Current Events > To me, Space Shuttle Challenger is still the biggest national tragedy.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mean fuck man, that teacher won a contest to go to SPACE. It was supposed to be this mindblowing and exciting thing for her and her students.

We saw her and all of them die right before our eyes.

All because it happened to be unseasonably cold that morning.
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Roger Boisjoly told NASA this would happen. Got ignored.

Actually Id say Columbia was a bigger tragedy, namely because Atlantis nearly had the same thing happen to it two flights after Challenger blew up.

Morton Thiokol may have knew about the booster beforehand, but everyone at NASA knew the dangers of debris shedding for nearly 20 years and took little precautions against it.





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CommonJoe posted...

Actually Id say Columbia was a bigger tragedy, namely because Atlantis nearly had the same thing happen to it two flights after Challenger blew up.

Hell, Columbia itself had significant tile damage, from the very first flight.

I had heard about it but didn't realize there was a teacher onboard who won a contest. That fucking sucks. There's a local middle school here too named Challenger Middle School.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson

Barbara Olson was going to fly out on September 10, 2001 to be on Bill Maher's ABC show but decided to go the next day day so she could wake up with her husband on his birthday.
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I actually met Dick Scobee once.
I was a kid at the time, but it still counts.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Hell, Columbia itself had significant tile damage, from the very first flight.

Yeah but that was due to tiles just falling off or chipping under the stress of launch.

Atlantis got struck by a piece of booster in many of the same places Columbia did.

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CommonJoe posted...

Atlantis got struck by a piece of booster in many of the same places Columbia did.

Wing leading edge?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suniiico7z4" data-time="

I'm a bit of a space nerd, and I should have known that by now.

I cant imagine being in her class watching the launch live on TV in the classroom.
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NASA can consistently be expected to get complacent and fuck it up every twenty years or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 (1967)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster (1986)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster (2003)

Questionmarktarius posted...

NASA can consistently be expected to get complacent and fuck it up every twenty years or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 (1967)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster (1986)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster (2003)

Yep. Reminds me of the investigation scenes from the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon.

North Americans rep is saying the wrench found in the capsule didnt play a part in the fire, but then the investigator says "But it still shouldnt have been there."

For all the things NASAs good at, the one thing they need to be bad at is normalizing erroneous occurrences. Just because it hasnt caused a problem doesnt mean ignore the error.

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CommonJoe posted...

For all the things NASAs good at, the one thing they need to be bad at is normalizing erroneous occurrences.

All of the this.

This is now a space nerd thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TYJyCCO8Dc" data-time="

I remember the endless, endless replays of it on tv. For weeks.
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EternalDivide posted...

I remember the endless, endless replays of it on tv. For weeks.

Challenger or Columbia?

I remember my teacher crying when that happened. Terrible tragedy.

Props to LeRoy Cain.
The engineers told him him it already happened, the mangers told him to ignore that it may happen, and it happened anyway.

You can see the exact moment "ohshit, that happened" on the video, about two minutes before "lock the doors".

That day in 1986 was one of my earliest memories

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It really was a unique moment that I dont think has ever happened before or since.

The entire country watching it live and the mood suddenly shifting from excitement to absolute horror.
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EffectAndCause posted...

It really was a unique moment that I dont think has ever happened before or since.

Well, apart from 1967 and 2003, sure.

The circumstances of those were different though. This one was all about a regular person, a teacher, winning a contest to be the first non-astronaut to go to space and basically gain the knowledge for her class that no other school teacher on Earth has ever or probably would ever have.

It may not seem like much now but in 1986 that was a huge deal.
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And of course no one listened about Columbia either.
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It always kinda gets me when you see them as they're heading to the shuttle. They're all smiling, happy, and excited.
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Strider102 posted...

It always kinda gets me when you see them as they're heading to the shuttle. They're all smiling, happy, and excited.

I'm not afraid of going into space. I'm afraid of the fucker blowing up in flight.
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I read somewhere that when challenger exploded there was debris in 3 states. Such a tragedy

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nevershine posted...

I read somewhere that when challenger exploded there was debris in 3 states. Such a tragedy

One YT video says that the crew survived the initial explosion because the hatch they were in was jettisoned after the explosion, but they did not survive the landing/drowned because it landed in water.
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the whole space shuttle program was really a leap back for mankind

i mean it's cool to have an orbiter that doesn't splashdown but it really did restrict deep space travel

and now we're circling back to moon again

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Google search just now:

Myth #3: The crew died instantly
The flight, and the astronauts' lives, did not end at that point, 73 seconds after launch. After Challenger was torn apart, the pieces continued upward from their own momentum, reaching a peak altitude of 65,000 feet before arching back down into the water.Jan 25, 2011
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What about the twin tower catastrophe?
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The teacher thing always was upsetting.

Winning a contest only to get blown up before even getting into space. Fuckin' sad.

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nevershine posted...

I read somewhere that when challenger exploded there was debris in 3 states. Such a tragedy

That was Columbia. Challenger blew up on launch so debris was scattered across the coast of Brevard county.

MI4 REAL posted...

One YT video says that the crew survived the initial explosion because the hatch they were in was jettisoned after the explosion, but they did not survive the landing/drowned because it landed in water.

They did indeed survive the explosion itself as the crew cabin separated from the rest of the craft. Their general safety equipment did its job, but slamming into the ocean at excess speed is not very healthy.

Parappa09 posted...

the whole space shuttle program was really a leap back for mankind

i mean it's cool to have an orbiter that doesn't splashdown but it really did restrict deep space travel

and now we're circling back to moon again

It really wasnt. While yes the focus on Shuttle program did hold back our BEO capabilities for 30 or so years, it was still the most advanced machine we had ever built up to its cancellation, and its contribution to science in general and our knowledge on how to build and maintain infrastructure in space cannot be understated.

Further, during the program the only thing restricting manned BEO missions was the lack of funding to support it. The Orbiters could easily transport and bring back hardware capable of going to the Moon and even Mars.

And going back to the Moon is a good thing. We literally only scratched the surface of the Moon and we learned a great deal about it. Being able to spend 4 or 5x the amount of time on the surface than we did before (if not an indefinite amount of time, if we build a base) with modern technology is going to be, welp, incredible.

But anyway, as @Questionmarktarius made this a space nerd topic, thoughts on my favorite space station concept Dual Keel?



Which I recreated in Kerbal Space Program:




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Being from NH I'm very familair with the Challenger explosion and Christa McAuliffe. There's even a planetarium named after her by a community college I'm not too far away from.