Christa McAuliffe

[Kinnick.At.Night]

I saw an interview years ago with her alternate, Barbara Morgan, who told a story of Christa baking a pie for her the first day they lived near each other while in training at NASA and surprising her with it. That's always stuck with me. January 28, 1986 is still hard to think about. I was only nine years old when the Challenger disaster occurred, but I clearly remember the weight of it. It was crushing.

 

[Formerly Rockymtnole]

The video of the launch and seeing her family’s reactions is still tough to watch.

 

[Kinnick.At.Night]

The video of the launch and seeing her family’s reactions is still tough to watch.

This.

 

[SolarHawk]

Was too young to remember when it happened, but old enough to never forget that it happened.

 

[DirtyJohns97]

The video of the launch and seeing her family’s reactions is still tough to watch.

If I recall correctly they also had a dog

 

[DooBi]

I was 8 years old. I remember it very well. It was right after the Superbowl that the bears won. We watched it in class and it was a big deal that a teacher was going up

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

I was in tech school at Lowry AFB. They let us out of class early because of it. Announced what happened and there was just a general feeling of disbelief. Didn’t hit home till I actually saw it on the TV in the day room.

The launches had become so routine that it was a total shock.

 

[Kinnick.At.Night]

I was in tech school at Lowry AFB. They let us out of class early because of it. Announced what happened and there was just a general feeling of disbelief. Didn’t hit home till I actually saw it on the TV in the day room.

The launches had become so routine that it was a total shock.

They certainly had. To the American public at least. If you want to read a book that will rock you, check this out. Complete booster segment failures had almost occurred on several launches prior to STS-51L. It had become common to see charred O-rings on recovered rockets. For years.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

They certainly had. To the American public at least. If you want to read a book that will rock you, check this out. Complete booster segment failures had almost occurred on several launches prior to STS-51L. It had become common to see charred O-rings on recovered rockets. For years.

I watched a documentary on one of the streaming services and they talked about that.

Totally inexcusable. I’ll check out the book, thanks!!

 

[St. Louis Hawk]

Find Roger Boisjoly’s book/articles. He was at Morton Thiokol. He knew what might happen and was repeatedly overruled by higher ups.

 

[MeetTheFerentzes]

If I recall correctly they also had a dog

 

[seminole97]

My 4th grade science teacher, Mr Nortle, had an unpainted white plastic model in his class of the space shuttle that he had made. He said it was part of the application process.
Obviously he didn’t win.

For some reason we weren’t watching live when I was in FL in 5th grade. But I do remember the kid coming in to tell our class it had just happened. I don’t know how he got the news.

/csb

 

[Herky T Hawk]

They certainly had. To the American public at least. If you want to read a book that will rock you, check this out. Complete booster segment failures had almost occurred on several launches prior to STS-51L. It had become common to see charred O-rings on recovered rockets. For years.

In high school in the late 90s I was one of a select group of top (aka nerdy) students that were invited to an event for local business leaders with a special speaker. He was a former astronaut that was involved with the investigation. His speech was centered around the cascading series of failures involved with the disaster and how institutional inertia prevented the launches from being stopped so that they could fix the problem. Really mind blowing that people knew about the problem, knew that it could be catastrophic, and weren’t allowed to do anything about it.

That was also where I first learned that several of the astronauts were still alive well after the explosion, likely surviving until they hit the surface of the ocean. There were switches that were flipped away from their normal launch positions, ones that had locks on them meaning that only human intervention could have flipped them. There is some theory that some were knocked unconscious from depressurization, but at least three had their emergency oxygen system turned on before losing consciousness.

 

[thewop]

Don't worry y'all, nobody was on board and the whole thing was done to bring awareness to the space program and secure more funding. This is most definitely real, and took 38 years for someone smart enough to come along and figure it out and release it on... Tiktok...