Space Shuttle Challenger Tragedy... 25 Years Ago Today

[Joe Realist]

I remember exactly where I was. I could not fathom it at time.

 

[Concord]

Washed ashore

Some pieces of the shuttle Challenger did not surface until long after the explosion.

A tractor carries one of the shuttle's elevons after it washed ashore on Cocoa Beach, Fla., on Dec. 17, 1996 ... almost 11 years after the loss of Challenger and its crew.

 

[Yeagermeister]

Flying fragments

This picture, released by the presidential commission that investigated the Challenger tragedy, shows fragments of the orbiter flying away from the explosion on Jan. 28, 1986, 78 seconds after liftoff. The top arrow shows the orbiter's left wing. The center arrow shows the orbiter's main engine; and the bottom arrow shows the orbiter's forward fuselage. Investigators suggested that some of Challenger's crew members may have survived the explosion itself but died in the fall down to Earth.

I've heard some of them survived the explosion but were killed when they hit the water.

 

[arglebargle]

I was at work, and someone hauled in a portable TV and everyone watched, horrified. Not much got done that day.

The Challenger Report was pretty sad reading as to exactly how the decision making process facilitated the accident. NASA had been going downhill, and had been seriously cooking their numbers.

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/table-of-contents.html

 

[Concord]

http://img822.*************/img822/1791/52325304.jpg

Challenger Wing

A 9'7' x 16' segment of the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger's right wing is unloaded at the NASA Logistics Facility, 18th April 1986. It was located and recovered by Navy divers from the rescue and salvage ship USS Opportune, about 12 nautical miles northeast of Cape Canaveral in 70 feet of water.

 

[5Stars]

I was working in Columbus, OH, and was on lunch break at a gas station getting fuel for my car. When I went inside to pay, that's when the news broke the shuttle had blown up. It was on a TV in the gas station.

I went to a pay phone (yeah they had them back then), and called in for leave the rest of the day then went to a pub where all the people were just glued to the TV watching the news of this horrible event. I can remember it like it was yesterday.

 

[Concord]

I've heard some of them survived the explosion but were killed when they hit the water.

7 myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster


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 feet 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.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11031097/ns/technology_and_science-space/

 

[zrinkill]

I was in 7th grade.

So sad.

 

[peplaw06]

http://img822.*************/img822/1791/52325304.jpg

Challenger Wing

A 9'7' x 16' segment of the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger's right wing is unloaded at the NASA Logistics Facility, 18th April 1986. It was located and recovered by Navy divers from the rescue and salvage ship USS Opportune, about 12 nautical miles northeast of Cape Canaveral in 70 feet of water.

Chilling picture Concord... Thanks for the info/pics you've provided in this thread.

 

[Concord]

Chilling picture Concord... Thanks for the info/pics you've provided in this thread.

No problem...I've always been fascinated by things like this.

 

[burmafrd]

NASA got over confident and arrogant. I work with them - and they are still arrogant and they no longer have any reason to be. Back then you could at least say they had reason.

 

[Aikmaniac]

NASA got over confident and arrogant. I work with them - and they are still arrogant and they no longer have any reason to be. Back then you could at least say they had reason.

Why does it seem that the space program is in total reverse?

I know, since you work there, you've heard this question may times: How can we be so far from getting back to the moon when we were there forty years ago?

 

[YosemiteSam]

Why does it seem that the space program is in total reverse?

I know, since you work there, you've heard this question may times: How can we be so far from getting back to the moon when we were there forty years ago?

Money. JFK pretty much wrote a blank check to beat the Russians to the moon. That isn't quite the case these days.

 

[ScipioCowboy]

[youtube]gEjXjfxoNXM[/youtube]

 

[VietCowboy]

I know exactly where I was too. a 30 months old fetus in my mom's belly.

 

[Yeagermeister]

I know exactly where I was too. a 30 months old fetus in my mom's belly.

Wow you were in the womb a long time :laugh2:

 

[Faerluna]

Wow you were in the womb a long time :laugh2:

Never was a woman so happy to go into labor!

:laugh2:

 

[Yeagermeister]

Never was a woman so happy to go into labor!

:laugh2:

Ya think :laugh2:

 

[kristie]

i was in the 3rd grade at an elementry school at elmendorf air force base in anchorage, alaska when it happened. there was a substitute teacher in my classroom that day, & she just had a very sad look on her face when she found out what had happened. it was like she had lost a comrade that day. all my classmates were sad too, even me. even today, watching that launch is just so heartbreaking.