Apollo 1 AS-204 - January 27, 1967; 23:31:19 UTC 49 years ago
Challenger OV-099 - STS-51-L January 28, 1986 11:39:13 EST (16:39:13 UTC) 30 years ago
Columbia OV-102 - February 1, 2003 08:59 EST (13:59 UTC) almost 13 years ago
I remember this well....
......it was the only time I didn’t stand in the back yard to watch the lift off.....because it was TOO COLD!
I had my TV on......and when it happened, I then went outside & could see the contrails.
This devastated the people of Brevard County and the nation.....( I’m about 30 minutes from the Cape)
Our county is big on aerospace technology.....many companies here.....our schools with children of aerospace engineers ...( my two included)
It was the beginning of the end for the little city of Titusville.....and Cocoa Beach for a while, but it bounced back
A dark and sad sad time.
My 11th grade history teacher came flying in the classroom, wheeling one of those big carts with a TV and a VCR that you use to watch videos in class.
She didn’t say a word the whole class, just stared at the TV.
We were 17 so we thought, “hey, free class, no work”.
Come to find out she knew the teacher that was on the shuttle.
I remember the media frenzy and speculation as they waited for the searchers to find the bodies and bring them back to Cape Canaveral. But the bodies weren’t there. Searchers had secretly found them and brought them to my father, a USAF doctor who was commanding a nearby base hospital that night. So sad.
BTTT
Bfl
My daughter co-wrote a play about the Challenger disaster when she was in college (theater major and space geek). A small theater (Pocket Theater) in Seattle is putting on the play in April with her as producer. Not bad for a 22-year old! Her day job is at the Museum of Flight.
Ironically, the actual destruction of Challenger was just sheer bad luck.
The burn-thru at the SRB joint was completely random and only by bad luck occurred in the roughly 90 degree arc facing the External Tank (ET).
If it had been somewhere along the other 270 degrees, the slight loss of thrust could have been offset by a small gimbaling of the Main Engines (ME) and the Shuttle could have made orbit with little or no change. In fact at the time of the explosion, the ME’s were already moving to offset the loss of thrust.
Instead the flame from the joint cut into the ET and severed one of the lower struts mounting the SRB, resulting in explosion that destroyed the Shuttle.
Sobering.
Dad’s was involved in the autopsies. I was involve din trajectory analysis of the debris from space-based sensors. It was the day the future of my entire career field died. The Air Force manned space program never recovered from that event.
Suddenly we knew something was wrong, there was just too much "smoke" and smokey trails and wisps way up there. We ran to the TV and clustered around it, running outside every few moments, then inside to hear the narrative, then outside again.
The white debris contrails filled the sky. It seemed like they were lasting up there forever before trailing and looping down to the horizon. Some stayed up for an hour.
We were all devastated. The neighbors went home to turn on their own TVs.....and to mourn. It was so shocking and stunning. It hit right in the gut.
It was one of those moments in history that remain embedded in your heart and mind forever.
RIP.
Leni
30 years ago, today, it was crisp, cold, clear day with not a cloud in the sky, in Lakeland, FL. The bluest of blue skies. Because it was so cold out, I chose to watch the Challenger shuttle launch from my office. Watched as the Challenger lifted into the sky but something was amiss. Plumes went in several different directions. Not normal. One of the ladies, watching on TV in the office, ran into my office and said the Challenger had exploded. It was a very sad, and quiet, moment, knowing I had just watched it happen. My prayers immediately went out to the crew and families. Sad day, indeed!