watching the craft through the lense, seeing the explosion and then the seperation of the plums left me with a empty feeling inside.

I ran back in the house to see what the TV was covering and my worst fear was confirmed.

It was several weeks before I decided to develop the film because I felt uneasy filming someones death.

I was working at Commerce Union Bank Operations Center in Nashville when we heard the news and ran out front to the branch to catch the replay on the TV. Sad, sad day.

What is this pic??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#Liftoff_and_initial_ascent



ETA
the picture i posted above is Dr Richard Feynman, a Nobel physicist, with a cup of ice water and a section of a shuttle O-ring.  releasing the C-clamp pinching the ice-cold O-ring demonstrated (in a very simple fashion) to the assembled press that the O-ring would not return to normal shape.  getting to the point of this simple explanation took the better part of a year.

RIP Our future is in space. I wish our nation's leaders understood this.

I heard it over the Plectron. Those of you who know what that is will understand that it was actually a Motorola unit. It was open from an overnight call and the cops used it as a backup channel. I heard one of them tell another that he just heard it on the news radio, so I switched on the tv.

Things were very quiet in town after that.

It's just such a damned shame that so many brave people died, because of a bad O ring design and Nasa's irrational push to keep to a schedule.  
 

If I'm remembering correctly, wasn't it really due the the "greenies" and the redesign of the material in the O ring to be more environmentally "friendly?" Or was that with the Tile "glue?"

no and no and no.  good grief.  i can't believe people can't be bothered to use Google for 10 seconds before posting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report

ar-jedi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#Rogers_Commission

O-Ring Failure.



 

+1





7 myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster

 
 

I don't believe so. The O-ring material wasn't anything 'special'. It worked fine when it was used within the environment it was intended to be used in. Same with the tiles.

What you're probably thinking of is the insulating foam sprayed onto the external tank. There was a change to reduce the amount of CFC's used in the insulation in the early 90's, although some small sections still use the old foam. The leading theory is that one of those sections, with the old style foam, is what broke off and damaged Columbia. It has less to do with the foam type and more to do with the areas it was applied to- it was just always a problem with no easy solution.

more specifically, SRB "joint rotation" and lack of seal against internal pressure due to the in-elasticity of the rubber O-rings.



Simplified cross section of the joints between rocket segments SRB. Legend:
A - steel wall thickness 12.7 mm,
B - base O-ring gasket,
C - backup O-ring gasket,
D - Strengthening-Cover band,
E - insulation,
F - insulation,
G - carpeting,
H - sealing paste,
I - fixed propellant

That sounds about right, I remember a lot of hoopla at the time about reformulating some product and that it may have contributed to one of the disasters.

Oops, wrong post.

Yep, I remember the Challenger Launch just like it was yesterday.

The Columbia's crew spent several tens of seconds in a flat spin at around Mach=15 before their orbiter disintegrated.

Both crews died because of hubris and mismanagement at higher levels.

And before I forget, fuck Obama.

He was the uncle of a NAPS classmate of mine.

I was in 4th grade, reading class at Abrams Elementary, Ft Carson.  We were told there was a "crash landing in the ocean."  Never will forget it.

When Columbia broke up, I'm certain our flag at MKC was the first on in KC at half staff.  Brave souls crewed those missions.

Easy question. It's more haunting because there are more active eyeballs on a shuttle launch than there are on random helicopter mission.

For anyone who is too young to remember, or wasn't born then, the Challenger explosion was THE "Where were you when?" moment for the post-JFK assassination generation.

For eveyone born too late to have experienced the JFK assassination this was our defining "Oh My God I can't believe it" moment.

The only other event in my lifetime that had as much cultural impact was 9/11.  (The loss of Columbia was post 9/11 and post-Challenger and didn't seem to hit us hard, collectively, as the two earlier events).

For my Grandparents it was, "Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor?"

For my Dad it was, "Where were you when JFK was killed?"

For me it was, "Where were you when the Challenger explosed?"

For people younter than me it was, "Where were you on 9/11?"

Worded perfectly.

Maybe.....for I have also heard the same question about Hinckley's attempt, the start of Desert Storm, Lockerbie, Nixon's resignation, or any number of other things.

As far as why Challenger is taken more to heart than a helicopter full of troops? Any of a number of reasons but two of them might be that death in the military is expected more often as an occupational hazard; it isn't perceived as such on space flights. Statistically, it is pretty high, but over the years, I think we've done probably quite well. Secondly, space flight is usually seen by more people.

That second reason could have a big part of the issue. After all, who was the first American to die in a space mission? Major Michael Adams. WHO? Michael J. Adams, X-15 pilot, died in 1967. He was our first re-entry fatality, not the Columbia, but of course, people don't know that. They see only one aspect of our space program, which is shown on the news, and think that's it.

Don't get me wrong; I felt intense hurt back then as well. One of the things that helped me see the other side of it, though, was a few weeks later doing an UNREP off the Virginia Capes. Here we had two multi thousand ton ships, moving thru the water at 20+ knots, tied together with steel cable, only a few tens of feet apart and HEY, THIS IS DANGEROUS!

But it was something we did all the time. If something went wrong on that one and a mess was made of it, we might end up as just a footnote in the paper...but we would be rubbing shoulders with astronauts in the Valhalla, having gotten there doing what we were dedicated to do.
______________________________________________________
("Dear Caroline, by the time you hear this, I'll either be safe or a headline on the Evening News after the Central American Crisis."––Dr, Heywood Floyd communicating to his wife about aerobraking on the approach to Jupitier, (w,stte), a 2010 script)

"They're not having trouble, are they?"

So your down with giving China the high ground?



BRILLANT!!!





 

Millions of American school children saw it live in classrooms...  Saw what was supposed to be a revolutionary moment of the first "normal person" in space end in a fireball.



It's a loss of innocence moment for a whole generation.  



 

None of those events were broadcast live, IIRC (I guess the start of desert storm was)...  And none of those events really match the touchstone moment that Challenger was.



There's a lot of intangibles that go into making one of those moments.  It doesn't make other events less tragic.



 

Yup. I watched it live. 4th grade, Mrs. Cantrell's class at Willard Elementary. The teacher on board (Christa McAuliffe (sp?))was the reason we were watching. The launch just happened to be at science time too but we would have watched it anyway, like the rest of the school. I remember the gasp throughout the school when it happened and thinking, 'that's not normal, is it?'

Yup.

I was 6 and I was home that day.  I don't remember why.  It was either a vacation, professional day, or sick day.   I was watching it with my Mother.  

The space program was a huge thing to a 6 year old.  I can't imagine what it is like for kids that don't have that don't have a space program to look up to.  Despite my age, I was pretty familiar with the entire history and the practical limitations and challenges of space flight.  Lots of PBS watching and books.

I suppose that is one way to look at it and I will admit if looked at it from that way, then I am out of the loop. I didn't learn about Challenger until hours after the event. I didn't know about Columbia until my mother showed me a special edition of a paper; we had been shopping the whole day and wondered why all the flags were at half mast.

While the numbers maybe getting less each day, face it; there are those of us who are not linked in to the news on a constant basis.........and considering the programming aspect of things, that might not be a bad thing.

One thing on the Challenger, however; in the weeks afterwards, I had superiors who were repeating, laughing about the jokes that came out of it. Were others expressing that as well?
_____________________________________________________
("And break radio silence, Sir?"––comm officer, (w,stte), "In Harm's Way")

People in a military helicopter should expect to die everytime they go up.  


People going to outer space are just waiting to take a zero gravity poop.  

I was in Physics class at a tiny Jr College in a small NW Alabama town that y'all might have heard of––because a super tornado blew it away last year.  I think the college survived the town's utter destruction.

It will be the future; after we've solved this terrible problem of biological existance.