7 myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster

[Roon]

It didn't explode, the crew didn't die instantly and it wasn't inevitable.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11031097/

[zbdent]

1. I'd have to agree that it wasn't inevitable

Hell, if they would not have forced it to go off just so beloved Saint Ronnie could have his flag-waving, red-white-and-blue speech that night . . .

[SaveElmer]

2. As to this specific flight I agree...

Every individual accident is of course avoidable...but in the program as a whole, it is simply impossible to completely eliminate human error in 100% of the cases. Accidents will happen no matter how much care is applied.

[JHB]

19. You're right there. MY first thought was "Damn! It finally happened"...

...And I didn't know O-rings from Cheerie-O's at that point; I'd just been reading some space articles that pointed out that either somehow the shuttles would be the first aircraft in history to never-ever crash, or there would be a disaster at some point.

[Frank Cannon]

7. Oberg debunks that in the article

He says even Richard Feynman looked into it and didn't find anything to the Ronnie rumor.

If Oberg says it, I tend to believe him. He's probably the most knowledgeable and best connected journalist on the space program that there is.

[Vinnie From Indy]

13. Not exactly true about Feynman

Feynman was very aware of the political aspect of the launch decision, but he felt it was more important to focus on the feedback systems and the degradation of discipline to standards and procedure. In so many words he said that the decision to launch was just piece of the puzzle or cascading failure leading to disaster.

[Thtwudbeme]

8. I always thought of that speech as Peggy Noonan's finest writing.

I was young, and that "slipping the surly bonds of earth" stuff got to me.

Now that I am older, I watch him read it in videos and am amazed how he just read it off the teleprompter.

[Kingshakabobo]

15. Wasn't that stolen?

"slipping the surly bonds of earth"

I thought that was stolen from a movie? IIRC

[Mountainman]

17. slipping the surly bonds of earth is from the poem "High Flight"

High Flight
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 untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

http://www.deltaweb.co.uk/spitfire/hiflight.htm

[zbdent]

29. I always remember that being the sign-off for the local TV station

out of Pittsburgh PA at the end of the broadcast day . . .

[PATRICK]

3. The consolations

that re-victimize the victims and the grieving, that also console otherwise responsible criminals and incompetents, that console those who would have false emotions than justice or a trusted institution revealed as untrustworthy. it is such a natural institutional process one not need not pick one or two villains but also question the whole meaning of our news institution.

It's character, even as it does give pertinent facts, becomes a priestly celebration and a pseudo religious prop for other institutions. It is a great proof of the necessity for alternate mainstream media and appreciating the often more painful, always more valuable "mythology" of truth over false piety. Many of those myths are easily dispelled by picking out the facts that were reported though little acted upon. Much more time and effort was spent on the emotional mini dramas caused by the crime. The box of the event never skimps on the wrappings. It packages and wraps it in front of our eyes until only the cover remains. Don't open until Judgment Day.

[soothsayer]

4. blew up on my birthday

[Connie_Corleone]

5. I was 14 years old.

I was oblivious back then. I didn't even know the shuttle was going up that day. Some boy told me about it in the school hallway.

[politicat]

6. In regard to myth 1: Millions of school children DID see it live.

Because it was piped into schools, lots of us were in assemblies to watch. Those millions of children are now in their late twenties and thirties. People who were adults at the time (now in middle age) did not see it live, but the rest of us... My classmates saw it live on TV. In fact, my entire school was in assemblies to watch it. I know that the entire school district I was in at the time (Mesa Public Schools, one of the largest school districts in the country) was watching live.

I saw it live. Not on TV. From about 2 miles away on Static Test Site road. My father had access and that was our family vacation that year. I remember having homework to do on the plane.

Explosion at that altitude doesn't have noise, but that doesn't mean it didn't explode.

And loss of life is an unavoidable price of progress. Maybe not this specific mission, but space flight is still experimental. We can't be afraid of death. The astronauts themselves wouldn't appreciate our disregard of their sacrifice by ending the programs.

[snooper2]

14. I remember watching it live in school, DeSoto M.O....

I was 11 years old

[izzybeans]

21. I certainly remember the TV never cutting away

they played it repeatedly over and over again. I remember a breif discoloration and then an explosion. Either way they died. 73 seconds in or a few seconds afterward.

[wicket]

25. I stayed home "sick" so I could watch it

I was in the 2nd grade. Turns out my class rolled in a TV to watch it anyway, and we were all heartbroken :(

[Pithlet]

26. Not only that

But you didn't have to have a sattelite dish to get CNN! We'd had CNN on our local cable for awhile by that point. My sister was home sick from school and watched it live on TV, along with my mother who was home with her.

[GreenPartyVoter]

27. yep. I saw it in the science room in 9th grade

[Lars39]

33. I was at home and saw it live.

I think they interrupted programming to show the lift-off.

[Clark2008]

38. I saw it live

The whole 5th-grade gasped and was silent.

It was awful.

[Heddi]

39. I saw it live. Did not have satellite.

I was at home sick that day. I would have been in Ms. Tindall's 4th grade class, where everyone was gathered 'round the tee vee to watch in school.

Instead, I watched it live. I know it was live. There was the little "live" thing on the bottom of the screen. I remember them walking to the shuttle. The count-down. Various interviews. Shuttle taking off. Shuttle "exploding". Parts raining down. Much crying. People screaming in the background. It was on the news for the rest of the day.

I was in North Charleston, SC at the time. I lived in a trailer with my mother. I was writing in my journal while it was happening. I still have thejournal. Started out talking about how neat it was that the teacher was going to space and how I wanted to go to space and hopefully one day I would. THen I wrote that something looked wrong. And then I wrote that it blew up and I hoped they were still alive.

No satellite.

Just tv. Just like the kids in the classroom (we were in a poor school district and they were getting live feed off the TV just like I was). They didn't have satellite either. I don't even think the school had cable.

[Punkingal]

9. I have a friend whose father was career Air Force....

He heard the tapes...said they were just awful...crew was screaming, etc. I never believed they died instantly, even before I heard that story.

[ScreamingMeemie]

10. Hi Punkingal...somewhere, a few years ago, a transcript was floating

around, but I never knew if it was vetted by anyone or not. :hi: How have you been?

[Punkingal]

24. Good, MrsG, how are you?

I am going to Las Vegas for the month of February to get some sun and rest amd warm up my bones!

[Connie_Corleone]

12. I read a "transcript" online a couple of years ago.

I don't know if it was real or not, but it read how you describe it. Except Mccauliffe was the only one unconscious.

[politicat]

18. The major online "transcript" comes from Weekly World News.

So it's about as reliable as Free Republic.

The best indication of survival is the fact that 3 of the airpacks were manually triggered, but the fourth was not. It's likely that realization and unconsciousness happened at about the same time.

[wicket]

34. According to Snopes, it is fake

I read that transcript too and did some poking around:

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/challenger.asp

[mattclearing]

11. He's wrong on his first assertion: A lot of people didn't watch it live.

Christa McAuliffe's presence on the mission made it a big deal. The launch was watched in classrooms as a result. My 3rd grade class watched it live, and it was stunning. I'll never forget it.

[rinsd]

23. He is referencing the general public but you're right.

My 5th grade class watched it. I just remember the shock and not understanding what happened and when we started to ask our teacher, she had tears in her eyes.

[Bjornsdotter]

16. I had read years ago

...that the crew didn't die until they hit the water. It bothered me for a long time.

Cheers!

[izzybeans]

20. The difference between this

The shuttle did not explode in the common definition of that word. There was no shock wave, no detonation, no "bang" — viewers on the ground just heard the roar of the engines stop as the shuttle’s fuel tank tore apart, spilling liquid oxygen and hydrogen which formed a huge fireball at an altitude of 46,000 ft. (Some television documentaries later added the sound of an explosion to these images.) But both solid-fuel strap-on boosters climbed up out of the cloud, still firing and unharmed by any explosion. Challenger itself was torn apart as it was flung free of the other rocket components and turned broadside into the Mach 2 airstream. Individual propellant tanks were seen exploding — but by then, the spacecraft was already in pieces.
snip from the article

and an explosion is meaningless. It wasn't an explosion it was a fuel tank tearing apart and causing a fire ball. So, they didn't die 73 seconds in, perhaps it was 75 seconds or something


:shrug:

[pointblank]

22. Here is the supposed

"rest" of the transcript. The website says that it picks up where NASA'a official transcript left off, and that this info comes from the astronauts. I am pretty sure its bogus, but who knows?

**WARNING DISTURBING MATERIAL IN THIS LINK**

http://www.blurofinsanity.com/challenger.html


A sad day in history. :-(

[politicat]

28. That "transcript" is the one that was traced to Weekly World News.

Yes, disturbing, but not too reliable.

[SaveElmer]

32. Of course it is completely bogus...here is the snopes link

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/challenger.asp

[Roon]

37. I totally trust snopes

Whenever a freeper cites a snope's link, I cite this one http://www.snopes.com/military/limbaugh.htm

[Roon]

30. Kick!

[electron_blue]

31. Huh, I'm very surprised to find out that I didn't believe any of the myths

But, then, I followed the whole Challenger aftermath for years. For crying out loud, the bit about the O-rings was talked about in the news forever, including Feynman hopping around explaining how it could have happened.

Such a sad tragedy.

[CornField]

35. That's one of those days where you'll always remember where you were

I was sitting in trig class. My best friend Barbara and I were feverently passing notes about my recent break-up with a longtime boyfriend. I nearly peed my pants at the abrupt noise from the schools' PA system. Our principal's voice boomed throughout the school, "This morning the space shuttle Challenger took off..." Muffled 'hurrahs' could be heard from the class across the hall where James was in class. Everyone knew James' dad had been working with NASA and I could see the scene of pats on the back and congratulations.

Realizing his long pause was taken as the end of his announcement, the principal began again, "Ahem... This morning the space shuttle Challenger took off with teacher Christa McAuliffe on board and exploded shortly after. There are no survivors." I don't remember much after the long, still silence which followed.

[Roon]

36. I was 18 at the time

Didn't watch TV or listen to the radio in the car, listened to tapes. I found out the shuttle exploded when I went to the laudromat late in the day and saw it on their TV.

[Horse with no Name]

40. I was in my car

I just had a job interview that went very well and I was driving down the highway on my way home.
It was absolutely shocking.
However, I never in my wildest thoughts considered this a MIHOP or a LIHOP.