My mother recalls watching the shuttle break apart on her way to lunch, not knowing what was going on until one of her students saw the splitting streaks of smoke and said 'Something is wrong.' I have a friend who recounted online today sitting with his first-grade class 30 miles from the launchpad and watching the shuttle go up, then turn into a fireball and crash back down.
I didn't watch it happen. My second-grade class at Beverly Shores Elementary had watched other launches, but this one occurred while we were at lunch. But we were all interested in the flight. My teacher had met Christa McAuliffe and we were planning to watch the video lessons the teacher would beam down to Earth. It was something we were all looking forward to, and living just an hour from Kennedy Space Center, the whole affair was something with which we were all connected in a more real way than, say, kids in Wisconsin.
When we came back from lunch, the teacher was crying. She sat us all down and explained to us what had happened. Things were quiet at first, then we started asking questions. How did this happen? Nobody knew yet. We had to wait. What about the astronauts? How were they? Somehow, we all presumed the astronauts could just hit the eject button and escape. She explained to us there was no way any of them could survive, and that they had all died.
I doubt many in the rest of the country realize the degree to which this tragedy was felt by the state of Florida. Like all students at the time, we had read our Weekly Readers and were anxiously awaiting the launch of a teacher into space. But when disaster struck, we saw the lingering streaks of smoke in the sky that seemed to last all day. The local news replayed the tape again and again, even when the national news had tired of it.
We also waited for the successful launch that would put this tragedy out of our minds, but which would not come for a long and painful two years. Instead of another shuttle launch, we just got to hear reports about O-rings. I was just a kid, so I certainly didn't understand the devastation the shuttle loss caused to the local economy, but the loss of life and a presumably safe orbiter was on the top of most minds for a long time.
This anniversary snuck up on me, which is a little odd since I was just at Kennedy last weekend. I took my son there for the first time on a Cub Scouts campout where we slept under the Saturn V. My son was really struck by the stories of astronauts who had lost their life in the pursuit of space exploration. Tales of Apollo I, of Columbia and, of course, the Challenger were among the space stories that seemed to resonate the most with the 10-year-old child.
I've been hard on NASA sometimes since I launched this blog. The program can be defensive, acting like it should be exempt from the fiscal constraints of government. And I maintain our best chance at accomplishing truly successful space travel is by encouraging private sector involvement in spaceflight.
But there is no question mankind would not have accomplished what it has in outer space if not for the drive of the people at NASA. The fact astronauts are willing to put their lives on the line, even after the disasters which have destroyed 40 percent of our orbiters, is a huge part of that. We owe everybody who has ever ridden these high-powered dynamite sticks into orbit a huge debt of gratitude.
I think that is why losing Challenger is such a memorable experience for every American who lived through it. We all could feel, as those smokescreens besmirched out skies, that a sacrifice had just been made, but that our eyes still needed to focus on the stars. It was a soul-searching moment when, as an entire human race, we had to weigh the price of life against our wish to reach beyond the limits of our atmosphere.
The astronauts on that orbiter would never want the dream abandoned. I hope that never happens.
This is some of your finest writing.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much.
ReplyDeleteI was working for CNA as an internal auditor and for once I was in town so I went outside like most of the rest to see the launch. I don't remember ever feeling as sick as I did the instant the disaster occurred
ReplyDeleteI was living in Maryland at the time, in kindergarten. I don't remember it at all. After I moved to Leesburg in 1990, I don't remember ever taking time out of class to go outside and watch a Shuttle launch. When I mentored at a middle school in Brevard county a few years ago, they never did, either. I wonder if that's one of the legacies of Challenger (and, to a lesser extent, Columbia) - teachers are reluctant to get their students involved.
ReplyDelete40% is misleading. Only 2 out of 135 or so Shuttle missions have ended in disaster, about 1.5%. That's the only reasonable way to look at the record. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better.
And out of 135 car trips, how many end up in fatal, or even serious, crashes? How many commercial airline trips? Or military fighter flights, end up as disasters? I think the shuttle program overall has been a success. But we are at its end for a reason. Whether NASA builds a new type of vessel or we leave that to Richard Branson, we are at a point where we should be able to do something better than the shuttle at this point.
ReplyDeleteSon of a bitch...I wrote a manifesto and lost it when I tried to submit. Allow me to summarize:
ReplyDeleteI don't claim that the Space Shuttle is anywhere near as safe as a car or a plane. Nobody knowledgeable claims that any space flight is, can be, or should be that safe, at least not until decades in the future. Recent major rocket programs have comparable safety records to Shuttle. I suspect you are overestimating the state of the art, Jake.
Failure rates tend to be described by a bathtub curve - high at the beginning, low in the middle, and high at the end. The reason we flight test airplanes and test drive cars is to get through that early high failure rate (see the recent electrical fire on the 787, along with a host of other typical flight test failures). Manned rockets, especially the ones that are designed to take advantage of human interaction, need to be flight tested with people. So with any new system, even one designed to be more than 10 times as safe as Shuttle (Constellation was targeting a 1 in 1000 rate, and I believe that's the same for SpaceX), you're going to add risk at the beginning of the program.
Commercial space tourism is keenly aware of the problem of safety. The FAA doesn't even call their customers "passengers" - they use "space flight participants" to avoid implying the level of safety you expect from a commercial airliner. The fact is, they cannot exist with such a high level of safety. Safety, in the form of stronger structures and redundant systems, adds weight. Weight, if it doesn't ground your vehicle, adds cost. A LOT of cost. That cuts your market, cuts profitability, eliminates the industry. There are those who attempt to enforce very high safety standards, but the industry has been (surprisingly) successful at lobbying Congress to prevent it.
As a citizen and a taxpayer, I'd be willing to accept as high as a 5% chance of failure for a Moon or Mars program. Except I know that anything designed for 5% is not going to be 5% in the real world, so I'd be more comfortable designing to ~1%. Of course, it's not my ass in the rocket.