Earth's First Space Teacher
Christa McAuliffe would have turned 72 today. #AdAstra pic.twitter.com/2Nl04jUuAU
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 2, 2020
Christa McAuliffe would have turned 72 today. #AdAstra pic.twitter.com/2Nl04jUuAU
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 2, 2020
I remember the day well. As a space nerd, I rarely missed launches. But that day the launch was while I was commuting to work. When I got to work, people told me the shuttle had exploded and they were “looking to see if the astronauts got out with some escape system”. Well I knew there was no escape system. We went into a conference room where the replay was happening. It was a sad, sad day.
I, too, well remember that sad day. As it happened I was home from work with a mild stomach upset. I tuned into the coverage on the phone, and heard the call that the booster had exploded. I immediately called my section as we were contractors for the booster recovery parachutes (SRB Decelerator Subsystem – SRBDSS). They had not heard anything at that point. Later, we were called in on Sunday to review all data connected with the Shuttle program. It turned out that the only thing that worked as it was supposed to was the drogue parachute/frustum from the left-hand SRB, that would deploy the main parachutes on a normal recovery. The drogue then lowered the frustum to the water. When recovered it was the only thing that could have been reused. Of course, they wouldn’t/didn’t and buried it in the Minuteman silo along with the rest of the wreckage.
I got to looking at the booster downstage post-flight reports (which we normally didn’t pay any attention to as they were not part of our responsibility. The reports from the previous April and the August prior to that showed there had been leakage for 120 degrees around the circumference past the first o-ring. Fortunately, nothing untoward had happened, but the warnings were there!
The launch of Challenger on that day was done against the advice of the booster contractor’s personnel, but was countermanned by the NASA individual responsible for the boosters! Cost the lives of seven wonderful people! RIP Challenger.
I met Christa at the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator as she was making a tour of Marshall Space Flight Center. We divers tried to get her in the water but her handlers were having no part of that. She seemed awed at everything she was seeing and had a bright smile that I still recall. I was in Japan when the Challenger accident happened. My feeling then was sadness but, after working on the SRB redesign afterwards and seeing at close hand the Rube Goldberg seals between the solid rocket motor segments, I was angry at the managers who allowed that system to continue even in the face of its obvious flaws. For that matter, that goes for the entire Shuttle design. It was a test vehicle and many upgrades should have been made to make it safer and truly operational. I was glad to see the thing retired. Grace Corrigan, Christa’s mom, came to Coalwood for the October Sky Festival many times. She was a sweet woman whose heart never mended from that awful, unnecessary accident. RIP Christa. RIP Grace.
I think I speak for many of the readers here when I say that your comments here are invaluable. Your first hand accounts make all of this “real” for people like me who never got the chance to work on these programs. Thank you!
Indeed. One of the Big Dogs check in here from time to time, and as Jeff points out, the comments are welcome.
I’ve frequently pointed out why I read this blog: it’s about the only place that an ordinary citizen gains a sense of what’s actually happening at NASA; moreover, current NASA related issues are not covered anywhere else. It’s a sort of water cooler for the space nerd.
Plus, having the opportunity to bloviate a bit can be satisfying…
I was in grad school and was about to go teach a class. I had the radio on. Right after the launch I dashed out of my office for a minute and came back to hear the announcer talking about debris falling. I was a teacher. 21 years later I was elected to the board of directors of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.