On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
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I lived in Tampa at the time and as soon as it happened I went outside and could see the split smoke plumes from the explosion. Just heartbreaking.
But I also had the pleasure of being invited to a landing of a previous flight, way "inside the ropes", and I'll never forget the sound of the shuttle coming in. No engines, so I expected it to be silent. Nope - talk about aerodynamically dirty!
Amazing craft and program. Too bad they couldn't keep the political pressure from interfering.
@friz As flawed as the shuttle was, it was hugely important machine & in many ways, still unrivalled, despite the endless bleating of the billionaire space bros.
Unfortunately, I never saw a launch, but I was lucky enough to visit KSC in 2010 as part of an ESA-NASA bilateral & take a tour through the OPF.
Discovery was there & we got very up-close & personal, walking underneath it. I may or may not have (gently) touched the thermal tiles & undercarriage
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
@markmccaughrean
I was in my middle school homeroom class and someone wheeled in at television to show us the news. -
@markmccaughrean I was 11 when it happened and we were on a school trip when it happened. That morning our teacher told us the the Space Shuttle exploded and I could not believe it until he showed me the newspaper with the swan cloud on the title page.
I was one of the kids with NASA posters on the wall, big space nerd, but I knew hardly anything about how dangerous flying to space was.
@Snoeksen Indeed. And arguably, it's not much safer today – while computing power may have improved greatly in the past 40 years, certain aspects of going to space are remain very much rooted in "analogue physics", & also there's no guarantee at all that engineering, management, & oversight systems improve with time.
We will found out when the first group of tourists dies on one of the billionaire tech bros machines – these are not famously people that listen to dissenting employees.
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
@markmccaughrean Not too long ago I visited (for the first time ever!) a theater play. It was a one-woman show about Judy Resniks life, called You're Too Cute to Be an Astronaut. A quite gripping performance, exciting, funny, sometimes intermixed with personal anecdotes from the actress who is also called Judy. I did in fact not know that she was one of the Challenger victims, but during the play there was some foreshadowing.
The clock stopped at 73 seconds and the entire room was gasping for breath in deadly silence.
I was not alive when the accident happened, but I feel I experienced some of the despair through this play. -
On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
@markmccaughrean I was in a university class and a friend came in and asked, "Did you hear Challenger blew up?"
I thought it was the lead to a joke in poor taste, and I still wish that had been all it was.
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@markmccaughrean
I was in my middle school homeroom class and someone wheeled in at television to show us the news.@JeremyMallin That must have been quite shocking.
Indeed, if I recall correctly, many school children were watching the launch live, as Christa McAuliffe was on-board, to be the first teacher in space.
Very traumatic, I expect.
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
@markmccaughrean The #BBC did a podcast season about the space shuttle, leading up to the Challenger tragedy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads
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@markmccaughrean I was in a university class and a friend came in and asked, "Did you hear Challenger blew up?"
I thought it was the lead to a joke in poor taste, and I still wish that had been all it was.
@jrm And as if to prove that insensitive snark wasn't invented when the internet came along, there were many very poor state jokes made after the explosion, things I remember hearing but won't repeat here.
Humans really can be the worst of species at times ...
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
@markmccaughrean I can't bear to watch it. The Mother watching from the stands.
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@markmccaughrean Ouch!
Although, to be fair, this was a 'special circumstance'... Didn't the newsletter have an editor to catch and question the tone?
@birchbirch Apparently not – when the newsletter was printed & circulated on site, some people complained to me about the apparently callous transition. But it was entirely unintentional & the consequence of numbness I felt on that day.
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
@markmccaughrean I was in sixth grade (10 years old or so) during what would normally be English class. We were watching it live on the television as a teacher was going into space.
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@markmccaughrean I was in sixth grade (10 years old or so) during what would normally be English class. We were watching it live on the television as a teacher was going into space.
@raederle I can't begin to imagine how hard that must've been to witness at that age & how difficult it must've been for the teachers in all those schools faced with a class of pupils after seeing such an event.
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
That was a baaaaad day. We had to immediately produce a dedication-slide to put up before the move "The Dream is Alive" (IMAX, 1985).
The one and only time the boss didn't complain about the rush fees for 35mm slide production.
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
Thanks for the reminder, Mark, and the tribute to the astronauts. A horrible day!
In later years, teaching a "capstone course" on engineering design, I used this calamity as one example that professionalism and good judgement are essential when building a new, risky technology.
E.g., if eminent experts on O-rings say "don't use O-rings this way", don't ignore them. Or when orbital mechanics experts warn you about putting too many satellites in similar orbits, take heed.
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
@markmccaughrean I was in college and my roommate had a television (I usually didn't). Normally we would come home between classes and watch silly daytime tv to unwind (sometimes even summarizing the show in notes for each other if one of us couldn't see it, because that was over the top analog fun). This was what was on instead.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
The shuttle was such an important piece of space history and I always loved it for what it was -- and for the almost low-tech machines (compared to our shiny fast ones now) it was comprised of that accomplished so very much.
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
@markmccaughrean I was in Jr HS boarding school sick in bed, woke up around lunchtime and heard the news.
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On this day, forty years ago: 28 January 1986.
I was working on my astronomy PhD in the terminal room at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Someone came in & told us the awful news. After so many launches & astronauts, we’d grown blasé & didn’t pay much attention anymore.
That changed in 73 seconds on that cold day & we learned again that space is hard.
I still remember their names:
Onizuka, Smith, McAuliffe, Scobee, Jarvis, Resnick, & McNair.
Ad astra, STS-51L Challenger crew
I was home sick from school and watched the explosion played on tv - not with the single-minded repetitive ferocity of today, but still at least once or twice every hour.
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