Posted on 02/01/2010 11:10:50 AM PST by Talkradio03
January morning 24 years ago, Corydon optometrist Jack Moss raised his new video camera to the sky over central Florida and captured one of the darkest moments in American space exploration – the explosion of the shuttle Challenger. In the videotape, a stream of white smoke behind the climbing shuttle shoots into view – but Moss, his wife and a neighbor noticed immediately that something was amiss when the channel separated into two streams.
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Ping.
I should point out that this video was uploaded onto liveleak Saturday afternoon January 30th, 2 days ago
I’ll never forget that day. If we stopped manned exploration of space, we will have let that crew down, I do believe.
Ping for later viewing.
I was watching through my 20X80 binoculars. I saw the puff in the trail and thought something looked different and then thought that the solid rocket boosters shouldn’t still be under power and knew that something was wrong.
I remember that it got down to 30 degrees that morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
One of the coldest days in Florida history. You would have thought they would have scrubbed the mission because cold weather in FL does not last very long. Very sad.
God - I am amazed that the shuttles have been around that long.
A sad, sad day. I remember it the way others remember where they were when Kennedy was shot.
ping for later
I’ll never forget my father waking me up (lazy college student on a day off) to tell me the shuttle blew up. Then I watched and got aggrivated with Dan Rather as he kept speculating that there was an escape capsule coming down with a parachute (There WAS a parachute, but the Shuttles have no escape capsule), I knew that was not the case but Dan kept on asking.. gave everyone false hope.. I was devastated.
At that time, the shuttle mission had already been scrubbed several times for various reasons and NASA was under intense political pressure to ‘GO’ that morning. Hence, they pushed the button against their better judgment.
For a great account of that day, read “Riding Rockets” by former autronaut Mike Mullane. The Challenger 7 were victims of haste, arrogance and gross incompetence on the part of NASA. They knew, from prior launches, that there were problems with the booster O-Rings in cold weather, and chose to go ahead anyway.
I lived in Palm Bay and heard on the radio that there was lift off, walked out the door to see it explode. Very sad day, indeed.
I would guess below 30 that day. It was in the 30’s in S FL. I remember it like it was yesterday.
The Super Bowl was played the prior Sunday, and New England Patriots were in the Super Bowl. They were scheduled to launch that Sunday, but the launch was delayed until the following Tuesday. We were at a Super Bowl party that day, and someone commented that they probably scrubbed it for that day because of the Super Bowl. If I remember correctly, Christa Macaulliff was from the New England area, and this person was speculating that the astronauts wanted to see the S.B. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is, that would be a terrible decision by NASA.
Christa McAuliffe’s six-year-old daughter pleaded with her not to go. She is thirty today. I wouldn’t blame her for being bitter. Perhaps she is not. But I wouldn’t blame her.
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