And cynical as I sound, I do remember very vividly where I was and what I was doing and how I felt. I was in the eighth grade, waiting for Mr. Hoover's music class to start at Davey Jr. High School in Kent, Ohio. This kid named Brett Davis stopped in the doorway to my classroom and said very flatly, "The space shuttle blew up." I had been interested in the space program for a long time, but had drifted away from it for a spell with the eighth grade perception that all interests and hobbies are stupid. But my first feeling was one of denial. Impossible, I thought, this is the space shuttle. This just doesn't happen. Especially since this was a special First Teacher in Space flight. Accidents only happen during routine operations, not at moments of novelty -- no matter how over-publicized.

I remember just feeling empty. In shock. I tried to find out if I recognized the astronauts at all from the picture in the newspaper. I recognized Ron McNair who had been on the MMU test fight. And of course I recognized Judy Resnik. She was so beautiful, I thought -- still under the juvenille and unfortunately common perception that death has greater weight when it involves a beautiful woman.

Crew of STS-51L. (l-r) Back row: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judy Resnik. Front row: Mike Smith, Dick Scobee, Ron McNair

 

Then, of course, came the long string of astronaut jokes. Suddenly aware of the reality of death and the very real and embarrassing shock that I had felt, this seemed a reasonable way of dealing with my own feelings at the time.

The space program was on hold for quite awhile after that, so there was just this sense of nonprogress from this event. It was not like we could exactly move on and forget this the way we do plane crashes. Every mention of the words "space shuttle" invariably brought the whole thing back.

There was lots of talk about these seven astronauts as being heroes. Heroes? Not to sound crass here, but these seven people didn't really do anything, really. Six of them just showed up for work and the seventh went on research leave. When a tourbus overturns on a slippery road, we don't call the driver and guide "heroes" even though they get killed in the line of duty so to speak. These were seven people nobody really knew, part of a space program that people were no longer excited about. One would think no one had died in anyone's memory. And really, had anyone really died to speak of? Rock Hudson had passed away, but who the hell was he anyway? Having been recently exposed as a AIDS-carrying homosexual, people just kind of lost whatever sense of connection they had with him. We certainly hadn't had any rock stars go on us for awhile -- at least none that had captured the attention of the little music tabloids.

The explosion

So heroes? I don't think so. I think we call them heroes because of the way their deaths made us feel about ourselves. I think that up till that point, we had started to feel secure again. We were becoming extremely isolationist in those days. We didn't care what was happening overseas anywhere. We knew that Communists were bad and that Democracy was good and that white people were normal and that financial security was easily attainable. A whole obvious war, created, operated, funded, and executed by the United States Of America went on right underneath us and we didn't really want to pay attention. We were safe and that's all we really cared about.

No, they were not heroes. We just learned, once again, that we were not safe.

Many people are (mistakenly) under the impression that the astronauts aboard the Challenger were vaporized instantly when the shuttle exploded. This is not the case. The Kerwin Report indicates that, although "the cause of death of the Challenger astronauts cannot be positively determined," it is evident that "the forces to which the crew were exposed during Orbiter breakup were probably not sufficient to cause death or serious injury." The upshot to this is that it is possible that the astronauts were fully conscious as they fell from a height of 65,000 feet, striking the ocean at 207 miles per hour some two minutes and forty-five seconds later. The Kerwin Report also indicates that the breakup of the shuttle would have cut off the oxygen supply to the cabin. Each crewmember had access to an emergency supply of breathing air, activated from the astronaut's helmet. Three of these appear to have been activated.

Wreckage from the shuttle washed ashore in 1996

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this whole disaster is that, according to a report from the Mechanical Engineering department at the University Of Texas/Austin, engineers at the time were well aware of the possible problems that could have resulted. In a memo to his supervisor, Roger Boisjoly (an engineer at Thiokol, the company that manufactues the shuttle's solid rocket boosters) indicated that "the secondary O-ring cannot respond to the clevis opening rate and may not be capable of pressurization. The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order -- loss of human life..." Boisjoly, in fact, predicted that the accident could have even taken place while Challenger was still on the launch pad. The report indicates that "in a final attempt to prevent failure of the boosters at the low temperature launch, Boisjoly and other engineers unsuccessfully argued to stop the launch the night before the launch" -- with no success. In addition, the report suggests that there is evidence that President Ronald Reagan may have had a hand in the tragedy; he wanted to mention the "first teacher in space" bit in his State Of the Union Address scheduled for that evening.

Whatever the fate of the astronauts on board, the impact of their deaths has lasted and will continue to last far beyond them.

Here is the launch up until shortly before the explosion.
Here is the final ascent and explosion.

Here is the Rogers Commission Report on the Challenger Accident.
Those with a mind to eat the proverbial frosting out of this massive Oreo can find some of the less techinical bits excerpted in the following: