Lessons linger 25 years after Challenger died
Read Time:3 Minute, 42 Second
Twenty-five years ago, an event occurred that is seared into the memory of most Americans: About a minute after liftoff, the space shuttle Challenger blew apart, killing all aboard, including teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe. Here is the story from NPR:
The day started off innocently enough. It was unusually cold in Florida that day, but NASA managers decided to attempt a launch anyway. As a subsequent investigation made clear, the cold temperature made O-rings, which were intended to contain hot gases, fail on the solid rocket boosters.
President Ronald Reagan was scheduled to deliver his State of the Union speech on Jan. 28, 1986, but Challenger changed those plans.
“Today is a day for mourning and remembering,” the president said in a speech broadcast to the nation. “Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.”
‘Trauma To The Nation’s Psyche’
“It was a huge shock to the American people because the space shuttle had come to represent our entire technological prowess,” says Sen. Bill Nelson. In 1986, he was Rep. Bill Nelson, but he was also an astronaut. His mission aboard the space shuttle Columbia had ended just 10 days earlier.
Nelson says it was shocking enough just to think about what happened to Challenger. “And when people suddenly saw on their television screens, that was played over and over, the close-up shot of those solid rocket boosters going off in different directions about 10 miles high in the Florida sky — this was a trauma to the nation’s psyche.”
The country had to revisit that trauma 17 years later. On Feb. 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas as it was returning from orbit. There were no iconic pictures from the Columbia accident — all you could see was a vapor trail streaking across the sky, and then some close-ups of bits of debris.
But shocking as it was, the second loss of a space shuttle didn’t hit the country in the gut the way the first one did.
“The first time it blew up, it was such a shock because most people thought it would never ever happen,” says Jon Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies public attitudes toward science. “But once you get the idea that spacecraft sometimes have catastrophic events, then it becomes less of a shock.”
Nelson agrees: “That’s why the Challenger destruction seemed to affect day to day Americans a lot more than Columbia did years later.” He says the arrogance of NASA managers and their inattentiveness to legitimate safety questions was in part responsible for both accidents — managerial problems he believes the agency no longer suffers from.
Discovering Truths About Big Science
Bruce Lewenstein, a professor of science communications at Cornell University, thinks the long-term impact of Challenger may be in how it changed the way Americans view science. He says NASA had always been the “good news” agency, freely sharing scientific findings with journalists. But after Challenger, everyone at the agency clammed up, including scientists.
“People had this image that science didn’t operate that way, but in fact modern science, big science, does operate that way, and Challenger was one of the ways we discovered that, perhaps one of the most dramatic ways we discovered that,” Lewenstein says.
He thinks journalists and the public came to understand that big science behaved like other big institutions — sometimes making mistakes and sometimes hiding the truth.
But Lewenstein says there was a positive legacy for NASA from the Challenger accident. When the Columbia accident occurred, the space agency certainly seemed to be more open about what was going on. That was a good move from a public relations perspective, he says.
“They were more open with information, they were more careful to get different perspectives out there. They were more careful to try to make information available,” Lewenstein says.
Later this year the space shuttle fleet is to be retired permanently. NASA takes pains to remind people that space is still a dangerous place. And no doubt the agency is doing all it can to make sure President Obama doesn’t have to make the same kind of speech his predecessors did before the shuttle program comes to an end.
Tip o’ the hat to Eric Adams
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I wasn’t even five yet and have no memory of this, other than what I have read over the years about it. You can now chastise me, for telling you I’m young and you are old farts 😉
You can now chastise me, for telling you I’m young and you are old farts 😉 – LOL you go Jess! We ARE that m’dear! 😉
LOL Jess although I strongly suspect that Greenlight might take exception to your remark 🙂 🙂
I’ll bet she laughs, since she knows it is done in jest and not to be vicious.
Jess, my only objection is one of fact–I was five for the Challenger explosion. I’m a fellow young pup. 😀
See, something else I did not know. Then we are the same age almost, nice to know. I read your writing and think you older for some reason. Won’t make that mistake again, well with you, anyway. The rest of the tribe elders I will 😉
“tribe elders!” LOL LOL LOL!!!!
lol
I have a “thing” about my age that probably rivals the old–er, our elders–just in the opposite direction. I was bound to “come out” as a young’n one of these days! 🙂
I was in Hawaii for the Challenger explosion, and in Janesville, WI for the Columbia disaster.
Speaking of disasters, Janesville is the home town of the nutty Republican governor from Wisconsin. Coincidence? Hm…
I was driving down the road in Missouri when the news came on the radio. I was stunned. I remember pulling over so that I could make sure what it was I was hearing. Like MH my first thought was also: there goes the space program. Then I felt guilty and started feeling sad for the lives lost. Then, after I got to a TV, I became angry at the networks constantly showing the poor parents of Christa McAuliffe, with those puzzled looks on their faces, trying to figure out what, if anything, had happened. All so sad.
I worked in aerospace in Federick MD, at Fairchild Space systems. We all just stood still and listened to the commentary. It was chilling and we all started crying, even the men. Six months later the layoffs started. I worked on GBUs, the Ground Based Units. My contract at the time, as the Project Manager, was GRO, the Gamma Ray Observatory. I also was a subcontractor on the grandaddy of them all, the HST, also known as the Hubble Space Telescope.
I was supposed to get a huge promotion and move back to Cali when they were to begin launching the shuttles out of Vandenburg AFB..which of course never happened. I took the layoff so I could move back to Cali as my son’s health was never good due to the damp weather on the east coast, he was a severe asthmatic. I never went back into aerospace after the crash. I loved it and spent 15 years of my life in it starting as a stock room attendant and working up to the first woman Program Manager at Fairchild. Talk about glass ceilings and taking major shit from males aka sexual harrassment(which I never bitched about)..perhaps that is why I cuss so much and I am such a hard ass. I had to be..or I never would of made it in that job. 😉
I am covetous of your interesting career past! Sexual harassment aside, of course. (You write like a man, by the way. It took me several posts to figure out you weren’t.) I am also a cuss-bucket, but do not have such a good reason for being so.
On the day the challenger ezploded, I was in my advertising design class. Our teacher came in crying, and wheeled in the TV so we could all see. They replayed the crash over and over on the news. She had known Christa McAuliffe so she was particularly disturbed.
I remember thinking- oh hell- there goes the space program! For a kid obsessed with sci-fi that in itself was depressing.
I really was defined by my father as he wanted his first child to be a son. He taught me baseball, took me to games, all sorts of male dominated things. To him, I could succeed at anything a male could.
So when I dealt with males that saw me as unable to compete on their level it only made me stronger and more insistant that I would be able to show them up. Woman, I got stories that would curl your hair. 😉 Like the time a govt inspector called me little girl on the manufacturing floor at Fairchild. I whispered in his ear: Call me that again and I will rip your balls off and shove them down your throat asshole. Then I patted him on the ass and smiled. His shocked look was priceless. LOL.
That is hysterical!! My parents wanted boys too, but my dad wasn’t sporty. He was into history, books, stamp-collecting, other nerdly pursuits. He paraphrased the entire works of HP Lovecraft to me in phrases a 5 yr old could easily understand!
I’d like to hear some of your “hair curling” tales! I’ve had a few interesting jobs as well. Maybe I’ll do a post about them someday. (This is a PG rated site though, isn’t it?)
I am a middle-aged fart, Jess. I am even younger than the gorgeous Mr Depp. So there.
Dearest Mother Hen, you must, when time permits swing by my blog (hover over my name on this comment string)I do occasionally have tall tails spun over there and much liberal language policies as it’s adult rated. I am a little older than Depp but a lot younger than say..Joan Rivers..and no plastic surgery needed..yet. 😉