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Thread: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

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    Default Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Twenty years ago, millions of television viewers were horrified to witness the live broadcast of the space shuttle Challenger exploding 73 seconds into flight, ending the lives of the seven astronauts on board. And they were equally horrified to learn in the aftermath of the disaster that the faulty design had been chosen by NASA to satisfy powerful politicians who had demanded the mission be launched, even under unsafe conditions. Meanwhile, a major factor in the disaster was that NASA had been ordered to use a weaker sealant for environmental reasons. Finally, NASA consoled itself and the nation with the realization that all frontiers are dangerous and to a certain extent, such a disaster should be accepted as inevitable.

    At least, that seems to be how many people remember it, in whole or in part. That’s how the story of the Challenger is often retold, in oral tradition and broadcast news, in public speeches and in private conversations and all around the Internet. But spaceflight historians believe that each element of the opening paragraph is factually untrue or at best extremely dubious. They are myths, undeserving of popular belief and unworthy of being repeated at every anniversary of the disaster.

    The flight, and the lost crewmembers, deserve proper recognition and authentic commemoration. Historians, reporters, and every citizen need to take the time this week to remember what really happened, and especially to make sure their memories are as close as humanly possible to what really did happen.

    If that happens, here's the way the mission may be remembered:

    1. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Few people actually saw the Challenger tragedy unfold live on television. <LI class=textBodyBlack>The shuttle did not explode in the common definition of that word. <LI class=textBodyBlack>The flight, and the astronauts’ lives, did not end at that point, 73 seconds after launch. <LI class=textBodyBlack>The design of the booster, while possessing flaws subject to improvement, was neither especially dangerous if operated properly, nor the result of political interference. <LI class=textBodyBlack>Replacement of the original asbestos-bearing putty in the booster seals was unrelated to the failure. <LI class=textBodyBlack>There were pressures on the flight schedule, but none of any recognizable political origin.
    2. Claims that the disaster was the unavoidable price to be paid for pioneering a new frontier were self-serving rationalizations on the part of those responsible for incompetent engineering management — the disaster should have been avoidable.
    Myth #1: A nation watched as tragedy unfolded
    Few people actually saw what happened live on television. The flight occurred during the early years of cable news, and although CNN was indeed carrying the launch when the shuttle was destroyed, all major broadcast stations had cut away — only to quickly return with taped relays. With Christa McAuliffe set to be the first teacher in space, NASA had arranged a satellite broadcast of the full mission into television sets in many schools, but the general public did not have access to this unless they were one of the then-few people with satellite dishes. What most people recall as a "live broadcast" was actually the taped replay broadcast soon after the event.

    Myth #2: Challenger exploded
    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.


    Myth #3: The crew died instantly
    The flight, and the astronauts’ lives, did not end at that point, 73 seconds after launch. After Challenger was torn apart, the pieces continued upward from their own momentum, reaching a peak altitude of 65,000 ft before arching back down into the water. The cabin hit the surface 2 minutes and 45 seconds after breakup, and all investigations indicate the crew was still alive until then.

    What's less clear is whether they were conscious. If the cabin depressurized (as seems likely), the crew would have had difficulty breathing. In the words of the final report by fellow astronauts, the crew “possibly but not certainly lost consciousness”, even though a few of the emergency air bottles (designed for escape from a smoking vehicle on the ground) had been activated.

    The cabin hit the water at a speed greater than 200 mph, resulting in a force of about 200 G’s — crushing the structure and destroying everything inside. If the crew did lose consciousness (and the cabin may have been sufficiently intact to hold enough air long enough to prevent this), it’s unknown if they would have regained it as the air thickened during the last seconds of the fall. Official NASA commemorations of “Challenger’s 73-second flight” subtly deflect attention from what was happened in the almost three minutes of flight (and life) remaining AFTER the breakup.

    Myth #4: Dangerous booster flaws result of meddling
    The side-mounted booster rockets, which help propel the shuttle at launch then drop off during ascent, did possess flaws subject to improvement. But these flaws were neither especially dangerous if operated properly, nor the result of political interference.

    Each of the pair of solid-fuel boosters was made from four separate segments that bolted end-to-end-to-end together, and flame escaping from one of the interfaces was what destroyed the shuttle. Although the obvious solution of making the boosters of one long segment (instead of four short ones) was later suggested, long solid fuel boosters have problems with safe propellant loading, with transport, and with stacking for launch — and multi-segment solids had had a good track record with the Titan-3 military satellite program. The winning contractor was located in Utah, the home state of a powerful Republican senator, but the company also had the strengths the NASA selection board was looking for. The segment interface was tricky and engineers kept tweaking the design to respond to flight anomalies, but when operated within tested environmental conditions, the equipment had been performing adequately.

    Myth #5: Environmental ban led to weaker sealant
    A favorite of the Internet, this myth states that a major factor in the disaster was that NASA had been ordered by regulatory agencies to abandon a working pressure sealant because it contained too much asbestos, and use a weaker replacement. But the replacement of the seal was unrelated to the disaster — and occurred prior to any environmental ban.

    Even the original putty had persistent sealing problems, and after it was replaced by another putty that also contained asbestos, the higher level of breaches was connected not to the putty itself, but to a new test procedure being used. “We discovered that it was this leak check which was a likely cause of the dangerous bubbles in the putty that I had heard about," wrote physicist Richard Feynman, a member of the Challenger investigation board.

    And the bubble effect was unconnected with the actual seal violation that would ultimately doom Challenger and its crew. The cause was an inadequate low-temperature performance of the O-ring seal itself, which had not been replaced.

    Myth #6: Political pressure forced the launch
    There were pressures on the flight schedule, but none of any recognizable political origin. Launch officials clearly felt pressure to get the mission off after repeated delays, and they were embarrassed by repeated mockery on the television news of previous scrubs, but the driving factor in their minds seems to have been two shuttle-launched planetary probes. The first ever probes of this kind, they had an unmovable launch window just four months in the future. The persistent rumor that the White House had ordered the flight to proceed in order to spice up President Reagan’s scheduled State of the Union address seems based on political motivations, not any direct testimony or other first-hand evidence. Feynman personally checked out the rumor and never found any substantiation. If Challenger's flight had gone according to plan, the crew would have been asleep at the time of Reagan's speech, and no communications links had been set up.

    Myth #7: An unavoidable price for progress
    Claims that the disaster was the unavoidable price to be paid for pioneering a new frontier were self-serving rationalizations on the part of those responsible for incompetent engineering management — the disaster should have been avoidable. NASA managers made a bad call for the launch decision, and engineers who had qualms about the O-rings were bullied or bamboozled into acquiescence. The skeptics’ argument that launching with record cold temperatures is valid, but it probably was not argued as persuasively as it might have been, in hindsight. If launched on a warmer day, with gentler high-altitude winds, there’s every reason to suppose the flight would have been successful and the troublesome seal design (which already had the attention of designers) would have been modified at a pace that turned out to have been far too leisurely. The disaster need never have happened if managers and workers had clung to known principles of safely operating on the edge of extreme hazards — nothing was learned by the disaster that hadn’t already been learned, and then forgotten.
    "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

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    Veteran Member TarynJolie's Avatar
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    I was there that day with my 4th grade class. It was my first experience with death and very traumatic

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    BrunetteGoddess
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    This was on my 1st b-day.Nice huh?

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    Jay Zeno
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Memory icons of the generations.

    People remember where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor.
    People remember where they were when they heard about JFK's shooting.
    People remember where they were when they heard about the destruction of the Challenger.
    People remember where they were when they heard about the Word Trade Center.

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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    It's hard to believe it's been so long. I remember watching the news story in class. Knew about it beforehand because of course, My Grandmother would get up at the buttcrack of Dawn and watch the news.

    I also remember all the stupid jokes about Christa. Ridiculous.

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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Quote Originally Posted by CorsicaFire
    This was on my 1st b-day.Nice huh?
    Thanks, CorsicaFire. Now I feel REALLY old.

    I was on that day a relatively young (33) brand new father. I remember hearing about the accident on the radio at work. It doesn't seem that long ago.
    My latest conspiracy theory: I am convinced that Dick Cheney is, in reality, Elmer Fudd.

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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Wow, I am amazed that it's been 20 years. It only seems like 10 yrs or so...

    Terrible tragedy.

    Corsica, how sad that your birthday is forever linked with such a sad event. My dad had the same birthday as Pearl Harbor day (Dec. 7).

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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Wow, man it had been a long time. I remember making cards and mailing them to her family and class. we also gathered money and sent it down there too.

    It really sucks when the markers of our collective society's lives are terrible events like that.
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    Yekhefah
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    *I* saw it live. I was six years old and obsessed with astronomy. I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up, and Christa was one of my heroes. That explosion was absolutely devastating to me. It was the first time I had to deal with serious accidents and death; it was when I learned that things don't always progress as they should. It took me years to stop having nightmares about it.

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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    I was in my dorm room, just got back from an early class, was studying and watching it on TV when it happened.

    Surreal.

    Then I went outside (I went to college in Fla) and looked up and you could see the trails of stuff faintly in the sky.

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    God/dess MrChristopher's Avatar
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Yeah, when I heard it had been 20 years I suddenly felt OLD. I grew up in Orlando, and I was 13 so....7th grade maybe? We stood outside our classroom and watched it happen. I do remember thinking "Hey, that didn't look right....". Then we went back inside and I distinctly remember the broadcaster NASA guy on TV saying something to the effect of "Uh...we seem to have a small problem with the orbiter", which still sounds as ridiculous now as it did then. 20 years, wow.
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    What I can't believe is that I was 12 years old when it happened!!

    It's so sad that it happened, though...and then there was the one that blew up (was it 2 years ago?) on it's way back into the atomosphere...

    *sigh* The price we pay to explore space.

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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Quote Originally Posted by VenusGoddess
    It's so sad that it happened, though...and then there was the one that blew up (was it 2 years ago?) on it's way back into the atomosphere...
    Three actually. Where does the time go?

    I remember that I was home sick from school the day that Challenger blew up. I had been asleep on the couch and went into the kitchen around noon to fix something to eat. I turned on the kitchen TV and they were showing replays of the vapor trails. It had been a little more than an hour since the accident.

    When Columbia disintegrated, I was driving home from work and heard a radio DJ mention something about a "space accident". I got home, flipped on the TV and saw that errie familiar image from 17 years earlier, only this time there were lots of vapor trails going down instead of a few going up.
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Funny, Doc, I was also home sick that day. I was watching a soap opera and saw the first of the news broadcasts.


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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Quote Originally Posted by VenusGoddess
    *sigh* The price we pay to explore space.
    It sounds heartless and cold to say so, especially in the context of this thread, but it is nevertheless true that the development of space travel has been astonishingly cheap in terms of human lives lost. Few, if any, other new environments, or just new places for that matter, have been explored more safely. You name it - crossing the world's seas, underwater environments via several different technologies, high mountains, polar regions, both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air flight, tropical jungles, extreme deserts, caves... They have all killed more people and been statistically more dangerous for the early pioneers than space travel.

    Just to give one example, see http://www.infoplease.com/spot/everest2.html which, among other facts, notes that

    Between 1921 and 2004, Everest has been climbed by more than 2,200 people from twenty countries. More than 185 have lost their lives, making the odds on not coming down alive about one in eight.
    ...
    Another reason is the appalling waste of human life. In May 1996, eight lost their lives in the single greatest disaster on the mountain—yet it did not stop others from attempting the climb just weeks later, resulting in four more deaths. The total for the year was fifteen. The following May, another nine mountaineers died.
    Although the arithmetic is not perfect (should be 8%, not 1 in 8...maybe climbed the mountain too many times without oxygen?), the input numbers and overall point are valid. This single mountain has killed many more people than space travel and is statistically more dangerous as well; it has even killed more since manned space travel began. And, it is by no means the most dangerous mountain in the world to climb.

    Nor is mountain climbing the most dangerous item in my list above, not even close.

    I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that more people have been killed in industrial accidents associated with building manned space craft and their launch systems than have actually died riding in them! (Probably a smaller fraction of those involved though.)

    The reason the tragedies that have killed astronauts seem so vivid is their heavy media, and especially TV, coverage. There must be a lesson in there somewhere.

    -Ww

    PS - VG, I quoted you not to pick on you in particular; you just expressed a very common perception/feeling clearly and succinctly.
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    As fascinated as I was seeing the clear videos of the actual tragic event thru my tears, the Challenger Commission Hearings on TV were even more fascinating. It was so in watching management with their simplified assumptions being shot down publically so hard scientists and engineers who had evidence that the design had flaws that should have been investigated, as many NASA engineers had warned. I appreciated Feynmann's clear statement of the flaws in management philosophy; he could do that with many technical issues. It made me proud that I understood everything I heard from him and practically the rest of the tech team, and it reminded me of how management could go so tragically wrong when they became aloof and insensitive due to top-level time pressures.

    Thanks, Big_Daddy, for posting the debunkment of so many myths, some of which I was aware. I guess this indicates how legends evolve.
    Last edited by threlayer; 01-31-2006 at 03:40 PM. Reason: corrected attribution
    I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.

    Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.

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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Sure blade did not even post on this topic and he gets all the credit. Damn it! LOL
    "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

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    God/dess threlayer's Avatar
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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    Quote Originally Posted by big_daddy
    Sure blade did not even post on this topic and he gets all the credit. Damn it! LOL
    SORRY about that, chief.

    I have corrected my post.
    I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.

    Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.

    NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.

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    Default Re: Can you believe it's been 20 years?

    I was just giving you a hard time lol.
    "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

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