At about... what was it... 10:00 am? A young woman who worked in the administrative office (and who rarely if ever talked to me, she was way too cool to talk to an engineer) came over to my desk and said "did you hear, the rocket ship blew up! At first I didn't understand what she meant. Rocket ship? What the...? Then I remembered that the Shuttle was launching that day. I went out to my car to listen to the radio. I was shocked and dismayed.
The routine of our flights into earth orbit was one of the things that made life seem so positive, hopeful, and exciting to me. I loved the way we could carry a payload the size of a city bus into space. I watched with joy the images that came back during each flight... the beautiful video of satellites being released, of the astronauts on EVA in the shuttle main cargo bay. It all underscored my pride in our country.
That night, I taped the coverage on my (brand new) VCR, and watched the fire ball over and over. I remember talking about it with my roommate, explaining to him that the whole shuttle was covered in refractory material, and that it still was virtually vaporized by the heat of the explosion. In time, I found out that this was not quite true.
I remember stopping one frame of the tape, about four frames into the explosion. You could see a blue-white ball of light at the leading edge of the fireball. It looked like a huge electric arc. I later learned that the liquid oxygen reservoir was at the nose of the external tank; and the hydrogen took up most of the cylindrical portion. That blue-white fireball was a huge boiling slug of LOX, accelerating the explosion.
In that first morning, theories were flying fast. One guy on NPR suggested there might have been some sort of "water hammer" effect in the 18-inch diameter pipes that carried LOX and liquid hydrogen to the shuttle main engines. It wasn't until later that second day (or maybe the third) that the first reports of flight imagery showing hot gasses escaping from one of the solid motors.
By the third morning, everyone was talking about the O-rings and the "capture feature." There was a Morton Thiokol engineer named Roger Bujoleis (or something like that) who had expressed concerns about the performance of the O-rings at low temperature. NPR was all over this, covering the mad search for the "culprit" who had overruled these concerns.
Pieces of the shuttle (and the astronauts) were recovered for the next two weeks or so. Maybe longer. They were entombed in an unused missile silo at the Cape, as I recall.
It was about a year and a half before another shuttle was launched. Much science and defense work was postponed.
The shock and sadness took a long time to wear off. The visions, during quiet times, of the event, and thoughts of the lost astronauts, took a long time too.
(steely)
There are two aspects of Challenger and seven dead astronauts that deserve attention:
ENVIRONMENTALISM RUN AMUCK CONTRIBUTED TO CHALLENGER EXPLOSION (and COLUMBIA)
1. removal of asbestos from the putty holding the O-rings in place made the O-rings more brittle at low temperatures. The blame for this can be laid at the feet of the radical environmentalists, trial lawyers and feel good greenies at NASA that rushed to remove the asbestos. (Similarly, removal of asbestos from the World Trade Center steel during construction made them fall down sooner than they would have otherwise on 9-11-01, resulting in more deaths.)
Earth Worshipers Cause Death in Space: Environmental Dogma Has Led to the Sacrifice of Fourteen Astronauts on the Space Shuttle
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2942
Written by an aerospace engineer and former flight controller at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Asbestos and CFC bans destroyed two shuttles and killed 14 astronauts -- thanks to the eco-totalitarians.
NASA CULTURE: COVERUP
2. the NASA culture portrayed in a series of article in the Miami Herald in 1989-1990 was also to blame. These are fascinating background articles and well worth printing out and taking the time to read.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031202164039/http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=318
And another point of interest:
DIVERSITY (aka white male discrimination) CAN WEAKEN AN ORGANIZATION due to NOT hiring the best qualified
-NASA guilty of age and white male discrimination
http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/viewSelectedArticle.asp?strArticleId=55962&strSite=MDSite&Screen=CURRENTISSUE
-NASA guilty of white male discrimination-reader letters
http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/viewSelectedArticle.asp?strArticleId=56365&strSite=MDSite&Screen=CURRENTISSUE
I'm ready for privatizing space exploration.