Challenger Still Haunts Me
Posted By Woody on February 11, 2010
I can remember it so clearly…the moment that I learned about NASA’s Challenger explosion, where I was as I watched the news updates, and how I felt. That was in 1986 – twenty-four years ago. Time lets us move on and covers up a lot of the sadness, but then updated information comes to light and it all comes back, and with more hurt for the heroes who rode the shuttle first to great heights and then to the bottom of the ocean.
Here’s what I just read from an MSNBC series that brings it back. It’s not pleasant, but it’s true, and it makes me appreciate and respect the risks and sacrifices of the brave men and women of our space program.
Chapter 5: An eternity of descent - Evidence hints that astronauts were alive during fall
…The divers began their grim task of recovering the slashed and twisted remains of Challenger’s crew cabin and the remains of its seven occupants.
On first inspection, it was obvious that the shuttle Challenger’s crew vessel had survived the explosion during ascent. A 2-year-long investigation into how the crew cabin, and possibly its occupants, had survived was begun.
…NASA’s intensive, meticulous studies of every facet of that explosion, comparing what happened to other blowups of aircraft and spacecraft, and the knowledge of the forces of the blast and the excellent shape and construction of the crew cabin, finally led some investigators to a mind-numbing conclusion.
They were alive all the way down.
The explosive release of fuel that dismembered the wings and other parts of the shuttle were not that great to cause immediate death, or even serious injury to the crew.
…The evidence led experts to conclude the seven astronauts lived. They worked frantically to save themselves through the plummeting arc that would take them 2 minutes and 45 seconds to smash into the ocean.
That is when they died — after an eternity of descent. ….
Chapter 6: Raising heroes from the sea – 10-week ordeal required to reunite the Challenger 7
…First to be retrieved from the watery tomb were the remains of Judy Resnik. The divers worked slowly but steadily. More and more parts of bodies went to the surface. Then, from the middeck, the remains of First-Teacher-in-Space Christa McAuliffe were carried slowly to the surface vessel. For the moment, that was all the divers could do.
…A blue astronaut jumpsuit bobbed to the surface, turned slowly and then disappeared again within the sea.
What seemed liked minutes passed, in reality only seconds of time. Divers and sailors stood stunned as they realized what had happened. They had found — and just as quickly lost — astronaut Gregory Jarvis. Immediately the divers went deep again, beginning a frantic search for the last astronaut of Challenger, a frustrating search that would not end for another five weeks.
In the days following, armed forces pathologists made positive identifications of six astronauts from Challenger. The underwater search continued for the body of Gregory Jarvis.
Veteran shuttle pilots Robert Crippen and Bob Overmyer had been put in charge of the recovery of their fellow astronauts…. Crippen and Overmyer had decided that when the remains were turned over to the families, there would be seven coffins beneath the American flags. There would not be six. So desperate was Crippen to bring Jarvis home with the rest of his crew that he used his own credit card to hire a local scallop boat to drag its nets across the ocean bottom. Crippen’s move was a last-ditch effort in a search all but abandoned by the exhausted recovery forces.
On April 15, when the recovery teams were planning to cease the search they had carried out for months, divers were making what was scheduled to be their last attempts to gather wreckage from the ocean floor. Two hundred yards from where they had lost the blue suit, they swam within view of the lost astronaut.
The seventh crew member of Challenger was brought carefully to the surface. Ashore, finally, the Challenger Seven were reunited.
There’s more that I could say, and there are political statements that I could make regarding NASA’s future for manned spaceflight. But, the reports say enough for the moment. It’s better to forget today’s battles and to reflect on old wounds and the heroes who lived and died for our nation’s progress into space.
Because of the Challenger disaster, our nation grew up a little more and, maybe, it made us stronger to endure another great blow that would be delivered fifteen years later. And, we have to be stronger. The world’s not getting any easier.
My pain of the astronaut deaths still continues, but my respect for them continues to grow as I learn and grow myself.
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Look GM, it is obvious that Obama is dropping faster than a lead baloon. He, and others didn’t give a rats behind when I ran for my seat as an independent and secretly, and in some cases not so secretly, hoped that the Democratic Nominee would beat me. I think I can take Obama in a heart beat.”
