Tomorrow is the 20th Anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion

[Up2Late]

Anyone else here care? Or are we all too focused on the current pending disaster?

Do you remember where you were when you heard? If so where?

As a child who grew up watching the Apollo astronauts. It definitely felt like something died inside of me that day, what about you?



The crew: In the back row from left to right: Ellison Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, Judy Resnik. In the front row from left to right: Pilot Mike Smith, Commander, Dick Scobee, and Ron McNair.

ALSO: Check out the video report at this BBC News Link (Below). The video link is in the middle of the page, under the picture where it says, "Martin Bell: "Everything was apparently on course up to a minute from lift-off". There is a shot in the video report that we in America Never got to see, or at least, by the time I got home and started taping the news coverage from that day, they had taken it out of the video loop they kept playing.

It's about a 1-2 second shot of a Parachute! A parachute they speculate might be attached to the crew cabin! I DO have video tape of CNN, CBS, and a few other newscasts from that day, and I NEVER saw that shot until today.:wtf: If anyone has the ability to record a RealVideo stream of that, please do, and post it here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/28/newsid_2506000/2506161.stm

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/shuttle/missions/51-l/mission-51-l.html

[DS1]

1. She's an alumnus of my state school.

I'm sick to death of hearing about it. I don't understand the celebration of a disaster.

[Up2Late]

5. I don't think anyone is calling a celebration, more a remembrance.

And today was the day that the Apollo 1 fire happened too. Then next week is the anniversary of the Columbia break up.

I know most of you science types (calm down, I'm one too) don't believe in Astrology too much, but to those of us who do the more precise, computer calculated Astrology, this grouping of disasters seems like a pattern, that might be Astrologically significant.

[Posteritatis]

11. Oh yeah, people are really just cheering this one on... (n/t)

[Lindacooks]

2. Yes, I care - and I'll always remember, not just because it's

my birthday, but because I was watching a muted TV while talking to my mom on the phone, so I saw the 'Special Report' but didn't know what was going on until they showed the shuttle exploding.

I haven't trusted NASA since. And when the shuttle broke up a few years ago, it was just as bad.

[TexasLady]

3. I remember, because I lived in Athens

Ano-Glyfada to be exact..and my landlady's teenaged daughter came up to tell me to turn on the TV. My oldest was a baby.

[Wilms]

4. So ironic it made me sick.

IIRC that parachute was for returning the Solid Rocket Motor casing.

[Ready4Change]

6. I was watching it live.

By coincedence I was home, sick. Many people knew that, and called me to hear what happened, because they also knew I'd be watching. That I couldn't be home and NOT watch, even for the routine we thought Shuttle launches had become.

I was too young to remember Kennedys assassination. This was my Kennedy moment.

There is no "moment of silence" smilie. It wouldn't work for this anyway. It was the moment that my youthful idealism about the space program died. Until that moment I thought the men and women of NASA were gods, that they were paving the way to the stars, that I might walk that road someday myself.

In the weeks and months that followed, I grew up. I recognized the stalling of the investigation. I cheered the few who pushed it through, getting answers, damning the interference of politics. I am convinced, to this very day, that if those few hadn't pushed, the Shuttle would have never flown again, and quite possibly no US manned spacecraft would have followed unto today.

It changed my view. I had idolized the Apollo program. I still am amazed they got to the Moon, given their level of technology. But Challenger made me skeptical. I realized that Apollo was a sprint, when what we needed was a marathon. That the STS was designed by a committee to meet political goals, rather than be what we really needed. That the wrong sort of people were driving NASA, no matter who was riding in the rockets.

So, as they rebuilt the STS program, I rebuilt my opinion of the US space program. I realize now what a mess it is. I have friends who wok there, and talking with them I see how fragmented the place is. There are little nests of people who care, really CARE about what they are doing. But they must hide themselves away, lest they catch a jealous eye, or be seen as a stepping stone for some self agrandizing empire builder. The best NASA programs are the small ones, who can hide in unoticed crevices.

The big programs? Crap. They are only allowed to succeed so far as they can be used for political gain, then their budgets are slashed. Take Bushs Mars program. When did Bush last talk about this? It was a momentary, election year grandstand, never heard from since. No new funds have been provided. It has been like a plague in NASA, funding it has cut and bleed out programs that had been providing useful science, programs that were ABOUT to provide useful science, turning all those efforts to pure waste, tossed in the junk bin, converted to trash for the facade of a figurehead President.

The astronauts and scientists of NASA deserve better. The lost souls of Challenger and Columbia deserve better. The citizens of the USA deserve, and have paid for, better.

The rocket pads are empty, but the stars are patient. There's a little company out in the Mojave desert that seems to know how to get things done...

[applegrove]

7. High Flight - by John Gillespie Magee, Jr

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/prewwii/jgm.htm

[LastDemocratInSC]

8. Challenger didn't explode

I'm not meaning to be geekish here, but it's important to understand that neither the Challenger nor its external fuel tank truly exploded. Many of the videotape presentations of the accident include the sounds of an explosion - these were added for dramatic effect. On the actual soundtrack there is a crackling sound at the instant of the event but this is from the ground radio receivers searching for the suddenly lost signal and receiving bursts of static, instead.

The external tank collapsed because the damaged solid rocket engine burned a hole in the liquid hydrogen tank (lower tank). The rupture of the hydrogen tank thrust it upward into the oxygen tank (upper tank). At that point only liquid hydrogen was spilling out. The hydrogen tank split the liquid oxygen tank and the two materials began mixing - a bad combination. At the same time, the lower attach point between the right solid rocket motor and the external tank gave way - it, too, was being blasted by the leak in the motor. This caused the base of the right motor to pivot outward, which drove the top of the motor into the oxygen tank like a can opener. Now, there were two breaches in the liquid oxygen tank.

The flame from the shuttle's main engines and the solid rocket motors ignited the now thoroughly mixed liquid hydrogen and liquid oxgen and they ignited in a conflagration, not an explosion. They were burning intensely but there was no explosion because the burning was not contained.

When the liquid hydrogen tank struck the oxygen tank the external tank itself lost its integrity and the shuttle attach points to the tank were severed. The forces on the shuttle from the tank collapse pushed it away from the tank and sideways, with the left wing now leading instead of the nose leading. Aerodynamic forces ripped the left wing off immediately, and it is one of the first items seen exiting the hydrogen/oxygen fireball. The shuttle's nose and crew cabin were ripped off next and quickly exited the fireball trailing cables and other connections.

With the shuttle's nose now gone the payload bay became overpressurized by the onrush of air and the bay's doors and walls were blown outward. This is what most of the shower of debris seen emerging from the fireball was. Included in this was also the pieces of the TDRS communications satellite although most of this satellite were later found intact on the ocean floor.

It's interesting to note that those who witnessed the disaster at the Kennedy Space Center never reported the boom of an explosion. What they did notice was that the roar of the launch eventually became less loud as the shuttle's 3 main engines quit running. It actually became quieter.

There were flashes of burning fuel from the shuttle's maneuvering engine fuel supply as those tanks ruptured, but again, it was fuel burning as it was released from its containers, not exploding in a confined way.

The fuel in the external tank burned away - it didn't explode, and the shuttle was broken apart by aerodynamic forces.

About the parachute: The right solid rocket booster drogue chute is seen on film deploying at the 76 second mark as the nose cap of the booster was sheared off by aerodynamic forces. This was widely thought, at the time, to be the parachute of a paramedic going into the area. No airborne rescue craft went into the area for almost an hour after the breakup because of the danger from falling debris.

It's also common to hear that Challenger's flight lasted just 73 seconds. The crew, if they could talk, would say otherwise. The crew cabin continued upward, in a tumble, to a great altitude, with the crew still alive, and impacted the ocean almost 3 minutes later. The flight was actually about 4 minutes in duration.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LastDemocratInSC]

10. I'll stick with the facts; you may be rude if you need to

There's a reason that nobody is allowed within a 3 mile radius of a shuttle launch pad during lift-off (except for a small emergency rescue group in a bunker): An explosion of a fueled external tank would be the equivalent of an explosion by a small atomic bomb. There would be nothing - nothing - left of anything on the pad.

With this in mind, it's worth noting the evidence: All of Challenger's major structural components remained more or less intact after the event. All 3 main engines, still attached to their support structures, emerged from the fireball with the engines still running. The left wing, ripped of by aerodynamic forces, emerged as a complete unit. The crew cabin and nose cap emerged as a unit. The same is true for the other components. If the external tank had exploded, even with 73 seconds of fuel having been used, these large pieces of the shuttle would not have been seen.

There is also this fact: The maximum G force experienced by the crew during the break up of Challenger was around 4 G. This was from the shuttle being detached from the external tank, being spun sideways in the slipstream, and the crew cabin being ripped off. A tank explosion would have yielded much greater G forces on the crew cabin.

Here is what the Rogers Commission said about the rupture of the liquid hydrogen tank and the subsequent splitting of the liquid oxygen tank (from chapter 3): "Within milliseconds there was massive, almost explosive, burning of the hydrogen streaming from the failed tank bottom and liquid oxygen breach in the area of the intertank." There was "massive, almost explosive, burning" of the mixed gases. Keep in mind that this event took place at an altitude of almost 9 miles where the air pressure is extremely low. When the liquid fuels were released they instantly began dispersing as vapor, even as they burned together. There was no detonation front or shock wave. It was a massive burning of dispersed vapor in a low pressure environment. That's a fact.

The burning of the gases didn't last very long. The image we all have of the event is the huge cloud and the falling debris. The cloud was just steam, the result of the hydrogen and oxygen burning together for a short few seconds.

About the parachute, again: the parachute in the video, which I have seen many times, is part of the solid rocket booster drogue chute assembly. The nose cap is designed to pop off at a certain altitude, pulling out the drogue chute which, in turn, pulls out the main parachutes for the booster. The TV images are of the nose cap descending alone with the drogue chute. At the time of the accident it was believed to be a paramedic parachuting in.

The Rogers Commission characterized the event as a "massive, almost explosive, burning" because of the high altitude environment, the spillage and rapid dispersal of the fuels, and the lack of total destruction that would be expected from a true explosion of an external tank. That's a fact.

Now, you called me a jerk and an idiot because you didn't like what I wrote. I debunked you and you don't like it. The best you could do was cite some definitions of explosion that included references to firecrackers, laughter and golf shots. You didn't consider, or cite, any of the important facts about the Challenger disaster - the environment, the specific structural events that occured, and the timing of those events - that led the experts at NASA and the Rogers Commission to conclude that there was no true explosion. The facts of this matter are clear and I was just trying to point those facts out in my original post because there's a lot of misunderstanding about what happened that day.

[benburch]

13. I'll underline what you wrote.

You are exactly correct. This is how it went down.

[rman]

14. True, but i think it's more important

to understand that the root cause was the decision by NASA management to launch in spite of warnings from engineers. Essentially the same thing caused the incident with shuttle Colombia.

[Crunchy Frog]

12. It just happened to occur on my birthday.

I usually tend to be more fixated on the anniversary of the disaster of my birth, rather than the anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

I also find the current disasters far more compelling than that disaster that occured 20 years ago. I guess I always kind of expected that something as new and inherently dangerous as space travel would produce a certain amount of casualties. Not that the event wasn't a sad one, just not one that seemed overwhelming to me.