January 28th, 1986: Space Shuttle Challenger explodes

[Boss_Hogg]

I was only youngin at the time, but I'll never forget it.

 

My class and I were watching the launch on live TV, just like every other school kid in America. As soon as the shuttle exploded our teacher bolted to the television set and turned it off.  Many of us were puzzled and had no idea what had just happened. I was only 5 at the time and didn't know what to think. I just remember watching it explode and the teacher telling us everything's okay.

 

I vaguely remember some of the older kids in my elementary school joking about the death of Christa McAuliffe, the public school teacher. 

 

 

 

 

 

The day before the accident, one engineer named Roger Boisjoly pleaded with NASA and Morton Thiokol (the rocket manufacturer) to postpone the launch. He claimed the shuttle's rockets were at a severe risk of catastrophic failure due to a faulty design in the o-rings coupled with the extremely cold temperatures (18 degrees) in Florida. Bolsjoly later confided in a "Challenger" documentary that NASA told him to think with his "management cap" and not his "engineering cap". 

 

Boisjoly resigned from Morton Thiokol after the accident and later suffered a nervous breakdown. He passed away in 2012. 

 

Never Forget

[Dan T.]

Hearing "Challenger, go at throttle up" still gives me chills of dread, every time I hear it.  What a nightmarish, gut wrenching day that was.

[TradeTheBeal!]

Saw it in my high school cafeteria.  Very sad day.

[China]

Happened while I was at class during college.  Came back to the apartment and all my roommates were gathered around the TV (which was unusual during the middle of the day) and then saw it.

[The Evil Genius]

I think I was in 5th grade when it happened.

 

Old enough to understand what had happened and old enough to still remember (shamefully) several of the off color jokes that came later that summer.

 

Thanks Boss for bringing up the story of Roger Boisjoly. I had never heard it.

[Bliz]

I think I was in 5th grade when it happened.

 

Old enough to understand what had happened and old enough to still remember (shamefully) several of the off color jokes that came later that summer.

 

Thanks Boss for bringing up the story of Roger Boisjoly. I had never heard it.

 

Same on all fronts.  Except I think I was in 3rd grade.  

 

How had I never heard the Boisjoly story before?

[88Comrade2000]

I was in high school.  Was home because snow closed schools that day.  Everyone was watching a video in the living room; so we didn't know what happened until I went into the bedroom and turned on the T.V. to watch something else.

[Rudechain]

I remember that day vividly. 

 

I had signed up to join the military and was waiting for my day at the MEPS station.  In the meantime, I took a job at the Macdill AFB Officer's Club to make some cash and stay out of trouble.

 

 

It was surreal as I was watching the TV, a window just behind the television and slightly to the right had a view to the NE and you could clearly see the smoke trails and point of explosion.

 

RIP

 

• Francis R. Scobee, Commander
• Michael J. Smith, Pilot
• Ronald McNair, Mission Specialist
• Ellison Onizuka, Mission Specialist
• Judith Resnik, Mission Specialist
• Greg Jarvis, Payload Specialist
• Christa McAuliffe, Payload Specialist

[pjfootballer]

Senior year of HS. I was going to HS in the morning and college in the afternoons on a college waiver. Just got home, was eating lunch, I turned on the TV and then it happened.  I was stunned.  My mom was upstairs cleaning and I yelled at her to come down to see this.  She thought something had happened to me.

[Boss_Hogg]

"Approximately 17 percent of Americans witnessed the launch live because of the presence of crew member Christa Mcauliffe who would have been the first teacher in space. Media coverage of the accident was extensive: one study reported that 85 percent of Americans surveyed had heard the news within an hour of the accident. The only live national TV coverage available publicly was provided by CNN"

 

More on Boisjoly from NPR:

 

The problem, Boisjoly wrote, was the elastic seals at the joints of the multi-stage booster rockets. They tended to stiffen and unseal in cold weather and NASA's ambitious shuttle launch schedule included winter lift-offs with risky temperatures, even in Florida.

 

On January 27, 1986, the forecast for the next morning at the Kennedy Space Center included a launch-time temperature as low as 30 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA had never launched in temperatures that cold and Boisjoly and his four colleagues at Thiokol headquarters in Utah concluded it would be too dangerous too launch.

 

Three weeks later, he told NPR's Daniel Zwerdling in an unrecorded and confidential interview, "I fought like Hell to stop that launch. I'm so torn up inside I can hardly talk about it, even now."

 

The explosion of Challenger and the deaths of its crew, including Teacher-in Space Christa McAuliffe, traumatized the nation and left Boisjoly disabled by severe headaches, steeped in depression and unable to sleep. When I visited him at his Utah home in April of 1987, he was thin, tearful and tense. He huddled in the corner of a couch, his arms tightly folded on his chest. But he was ready to speak publicly.

 

 ... A therapist recommended speaking out even more and for close to three decades, Boisjoly traveled to engineering schools around the world, speaking about ethical decision-making and sticking with data. "This is what I was meant to do," he told Roberta, "to have impact on young people's lives."

 

I always wanted to write to Boisjoly, but kept putting it off. 

[roanoker]

Terrible day. Brought a lot of us back to reality that space exploration is not a routine endeavor; RIP Challenger crew.

[nonniey]

Maybe not Reagans most famous or influential speech but I think that was his best speech. Probably the best delivery since FDR (or maybe Kennedy) by a President.

[PCS]

I was 2 1/2 years in the Air Force and working shifts in the hospital at the time. I was asleep when it first happened,but had been awakened by several excited voices down the hall in he dayroom at about the time of the launch. I woke up later and asked if anyone knew what the commotion was about. That's when I found out. Absolutely didn't believe it at first,but then ended up watching the video the rest of the day so that took care of that. Very sad day. 

[just skins baby]

Air Force basic training. Our TI came in and told us simply "The shuttle blew up" and that was it.

[Corcaigh]

It wasn't just Boisjoly; the SRBs were a disaster waiting to happen with many documented problems that management ignored.

[pointyfootball]

I was in South Florida in high school at time.  Our biology teacher told us that he had taken every class outside that morning to watch it take off but it kept getting cancelled, so he wasn't going to take our class out.  Freaky "foresight".

[frostyj]

Was in 4th or 5th grade. Our family went skiing for the first time and was on the slopes and heard about it. No one believed it, thought people were joking. Saying things like that would never happen. Word spread more that it was true. The impact did hit until we we're home and saw the news. By then they had stopped showing it. All I ever saw of the explosion was the next Time article and cover picture. It wasn't until early 00's until I saw the video. And have only seen it a few times. I remember a few friends getting in trouble over the head and shoulders joke.

[Spaceman Spiff]

I was in Kindergarten.  I don't remember too much of it, but I remember we had gone into the classroom across the hall to watch it with the 1st graders.  I remember the explosion and the teachers reactions, quickly turning it off.  

 

I also remember, I think they gave us posters and 8x10 photos of the astronauts for the mission before the launch or something.  I remember having a picture of the shuttle and some photos of the astronauts.  I can't remember if we got them before or after.

[HogNose]

I'll never forget. It was a snow day off from school ( Fairfax county)  and I was watching the Price is Right when the news broke.  I was in 11th grade. 

[Popeman38]

I was in 3rd grade and was watching it live in class. 

[skinsmarydu]

I was still in the Navy.

Only Columbia & RGIII losing his knee has hurt that much.

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

I was in 3rd grade and was watching it live in class. 

Yeah, I was in 6th grade and they would pull a bunch of classes into the auditorium with multiple TVs set up showing all the launches.  I'll never forget that day.   

[mjah]

It wasn't just Boisjoly; the SRBs were a disaster waiting to happen with many documented problems that management ignored.

 

Yep.  The entire Shuttle concept, as executed, was a set of multiple disasters waiting to happen -- and then waiting to happen again.

 

The long and winding path between initial Congressional approval and the Shuttle's first flight lays bare the rationale for the terrible decision to place the orbiter astride the tank and booster rockets - instead of atop them - eventually causing the deaths of 14 astronauts.  Doesn't excuse it, but at least explains it.

 

It also provides a strong argument for why NASA and the Air Force never should have attempted to follow through on that piggyback design concept in the first place.  The risks were known as soon as the final concept took form.  Maybe earlier.  That would mean mid-1970s at the latest.

 

There was a lot of unexamined pride in those ranks in the 1970s.  It's a terrible shame that more than a dozen astronauts had to die because of it.

[The Sisko]

I was in college and as I remember it, I'd skipped classes that day to take an ah, "smoke break" day. However from what others have said, maybe it was a snow day. Anywho I distinctly remember channel surfing and landing on the launch and thinking it would be cool to watch even though the whole shuttle thing seemed routine by that time. When it exploded my buzz was instantly gone. I remember being both horrified and saddened that the announcer and some in the crowd (I think it was McAuliffe's parents) didn't grasp right away that something catastrophically bad had just happened. I remember yelling at the TV, somebody do something!