Columbia v Challenger Space Shuttle Disasters

I will actually always remember when Columbia crashed because everyone was warned not to touch the debris if they found any, and some poor redneck in Texas found some and touched it and was interviewed about it on CN . He was nearly in tears: "I knew I warn't s'posed t' tetch it, but I jes' couldn't he'p m'se'f!" I never found out what happened to him.

I've posted this before here but I was in school with the astronauts' kids when the Challenger blew up. There didn't seem to be any paranoid secrecy at the time about the disaster.

Challenger was a big deal because I believe it was the first teacher who was going up in space, and a lot of classrooms have TV's put in to watch it.

Unlike previous missions, there was a sense of everyday middle America about this one, as the teacher wasn't affluent either. She was your average school teacher who wanted to be an astronaut.

Another thing about Challenger was that the engineers kept warning them not to launch in the cold because the o-ring seals on the fuel tanks could be compromised but they did anyway. It was eventually proven that the cold made them shrink and become brittle and allowed fuel to leak, which caused the explosion.

I live in Houston and was watching the news when word came in about Columbia. The local stations were of course taking calls from residents who lived in the flight path and saw the thing go past. I vividly remember one woman who called and was saying how she was cooking breakfast and looked out her "winder" and saw it go by but "seeins how there's an AF base nearby she didn't pay much attention cause I sees all kinds of UFO type things spyin' on me thru my winders all the time"......she continued on uttering more and more bizarre claims all the while the anchors faces growing more and more alarmed until they cut her off and they continued as if nothing had happened.

I think the paranoid secrecy around Challenger was about the final moments of the astronauts. At the time of the accident, NASA was very tight-lipped, and it wasn't until years later that reports came out that the astronauts survived the initial fragmentation of the shuttle body, and were probably alive/conscious for (at least some of) the free-fall. It took almost 3 minutes for the crew cabin to hit the water.

Some of the info about the final moments of Challenger was only released because an engineer sued under FOI in the early 1990s.

After Columbia, NASA released a 400-page "Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report" that listed 5 different lethal events that could have killed the astronauts as well as all the shoddy equipment failures that occurred in the final minutes. It's was a tragic event, regardless, but I think it's so much better to be forthright with the public about the risks, and how design and engineering processes can be improved to prevent disasters in future.

It's not like shuttle disasters are like regular traffic accidents or something: the space program is government-funded and (back then, anyway) it was all wrapped up with national pride.

There was nowhere near that level of forthrightness about Challenger. A lot more empty/jingoistic platitudes.

I remember being on DL when Columbia went down and everything was tense until someone posted a thread claiming to be a representative of The Romulan Star Empire taking credit for its destruction.

God, I love DL.

I didn't know it was a contest

Challenger was a HUGE deal at the time. The shuttle program had become rote, much like the late Apollo missions. NASA chose a public school teacher as a crew member, who would "teach" from space. The aim was to engage a new generation to support NASA. Of course, it was a colossal, preventable disaster, but the pressure was on the flight control team to launch in order to coincide with classrooms across the country being tuned in at the same time.

Columbia also was preventable in retrospect. It happened in the relatively early morning and, I think, on a weekend. Unlike early shuttle landings, Columbia's was not televised live.

Unlike Challenger, with its breathless news coverage, Columbia's explosion was reported unemotionally, to my ear at least.

Christa McAuliffe was a lesbian, right?

Columbia broke apart because of wing damage that happened during the launch (NASA was aware of the damage, but didn't think it would be lethal). So they did basically the whole mission with this fatal flaw in the aircraft. I'm not sure what they could have done in hindsight. Sent somebody on a spacewalk to fix the wing? Or sent a rescue shuttle to pick them up? I don't know.

Anyway, I was in 5th grade when the Challenger disaster happened. We didn't watch it live, but our teacher came into the classroom and was crying and shaken about what had happened (which was alarming on its own).

And there was tremendous national preoccupation with it (seeing the breaking apart of the shuttle from the rocket boosters and those big twirls of smoke again, and again, and again on television - I'm not sure anything compared to that obsessive replaying of a moment of tragedy until 9/11). And this was before 24-hour news channels were a thing.

I just think it would have been more healing for the nation if the Challenger aftermath had been communicated more honestly.

There's now a miniseries about Challenger on Netflix called "The Final Flight." America shouldn't have had to wait 35 years for this information.

The sonic boom from the Columbia breaking apart woke me up that morning. I ran to window to see what the hell had happened and there was nothing in the sky. I went back to bed and woke up to the TV warning us not to touch any debris in our backyards in case it was radioactive.

The Challenger was so inclusive too which I remember reading really hit home, at least to tv anchors, what American was about. Diversity. You had White, Black, Asian and Jewish crew members working together and I heard a lot of guys say Judith Resnick was "hot".

The local historical society of Nacogdoches, TX has a hokey documentary on Youtube about the crash Most of the debris ended up falling in the little towns around that area.

"The Day the Sky Fell." Very Bernie.

[quote] Some of the info about the final moments of Challenger was only released because an engineer sued under FOI in the early 1990s.

What was the point? It wasn't like that info was kept from those investigating the crash and planning to correct defects or from the families or those who needed to know that. Why does anyone feel they have the right to know the final extremely private and painful details of someone's life? This kind of thirst for information is often nothing but voyeurism. And it's very disrespectful birdering on cruel.

The Columbia post-crash report found that the cross-shoulder seatbelts did not work, the re-entry pressure suits were bulky to put on (some of the astronauts did not have time in the 40 seconds between the shuttle fragmenting and the crew cabin de-pressurizing to put on the suits), 3 of the astronauts had not put on their gloves, their helmets did not conform to their heads, and their visors were open. (Despite all of this, the report found that none of these factors would have prevented death from "hypersonic entry conditions" (exposure to very high altitude and high rate of speed).

Maybe having this level of detail seems morbid, but I find it almost inspiring in the sense that it helps people to understand what went wrong and try to do things better. Not least because astronauts are scientists who are, by nature, unsentimental troubleshooters. They must have been aware of the risks, yet were willing to go anyway, for the purpose of advancing scientific understanding.

It must be hard to re-design or re-engineer through the "noise" of political platitudes and hysterical national grief.

For kids my age, it was also the first experience with a "multiple casualty event," and for some, with death itself. The unwillingness of adults to speak with kids about it honestly, afterward, was pathetic (one kid in my class who inquired openly about the condition of the astronauts' bodies was sent straight to the principal--as if he was desecrating the memory of educators everywhere for simply being curious about a national event that no kid really got to opt out of seeing).

I think it was a really stupid, boneheaded move on the part of NASA to send a teacher (not to mention one with young kids), as if being launched into space were some candy-assed parade. Reckless, imo.

I think it was probably formative for young Gen X'ers (who are now old and cynical, like myself).

I was in pre school and we were watching the Challenger launch. There was so much excitement in the build up to the launch. When you are so little and you have good teachers, the thought of a real teacher going into space was just the most magical thing to think about. Maybe I was too young, but it seems like teachers were treated better and with more regard back in those days. When the Challenger exploded in front of American students as young as 3-4 on up, it was devastating. Everyone was crying. My mom was when she picked me up. Although I don't remember much, I don't think the whole thing was shrouded in secrecy. I can remember hearing "O ring" on the news early on. Maybe what was covered up was that they were warned not to fly. Also, to the poster upthread who said there is evidence that the astronauts survived the blast and were free falling, I do not know how. It was a massive fireball in the sky. I watched the Netflix doc during quarantine and I don't know how they would have survived that explosion. For some reason I don't remember Columbia at all, until I watched the doc. I've had to google for a reminder.

R11 - You are right about TV airing the tragic video in an endless loop that wasn't surpassed until 9/11; but the disaster-porn trend started a bit earlier with the assination attempt on Regan in '81. They played the clip of the President getting shot so often that SNL lampooned it a few years later with the death of Buckwheat.

R15, I respectfully disagree. The space shuttle disasters were portrayed as a "pride of the nation"-type thing and school kids everywhere either watched the launch from their classrooms or had to do "units" (as we did) about a teacher going into space. It was a huge production that was covered wall-to-wall in the media.

I think people (I hate to sound "political" but--unlike an ordinary car or plane crash--American taxpayers did foot the bill for that whole mess) have a legitimate interest in knowing, for example, that the astronauts survived the initial breaking apart of the shuttle and that at least 3 of them had activated their personal egress air packs after that event.

The Challenger disaster was my first exposure to racism.

There was a radio announcer in Texas that read out the names of six of the deceased astronauts. When he came to Ellison Onizuka, he just said "remember Pearl Harbor"

I feel similarly about war memoirs. Some years back, I read Philip Caputo's Vietnam memoir "A Rumor of War," and was a little surprised at how graphic it was--especially for 1977, when the war had just recently ended. But I think it's good and necessary thing.

When people read about what actually happens when a person is killed in combat--about intestines hanging out and brain matter everywhere, about body parts etc--it makes them think long and hard about what it means to send a young person off to fight a war. Rather than flag-draping everything, making believe that people just vanish into some patriotic ether.

I think the shuttle program should have taken a page from the age of Vietnam truth-telling. But, people never learn.

We're now fast approaching commercial spaceflight with SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos), and I wonder if there will be an honest reckoning about the hazards vs benefits, or if people will blithely go along, thinking that tech billionaires are somehow space proof.

I still remember the day, I was strolling around JFK airport waiting for the announcement about my flight and glanced up at the tv monitor to read the horrible news.

The Challenger was my generation's JFK (I was six at the time). I remember everything about it. Where I was sitting in class. What I was wearing. It was that first seminal moment where everything is frozen in amber for me. Probably because we all watched it live in school and was my first brush with death that didn't involve a hamster.

Tbh, I hardly remember the Columbia disaster.

[quote] When people read about what actually happens when a person is killed in combat--about intestines hanging out and brain matter everywhere, about body parts etc--it makes them think long and hard about what it means to send a young person off to fight a war. Rather than flag-draping everything, making believe that people just vanish into some patriotic ether.

A bit off topic, but this passage made me think of Emmett Till’s open casket. The stark brutality of death can serve as a needed reminder of the value of life - a soldier’s, a boy’s, an astronaut’s, a teacher’s...

I was watching the Challenger launch in my 5th grade class. My teacher was really excited because she was friends with Christa McAuliffe. I will never forget the look on her face upon the realization of what had just happened.

Columbia is hazier in my memory, but I recall it felt very long and a bit agonizing because the astronauts’ fate was inevitable.

Challenger had better jokes.

Columbia happened after 9/11 which I think desensitized people to horrible news whereas things were still pretty innocent when Challenger blew up. The Netflix documentary is excellent

I knew an FBI agent who'd worked on recovering Columbia debris. Indian trackers worked in teams to find fragments, I don't know which nations.

At the time, I worked for the company that was responsible for Columbia’s accident. (Pretty easy to guess which company and what happened.) we were watching the coverage, saddened as everyone else, especially since we were part of the program, but unaware we had anything to do with it. A few days later, all hell broke loose. Crazy times.

"I will have you blown out of space!"

Martin Marietta?

R30, that was the original company before they merged. Eh, I don’t know why I’m hesitant to say. It was Lockheed Martin and we made the external tanks. It was foam from the tanks that hit the heat tiles when the shuttle launched.

I was working as an anchor and reporter in Baltimore on the morning the Challenger exploded. I heard the bell ring on the small teletype machine near my desk, a signal that a bulletin was about to be transmitted. Then I watched as the story broke, the machine spelling out the bulletin slowly and methodically. It gave me chills. Still does. My station sent me to the NASA facility in Greenbelt, Maryland, for live reports. I remember walking into a large, empty room with a giant TV screen on one wall. It was showing a live feed of the Atlantic in Florida where pieces of the shuttle were raining down onto the ocean surface. I imagined that body parts were also hitting the water. I stood transfixed for several minutes because the tragedy was still too fresh. Prior to Christa McAuliffe being chosen to ride in the shuttle as the representative of the Teacher in Space program, NASA had promoted a Citizen in Space contest. I entered the competition and still have my certificate.

Q: What color were Christine Mcauliffe's eyes?

A: Blue. One blew left and one blew right.

There is video footage on youtube of the Columbia crew descending back to Earth. It cuts off before anything bad happens but I wonder if that footage exists

[quote] [R30], that was the original company before they merged. Eh, I don’t know why I’m hesitant to say. It was Lockheed Martin and we made the external tanks. It was foam from the tanks that hit the heat tiles when the shuttle launched.

Most large defense contractors make you sign NDAs during employment and make your exit benefits contingent on them. Subconsciously that may account for your hesitation in talking about it.

It is r35. Although it’s a matter of public record now.

R17, The astronauts weren't in the fireball; their capsule had already separated. But your impression was exactly what our government wanted us to have, so that we wouldn't envision the reality.

Meant to add: The launch wasn't timed for classroom viewing; it was hurried for Reagan's anticipated crowing in his SOTU speech.

Columbia was just terrible and close to home literally, someone found a HAND in their backyard here. They told people to go outside and look for debris and body parts here.

Challenger had been delayed a couple of times. Reagan gave the orders to launch January 28 no matter what so it would coincide with his State of the Union address.

For you, r21.

Nothing new under the sun.

The forward crew compartment of the shuttle was especially reinforced and was what separated intact from the explosion and fireball. There are youtube videos that pinpoint the crew compartment and show it starting to descend separately.

Wikipedia has a surprisingly good summary of what must have happened to the crew after the explosion.

[quote] Christa McAuliffe was a lesbian, right?

I think you're getting her mixed up with Sally ride.

Christa McAuliffe had two blue eyes; one blew here and the other blew there

Are posts r37 and r38 invisible, r40 and r42?

How did they know Christa McAuliffe had dandruff?

They found her head and shoulders on the beach.

I was 20 yo working the front desk at the Holiday Inn Resort ( it was the biggest hotel on Cocoa Beach at the time.) We always had all the shuttle crew families staying with us as well and all the major media covering the launch. Due to the cold weather the launch had been delayed several times and guests who should have checked out were requesting extensions. We were all relieved when they announced it was go. Myself and my off shift buddies rushed out to the Tiki bar on the beach as we always did to watch Challenger go. We all had seen many launches so when the boosters spun off we knew it exploded. Chunks splashing into the sea. First time in my relatively young life I had experienced shock. We ran back to the desk.Switchboard was going nuts. Grabbed the first call: This is ABC news what is the mood there now? I disconnected him. Had to help give a puppet show for the children of the astronauts families who were too young to realize what had happened. All the girls were in tears. I held it together till I got home and just sobbed in my dad's arms. Awful memory. Left town a month later. Gone for 35 years.

What kind of teacher was Christa McAuliffe?

Well, she was social studies. Now she's history.

Yep, I looked out my winder and saw it go by but seeins how there's an air force base nearby I didn't pay much attention cause I sees all kinds of UFO type things spyin' on me thru my winders all the time.

What was the last thing that went through Christa McAuliffe's mind?

Her foot.

[quote]Columbia broke apart because of wing damage that happened during the launch (NASA was aware of the damage, but didn't think it would be lethal). So they did basically the whole mission with this fatal flaw in the aircraft. I'm not sure what they could have done in hindsight. Sent somebody on a spacewalk to fix the wing? Or sent a rescue shuttle to pick them up? I don't know.

There were a number of options they could have tried, instead of the nothing they did.

There were a few fixes that involved spacewalks that they could have tried. They may not have worked, but doing nothing obviously didn't.

Columbia was on a long-duration mission and was carrying a ton of extra oxygen. Atlantis was going to launch pretty soon after Columbia got back, and was already being readied. They had enough supplies to have allowed them to stay on orbit until Atlantis could have been sent up, and then could have spacewalked across to hitch a ride home. Not low-risk, but again, better than nothing.

This one I may be remembering wrong, but I think they might also have been in an orbit where they could have docked at the ISS.

NASA is one of those agencies that seemingly everyone likes, but damned, do they have lousy decision-making.

That said, I hope Artemis-1 actually happens this year.

R46 (cont'd) I'm now retired living back on the beach I grew up on. Last week on the 35th anniversary of Challenger I went back to the old HI and stood at the Tiki bar where I had stood all those years ago. The hotel is getting ready to be demolished so was totally deserted. I wandered around my own 80's time warp snapping shots. Went into the old lobby and was surprised to see someone behind the desk. A bit embarrassed I blurted out to her. " 35 years ago I was standing right where you are when the shuttle blew up." Her response "I know I was standing right next to you!" Took me a nano second to realize it was my old pal Jane. She had white hair and glasses and 50 lbs heavier but I recognized her! I was overjoyed. I told her I thought I was the only ghost in this place. She was now GM and had been working at the HI for 36 years. Small town. Small world.

What are you going on about, r44? R40 and I just gave some more detail to what had been previously posted. Are you r37 and r38 and thought you had been ignored?

Although r40 exaggerated. Neither Reagan nor his staff gave an explicit order to launch "no matter what." They didn't have the authority. The final decision was NASA's. But NASA did give in to the Reagan team pressure, crossed their fingers and launched when they knew from their own staff it might not be safe to do so

R51, i love your recollections and you can quote Faulkner.

What time do you get off work?

My second grade class watched Challenger live. There was a lot of build up in our school to the first teacher in space. I didn’t know exactly what had happened as I watched it, but my teacher started crying and turned off the tv. Later the principal made an announcement over the intercom. My after school sitter had cable news, which I did not have at home, and I remember watching it shown over and over all afternoon. A day or few days later school children across America were going to leave porch lights on overnight for Christa. My parents wouldn’t let me because it was a waste of electricity.

[quote] Anyway, I was in 5th grade when the Challenger disaster happened. We didn't watch it live, but our teacher came into the classroom and was crying and shaken about what had happened (which was alarming on its own).

Just like when Jussie Smollett was attacked two years ago!

At least, we can take solace in the fact that all who perished in those horrific tragedies, were instantly whisked into heaven.

I want to read R46/R51's memoir.

There's footage of the Columbia crew joking with each other as the shuttle descended back to earth. This documentary showed how rough the re-entry was on the spaceship, however NASA is heard saying everything looked fine. Then the video feed freezes, but you can hear the background shuttle noise still. Then it cuts away as the shuttle is radio silent. This part is creepy. Complete silence as NASA radios for a response. But we see footage from earth that the shuttle becomes a fireball and parts of the ship break away, leaving a handful of separate contrails. You just knew the crew was being incinerated with no sound and just the images playing out in real time. It was very haunting.

Horrifying link:

NASA needed to spark an interest with youth to help ensure the space program continued to be in future budgets. Challenger was horrifying. It happened shortly before Expo 86 opened, so it was a bizarre media period in British Columbia. Jesus fucking christ, the explosion was replayed EVERY. FUCKING. DAY. ALL. DAY. For over a year. Every cable channel replayed it daily in news reports, 60 Minutes, W5, 20/20, CBC, talk shows, regional news, it was fucking relentless. Especially the fucking Fox network. Losers like Geraldo, Morton Downey, Joan Rivers, Oprah musta been saying turn the cameras on, Phil Donahue, who else? I hated the media for replaying the explosion around the clock on any cable channel. Thank god for streaming. By all means, it was a litmus stick for 911 to come.

Dennis Powell wrote an investigative piece ("Obviously, A Major Malfunction") for the Miami Herald in November 1988 (a link to the full piece is below--it's from another site) that's really damning of NASA, especially for the time. Talk about Keystone Kops.

For one thing, Powell writes, Challenger was not equipped with any emergency location transmitter (ELT), which is standard and required on all other U.S. aircraft. This would have enabled recovery crews to more quickly locate the crew cabin, rather than the 6 weeks it took (not least because locating the crew cabin was not priority #1 for NASA).

At the time, Powell's sources said, NASA argued that the transmitter (which would have been less than 10lb) was too heavy, despite making room for "700 embroidered mission patches, more than 1,600 flags of various sizes, countries and states, a video disk, an assortment of medallions, a deflated soccer ball, the town seal of Framingham, Mass., 47 copies of the U.S. Constitution and patches, pins, ornaments and assorted other things for organizations that wished to have something that had been in orbit aboard the shuttle."

The same article reports that a Coast Guard vessel came upon crew cabin debris on January 29, including "an astronaut's helmet, largely intact, containing ears and scalp." NASA suppressed that information, and didn't see it as any great impetus to give a move on finding the cabin.

Many sources have wondered at the ongoing secrecy about Challenger *in particular* and it's strange that this air of extreme secrecy and concealment should continue even to this day.

I think all the groaner jokes about the accident are cultural payback for the stupid and reckless media circus leading up to the accident, and the f*cked up way it was handled afterward.

(I meant "get" a move, not "give a move")

The sequence of events around Challenger reminds of a higher-level version of the Werner Herzog documentary "Grizzly Man," about the guy who was so starstruck about getting an Animal Planet-type TV gig that he was in total denial that he was challenging natural predators in their own habitat. And his own gruesome final moments were caught on tape, too.

Killary and Sleep Joe Biden were to blame.

I read some where that the remains of the astronauts were stiffed in empty oil drums dumped into the back of a panel van and driven down A1A at 2am to the autopsy location. So much for respecting our heroes.

Here's a NASA "resource tape" compiled for the 10th anniversary of the Challenger disaster that shows a lot of the pre-flight training and promotional stuff that the astronauts were doing to prepare for the launch.

Seeing and hearing interviews of Christa McAuliffe are so baffling, because she appears so utterly oblivious to any notion of danger or risk in the undertaking. Even if things had gone well. It's dangerous to get launched up into space.

NASA really sold this poor woman on a Wonka ticket.

The shuttle program had been going for five years by the time Challenger happened, Public perception was very much that it was basically a cargo plane. Which, actually, was the intention.

Barbara Morgan, who was McAuliffe's back-up for Challenger and was present at the launch eventually applied for and was accepted into the actual astronaut program, and actually did make it to space. I believe she was also working Mission Control the morning of the Columbia disaster, which means she saw both first-hand.

I watched the Challenger launch live with my high school students. I had applied to the Teacher in Space program, and followed it every step of the way. The image seared into my brain from that morning was just after the explosion, when the cameras cut to the astronauts' families in the viewing stands, and the dawning realization crossing their faces at different times.

And then I had to talk to my students about what we had just witnessed.

R51, thank you for sharing your story. I like to laugh on this site but I really love to learn and your perspective and way of writing it is so engaging. I'd be second up for your memoir.

[quote] and actually did make it to space.

Christa did too.

Well, parts of her anyway.

Do astronauts fuck in space?

No, but sometimes they get fucked.

I bet there's a lot of extramarital fucking around in space. Scat humor, too. At the end of the day, it's all just "data," I suppose.

NASA has actually considered that when planning for extremely long-duration missions, like to Mars. They may likely send couples (either gay--seriously--or straight that are past childbearing).

I thought I read years ago they got a male and female astronaut to wire themselves up with sensors and have a go on the space station, so NASA could study the physiological effects. NASA of course never publicized it. Or maybe not. Maybe I read about something proposed that hasn't happened. Who knows?

If you want a truly great read about NASA, pick up Mary Roach's Packing For Mars. It's mostly about the challenges (technical, biological, interpersonal) faced by NASA and what they are doing to try and solve them. She has a chapter about sex, and makes the point that an organization like NASA, which exists completely by the largesse of Congress, would never risk experimenting like that, because they would never be able to actually keep it secret.

I was in 4th grade when the Challenger blew up and for my generation it was like the Kennedy assassination until 9/11.

[quote]and it wasn't until years later that reports came out that the astronauts survived the initial fragmentation of the shuttle body, and were probably alive/conscious for (at least some of) the free-fall. It took almost 3 minutes for the crew cabin to hit the water.

That is horrifying. Hopefully they weren't conscious for the full descent.

[quote]That is horrifying. Hopefully they weren't conscious for the full descent.

SPOILER ALERT:

They were.

[quote]I heard a lot of guys say Judith Resnick was "hot".

Judy Resnik was an anomaly in the space program because she was the only female astronaut who was genuinely attractive. All the other female astronauts were "uglier than a dog's ass," as my father used to say.

Not only was Judy Resnick a very pretty woman, she was also very feminine. The other female astronauts were not only unattractive, but quite mannish and dykey as well.

[quote] because they would never be able to actually keep it secret.

Oh that right there is jess silly.

You libruls done hid the secret of millions of votes for Biden the socialist. If people can keeps a secret like that NASA kin keep two astronauts boinking secret.

Judy was quoted many times amongst friends saying she couldn't wait to get into outer space and join the "Million Mile High Club" by taking her fellow Challenger astronaut's cocks (and Christa's tongue) up inside her.

She was particulary delighted and getting the opportunity to see jizz float.

[quote] She was particulary delighted and getting the opportunity to see jizz float.

So she was going to spit?

Cunt.

I actually thought Sally Ride was pretty once the 80s ended and she stopped perming her hair. Definitely on the soft butch side, but I can see her being very popular at Dinah Shore.

I think it's a shame that there are so many clearly gay astronauts, but they have to be closeted. Sally only got outed after her death, and the only current (to my knowledge) out astronaut, Anne McClain was only outed because her ex-wife is crazy and made up a story about her. She is on the short list of candidates for First Woman on the Moon, so she's got that going for her.

Sally, sans perm.

Just look at that mug at R85.

That's a woman knowing she'll be using another woman's inner thigh as a napkin.

Two astronauts answer your questions about personal matters on the shuttle. What's is like to take a dump in zero gravity? Find out here...

I wonder if Judy was into scat.

She could have been NASA's answer to Veronica Moser.

Astronauts have said for decades that the number one question they get asked when they appear in public is how do you got to the bathroom in space?

According to the article, you sit on a vacuum tube and it sucks the shit right out of your ass. After you wipe your ass, you put the used tp in another vacuum-powered compartment.

Male astronauts get a lot of boners because of the changes that zero g does to the body's blood flow, and the boners are always ROCK HARD.

Christa McAuliffe was known for having particularly rancid farts that would gag her fellow Challengers in training. Christa chalked it up to a nervous stomach but in some ways they lucked out not being trapped in a giant vacuum tube with her.

I wish our scat posters were funny and witty.

When the Challenger broke apart up in the air, and the crew cabin was torn away from the rest of the shuttle, the cabin tore off a bunch of long wires that trailed it, and had the effect of "stabilizing" it/preventing it from rotating back and forth, which kept the cabin from rapidly depressurizing, and means (unfortunately) that they were alive and conscious for all 2 minutes and 45 seconds of the plummet.

Two of the three emergency oxygen masks that were recovered from the ocean floor had been manually deployed, and the amount of oxygen used (which meant the wearer would have been breathing) corresponded to the amount of time that the crew cabin was in freewill before it slammed into the water.

Supposedly there is some additional voice recorder tape (not the hoax transcript that was printed in supermarket tabloids years later), that confirms the crew were conscious and freaking out during the descent. The New York Times took NASA to court to sue for the release of the tape as an issue of public interest, but the court ruled against the Times, on grounds that the tone of voice of the astronauts captured on tape would be so distressing to the astronauts' families as to constitute an invasion of privacy.

Fucking HELL. r93. That is horrifying. It's terrible that they had to be alive and conscious, that is nightmarish.

NASA very discreetly installed ejection-hatch capabilities on the Discovery, which followed Challenger.

Link to the New York Times versus NASA lawsuit.

Was Barbara Morgan the luckiest bitch in the world or what?

Wonder what was going through Christa's mind as they were plummeting towards the ocean...

"Well, my kids are going to get one hell of a science lesson out of this!"

Reminiscent of Vladimir Komarov. He reportedly cussed out the Soviet Space Program administrators as he fell to his death in Soyuz 1.

This is a photograph of his recovered "body."

The bodies of the Challenger crew were barely recognizable as human after being in the water for six weeks. They were more like gelatinous mounds.

Nobody knows how long they have on this earth or how they will leave. Just another reminder that life is too brief. It is eternal life with the Lord that is truly important.

[quote]Was Barbara Morgan the luckiest bitch in the world or what?

If you watch the Netflix documentary, you can see, even 35 years later, that she still misses her friend. When they moved to Houston, they rented apartments together, and it's clear they got very close during their training.

35 years after Challenger disaster, former students of Christa McAuliffe honor her legacy

[quote]they rented apartments together, and it's clear they got very close during their training.

Are we talking tongues on sex organs "close"?

I don’t know why I clicked that link at r99.

I’m an idiot, I guess that’s why.

*shudder*

I'm from the UK so my experience of this at the time was very different. But one of the things that struck me a few weeks ago when I watched the Netflix series linked above was how profoundly traumatic this must have been, not just in terms of it being a national tragedy, but specifically for a nation of children - possibly even more so than 9/11 or the current pandemic.

Those are terrible events, but came out of the blue. The Challenger explosion on the other hand was an event in which a target audience had been encouraged to watch and in which to be invested. A teacher in space! An ordinary person gets to go into space; a person like your very own teacher. In turn, you too might be that person who gets to go into space. The event was imbued with such hope and humanity and futurity and optimism. And then to see that person die - collectively - live on screen, in the most grotesquely violent way? It is unfathomable.

An entire generation traumatised. How can anybody go through something like that unscathed?

Oh, we were scathed.

It was all worth it just for the Challenger jokes.

[quote]when I watched the Netflix series linked above was how profoundly traumatic this must have been, not just in terms of it being a national tragedy, but specifically for a nation of children - possibly even more so than 9/11 or the current pandemic.

I was in 5th grade and we followed Christa McAuliffe's story for months as she prepared to go into space. It was a major national news story in the US. The disaster was shocking for all of us.

At least it had a definitive ending.

Was Christa ever linked to anyone romantically?

Yes, her husband R111.

R46, Is why I love DL. I was in the 4th grade and remember my hag of a science teacher crying too. Challenger is definitely seminal Gen X thing.

Mmmmmm, semenial...

Oops, semenal.

Now you see why I taught Social Studies. Spelling was never my forte.

Could’ve been worse. You could’ve taught biology, what with the pieces everywhere.

I'm annoyed by most space programs. I guess the public likes the entertainment of seeing rockets go off, but the billions they cost could be spent better here on Earth.

The dream of becoming an astronaut has to be the most childish and pointless one, ever.

Paramount should do a STAR TREK: CHALLENGER series where the Klingons beamed off Christa right before impact but she got stuck in a data stream.

Fast forward to 2486 and she is finally materialized on a transporter pad aboard a Federation starship to continue her adventures.

Whom would we cast as Christa in her fish out of water (no pun intended) new life?

How would she react to Q? The Borg? Ferengi??

Quark: Allow me to introduce you to The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

Christa: Looks like Reaganomics to me!

Janeway: Engage!

Picard: Make it so!

Christa: Throttle up!

Where did Christa McAuliffe go on vacation?

All over Florida.

What does NASA stand for?

Now Accepting Seven Applications

[quote]Paramount should do a STAR TREK: CHALLENGER series where the Klingons beamed off Christa right before impact but she got stuck in a data stream.

You jest, but Nichelle Nichols worked for NASA in the 70s helping recruit women and minorities into the astronaut corps. Speaking of Challenger, Judy Resnick and Ronald McNair were amongst them. One of her other recruits, Charles Bolden, was appointed by Obama to run NASA.

If you want my vote for Most Canefaced Astronaut, that goes to Kathryn Sullivan. She had a cool career. She was on the Hubble deployment mission, and when they couldn't get one of the solar collectors to deploy, she got suited up ready to spacewalk and do it manually.

She's a geologist, and ended up running NOAA during Obama's second term.

I'm telling you about Kathy Sullivan NOW, so I don't have to tell you THEN.

[quote]and when they couldn't get one of the solar collectors to deploy, she got suited up ready to spacewalk and do it manually.

Did she change the oil on the shuttle and realign the brakes while she was out there?

Kathy Sullivan definitely looks like she could arm wrestle a Klingon.

SHPASHE SHUTTLE DISHASHTERSH

They elected me president twice r1

[quote] she got stuck in a data stream.

Did she have slow Internet connection or something?

Klingon technology is still stuck at 2G, R130.

R122 I always heard it as:

Need Another Seven Astronauts

I was in high school when it happened and yes, it was awful to watch over and over.

How many astronauts fit in a VW Beetle? Fourteen!

Three in the front, four in the back, and seven in the ashtray.

What were Christa McAuliffe's last words?

"What does this button do?"

Alternately R134, it was, "You feed the cat, I'll feed the fish."

(...An outcome that NASA could have prevented *entirely,* so I lay all tasteless and offensive jokes at the feet of the agency).