Remembering Challenger
46:40 – 5 miles
“It seems like a dangerous job.” That’s what someone said to me once when I was talking about NASA and astronauts. My response to her was: “Well, they do leave the Earth.”
25 years ago I was in 4th grade watching in awe the first teacher heading into space. Watching the team of 7 walk down the ramp in their bright orange suits. As they process continued and the countdown continued, the classroom filled with anticipation. The final countdown, rockets fired, and liftoff from the launch pad. Just a couple minutes later excitement turns to tragedy.
There have been numerous investigations and reports showing the signs were there to stop the launch. The thing is, there was a couple signs amongst over 100,000 of procedures and steps that need to be taken. This is not a 60 minute football game or driving to work. We are talking about taking a group of people, and sending them off the planet. It’s a little more complicated then we would like to think.
The tragedy provided an opportunity for a deep dive into everything that was involved with the space program. We are all moving a lightspeed these days. Maybe instead of waiting for a tragedy, or complete system meltdown, we should build in time for reflection. Having downtime is not a bad thing.
Hi Alex –
Thanks for posting this. I was living in Melbourne, FL at the time and saw the launch and failure from the open air halls of school between classes. Classes closed for the rest of the day and the community was impacted initially with overwhelming grief, then by the economical fall out from a pause in the Space Program.
I remember being surprised the shuttle went up that day as it was an icy morning and it *never* went up in questionable conditions. That is until that day.
The Space Program recovered and marched on…the tragedy becoming a point in history and something learned from. So sad lives were lost as part of that learning.
Nancy