Challenger Explosion - 21 years later

[84porsche]

I just looked at the calendar and realized today 21 years ago, I was in the 1st grade and our whole class was watching the launch out on the lawn and they had no idea what to tell us when the shuttle exploded right after launch.


http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sts51l.html



My respects to the Challenger crew who lost their lives in keeping our space explorations alive.

[RickM]

Sad time in our history. I recall just getting in from skiing in Sun Valley, ID. Turned the TV on and this was being reported. What a sinking feeling.

[Dan in Pasadena]

Originally posted by 84porsche
I just looked at the calendar and realized today 21 years ago, I was in the 1st grade and ....

Yikes! You were 6 years old? I was 31 years old and working for Rockwell in the Shuttle Division in Downey, CA. It was mid morning and we were all talking when one of the guys who was on the phone shouted, "Oh no, no, no....what channel". We all stopped and looked at him and he said to us, "we've lot the bird". We all ran for a confernece room to watch TV and the place had a morgue-like feel for months thereafter.

One of my friends in another building got to see the real time telemetry from the Orbiter and the astronauts body recorders....what he told me was NOT pleasant. They knew what was happening to them in the moments it was going down. A number of them were alive all the way down, and it was a long scream down, poor bastards. God Rest Teir Souls.

As an aside, I met Judy Resnik a few months before the launch and she was a very, very nice person.

[450knotOffice]

I remember it very clearly in my mind's eye. A bunch of us in a college class were watching the launch when it happened. It was surreal.

[Tyson Schmidt]

Dan, that is horrendous.

I imagine parachutes were never even a consideration, but I wonder if there would be any survivors had they been wearing them.

What altitude did this occur at?

[450knotOffice]

"Obviously a major malfunction..." has to stand as the understatement of the century.

[HardDrive]

I was at school too. High School, watching the launch in the library. I had already turned away and was doing something else when it happend. It was sureal.

[speeder]

I was at work at Westwood Porsche/Audi in L.A., we watched it live on the TV on the showroom floor. Shocking.

I was under the impression that the astronauts were blown to pieces along w/ the shuttle, but maybe not(?)

[Dan in Pasadena]

Tyson,
At one time, before the Shuttle was operational, there was a plan to make the entire crew compartment - somewhat like a giant capsule ala the Apollo and Gemini programs, able to be jettisoned away from the rest of the Orbiter in the event of a terminal emergency. In fact, this crew compartment IS a sealed unit that contains the breathable environment and it DID jettison away in the Challenger disaster...but not intentionally. It can be seen in the photos of the explosion right as it pulls apart...which is one of the reasons some or possibly all of the astronauts were alive all the way down.

This feature was done away with due to cost and other considerations. The Orbiter also had/has the capability of getting the astronauts out on an emergency basis while still on the launch pad via detonation cord in the crew compartment windows and what amounts to long wires that they shoot down off the gantry on...think of James Bonds sliding down a wire.

One of the secondary sources of explosion during the Challenger disaster were large hydrazine spherical tanks that are the fuel for smallish ignitors or "jets" that micro-fire as neened in orbit to manuever the Orbiter. The hemispheres of these tanks used to be made at Marquardt here in L.A... actually in Van Nuys. The detonation cord I mentioned above was made at a place that used to be called Explosive Technology in Fairfield, near Sacramento. I don't know how much this stuff has changed over the years, I've been out of the aeropsace business for 15 years but I used to be intimately involved. What I can say for sure is that the Shuttle program is old, old , OLD tech. It was originally designed in the early 70's. Too long ago for it to be still in use in my opinion.

[Dan in Pasadena]

Originally posted by speeder
...I was under the impression that the astronauts were blown to pieces along w/ the shuttle, but maybe not(?)

I am not the definitive source on this for certain, but I do know that the crew compartment WAS recovered from the sea floor and more than one astronaut was still strapped in it.

One of the rumors at Rockwell is that some of the astronauts had on demand air packs available to them in the crew compartment. Remember that the astronauts weren't all together. It had two levels, so not sure which ones we're talking about. But these air packs work only if the astronauts are alive to breathe or "draw" down the air. They were made to last awhile, but were sucked nearly dry. The assumption is that whatever astronaut did this was alive and hyperventilating...essentially panting in fear. I know this is horrible stuff to relate, and remember this was scuttlebutt among fellow employees. A lot of it may NOT be true, but remember also what employees we're talking about here. We were the private contractor that built the Orbiter and we DID have in-flight telemetry available during launches...but of course only some employees had access to that.

Another unknown (well, not to everyone) is how badly injured they were due to the explosion of the hydrazine tanks. Hydrazine is some BAD ASS stuff. The assumption has always been the primary explosion caused shrapnel to penetrate the lower front of the Orbiter hull where the onboard tanks were (below the floor of the crew compartment) and the subsequent explosion- along with the horrendous air forces when the Orbiter got "out of sorts" aerodynamically, tore everything apart. They were almost certainly badly injured and some killed, but I have always thought one or more survived until impact.

[84porsche]

Originally posted by Dan in Pasadena
Yikes! You were 6 years old? I was 31 years old and working for Rockwell in the Shuttle Division in Downey, CA.

Dan, yes I was 6 at the time, well actually 5 turning 6. I lived a block from Rockwell Shuttle Division in Downey, CA off Washburn and Bellflower Blvd. I used to go to Rockwell all the time as a kid and I saw the Apollo capsule mockup and the Shuttle mockup in the large room they had for guests. I used to always wonder what they did there because many of my dad's friends worked in aerospace and at Rockwell. I can't believe its a huge shopping center now called Downey Landing.

[island_dude]

Sigh. I was in grad school between classes when a friend came up and told me. At first I thought he was joking. What a terrible day that was.

[Joeaksa]

I was flying out of El Paso at the time. The entire shuttle crew were well known to us, especially John Young. They flew into the same place we were based then hopped in the Gulfstream and flew to White Sands to practice landings.

Really sad and nice people to boot. Cannot believe that it was 21 years ago. Time flies...

[ZOO]

The Challenger explosion was my first real understanding of the power of the media to analyse a story from every angle. It is to me more haunting than the 9/11 coverage. I suspect because I was only 15 when it happened, and I saw it live.

[IROC]

I was in college at the time of the accident, but went to work in the space industry not long after it occurred. In fact, the first shuttle flight after Challenger was a flight that had my program's (Spacelab) payload in the payload bay. For years after the Challenger accident, we would watch every launch up until the SRBs separated and then breathe a sigh of relief.

I was walking around in an old warehouse at Marshall Space Flight Center in the early '90s and happened across a segment of the SRB from the Challenger accident. They had recovered them and brought them to Marshall to study. Very interesting.

Dan - I may know some folks that you know. I had to work with alot of the Rockwell-Downey folks on some EDO pallet stuff (and LMC) in the late '90s...

Mike

[Jims5543]

I was working as a machinest in Melbourne, Florida my boss was an evil man and we were not permitted to stop owrk to see the launch.

From Melbourne you see and feel the launch.

Since they were launching so frequently my boss felt it was cutting into his bottom line.

I was aware there was a launch that morning, the entire town was tied into the Space Program in one way or another. I guess thats why its called the Space Coast.

I was working on a small lathe when I heard the Shuttle the buildign had that familiar rumble to it. Then suddenly the building shook like a bomb had just gone off, strike that, like 6 bombs went off one after the other. I shut down my machine and just stood there looking at the wall for a second digesting what I had just heard and felt.

Then one of the guys that snuck outside to watch the launch came running in, we locked eyes, he didn't have to say a word, I ran outside to see a sickening sight in the sky.

There was the familiar contrail heading up then it stopped and there was a myriad of con trails heading down in all directions.

The afternoon, and the following weeks were very depressing around there. Everyone was sad, everyone drive with their headlights on during the daytime for weeks after in a showing of respect and mourning.

The fallout from that accident was huge, thousands upon thousands layed off as NASA tried to figure out what went wrong and who was to blame.

I ended up quiting that job and looking for drafting work again, it was not to be found, there were engineers and designers out competing for the same jobs I was after. It was tough times. I took a job in Grant, Florida at a company that made irrigation pumps for farms and flood control huge pumps. One day a rep. from NASA contacted us and set up a meeting. They wanted us to make a "GO, NO-GO" guage for the SRB's on the shuttle. Imagine a giant round wagone wheel perfectly round and just a tad smaller than the inside diameter of the SRB's used to make sure the walls were not flexing. They wanted to know if we could make one to high precisions. We were pretty sure we could not. Our answer was no even though it would have been nice to work for NASA, I had a lot of respect for our guys in charge for saying they could not do something instead of just trying to take NASA's money.

I neded up taking a drafting job up on Merritt Island where the space center is, I got to go out for evey launch with the entire company and we all held our breathe like Mike did hoping nothing went wrong.

I also ended up working a lot with NASA after that doing a lot of surveying on launch pads and other sites to support them.

[legion]

I was 7 years old and in 2nd grade at Allen Avenue Elementary School in San Dimas, CA. We were watching the launch live on TV because there was a teacher on board. I remember the TV got switched off very quickly and we were set about doing something else. I didn't realize something bad had happened until I got home from school that day.

[Nostril Cheese]

I watched this live on TV in high school. They made a big deal out of the teacher in space thing. I remember thinking, something went really wrong here.

What was the eventual result of this? I thought the Thiokol higher-ups were largley responsible. As I understand it, the engineers told admin. not to launch under cold conditions..

[david914]

Like most people, I remember that exact moment like it was yesterday. I was living in Florida at the time, within 45 minutes of Kennedy Space Center. It was a crisp, cool day, especially for Central Florida. We listened to the countdown on the radio and after the shuttle cleared the launch pad, we stepped outside knowing that the heaven-bound shuttle would soon be visible as it cleared the tops of the trees. Everything looked normal until the booster rocket separation. Normally, there would be a slight puff of smoke as the booster rockets separated, but this time I noticed the "puff of smoke" was much more pronounced that usual and the boosters were still firing and going in all different directions. It was almost immediately apparent that what we saw was an explosion. We ran back inside to hear the radio and it was dead silent for what seemed an eternity. The silence was finally broken by the aforementioned "...Obviously a major malfunction."

I still get a huge lump in my throat and cannot hold back the tears whenever I think about it. God-speed Challenger crew. You will not be forgotten.

[IROC]

Originally posted by Nostril Cheese
What was the eventual result of this? I thought the Thiokol higher-ups were largley responsible. As I understand it, the engineers told admin. not to launch under cold conditions..

Pretty sordid affair with lots of finger-pointing and plenty of blame to go around, but the end result (at least as I recall) was that Thiokol had an o-ring joint that sucked during low-temperature operation and even though they knew this and advised NASA of the concerns, the decision was made (by NASA) to proceed with the launch for reasons other than safety of the crew.

This rats nest of safety requirements was the environment that I came into trying to fly payloads on the shuttle in the late '80s. Safety reigned supreme (and still does to a great extent). Nothing wrong with that.

Mike