Warbird Information Exchange

25 years ago...

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

I was 5 years old. It is one of my first memories. I was having lunch with my mom and watching the launch.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I always liked this picture of the crew in the simulator (taken a month before launch)...

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

At 49, I remember where I was for Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia.

I remember that after Challenger's loss Time and Newsweek's covers were photos of the fireball, but U.S. News and World Report's cover was the most respectful.




In every display I've seen of Columbia's cockpit windows there have always been flowers, often roses.

I don't like the idea of gratuitous displays of wreckage, and the people who come to KSC or JSC for the tours are not looking for a morbid thrill. They're dreamers, and astronauts are some of our modern mythological heroes.

I've always thought that displaying the "nameplate" (like Scott posted at the top of this thread) of Challenger and Columbia from the side of the fuselage would be an elegant and dignified way of honoring the crews, while reminding us of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of space exploration.


"We are going to have failures. There are going to be sacrifices made in the program; we've been lucky so far. If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
— Virgil 'Gus' Grissom. He said this after John Glenn returned from space, it was published after his death in Time magazine 3 Feburary 1967. On 27 January 1967, astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee died from a flash fire aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft during a ground test


Respectfully,

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Anyone can do the job when things are going right. In this business we play for keeps.
— Ernest K. Gann

Hard to believe it's been a quarter-century. I remember it vividly. I was living in suburban Denver working a late night shift at Mickey-D's, and got up later in the day. On my way through the living room on the way to the kitchen I flipped on the TV. They had returned to regular programming by then, but a news update came on. It's wierd, I still remember my thought process. The announcer said "Of course, our top story today.." and my first thought was Oh geez, what has Kaddafi done now? "..the firey explosion.." hm..must have been a gas main downtown or something "..of the Space Shuttle Challenger." I tripped over the furniture to get back to the TV. The showed the launch footage, and I remember actually shaking as I watched the explosion.

My uncle was working in electrical maintenance at Martin Marietta Aerospace, prime contractor for the external tank. He said thier engineering dept. was monitoring the launch telemetry, and assumed they had lost their data link because everything just instantly flatlined at T+73 seconds. While the media was still speculating on the cause that evening, he said within minutes the engineers had figured it was likely a burn-through on one of the SRBs.

The wife and I visited Arlington National Cemetary a couple of years ago..they have nice monuments to both the Challenger and Columbia crews.

Goodspeed Star Voyagers,

Steve

Mike Mullane's book, Riding Rockets, has a fantastic chapter on Challenger and the crew. If you haven't read his book, it's a great read, very funny and gives a real eye opening view of the early days of the Shuttle Program and what went on behind the scenes. He was a close friend of Judy Resnik and flew several times on the Shuttle. Worth a look...

http://www.mikemullane.com/RidingRockets.htm

Also available on Amazon...

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."