Posted on 01/28/2024 11:17:11 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
At the time I was working for the company that built the Shuttles (as was my father and my [then] brother-in-law). As we always did, the whole plant was gathered around TV sets to watch the launch. At first there was a gasp of shock, a second of unbelieving silence, then lots of crying and grim faces. It was a terrible day for us, almost like 9-11.
For me, always too soon.
The Columbia later fell victim to the same malaise.
Yep. Radios supposedly weren’t allowed in the office so everyone was gathered around mine, including the boss.
NASA
Need
Another
Seven
Astronauts
“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God,’” - Ronald Reagan
My wife and I were looking at news TVs at sears watching the launch. Soo very sad.
I was standing on the stairway between the VAB (Vertical Assembly Building) and the LCC (Launch Control Center). That was the first Shuttle launch from Pad 39B. We had spent the previous 3 years designing the modifications to the pad for the Shuttle. It was “our pad”. I took the last picture on my roll of film seconds before the explosion. We spent the rest of the day watching the video over and over again trying to figure out what happened. We spotted the plume coming from the solid rocket booster in the video and knew that was the cause before the day was out.
I joke in order to cope with my seething anger at NASA executives who thought it was more important to launch the first Teacher in Space on time for the TV cameras than it was to listen to their engineers who said not to launch because they've never studied how such cold temperatures would affect the launch vehicle.
NASA Management killed those seven astronauts.
NASA knew they were burning through O-Rings as they had done it on previous missions. They knew it was not if, it was when it burned through at the wrong angle and impinged on the LOX tank.
Dad was never one to talk about work at home, but he came home early in the Shuttle program one day and said “mark my words...” He was part of the team early on that was trying to find out if it was a seal or metallurgical issue.
The push to get the first teacher in space on time killed the entire crew, most of whom lived until they hit the water.
Inexcusable
It was also very traumatic for all the schoolkids who were watching the very heavily publicized “first teacher in space”.
I had just left work to go out for some lunch, the news was on the radio in my car.
Nobel Prize physicist Richard Feynman was put on the investigation committee. He gave NASA more than they bargained for. He was thorough and scathing.
It wasn’t just the o-rings. There were other defects that would eventually have killed them.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4kpDg7MjHps
When it exploded my first thought was "That doesn't look right at all. They're dead! They all just died right there!".
The news reporters were clueless and it took a minute for them to realize that this was a horrible disaster.
I understand.
I hope that you can see that I was commenting, not criticizing.
I joke in order to cope, too.
There are some things, however, that I can’t joke about and this is one of them.
I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. I was painting our daughter’s room and my dad called and said the Shuttle blew up...I didn’t believe it and turned on the TV....Oh my gosh it was like the assassination all over again.
Interesting link on Feynman—thanks.
Management theory addresses many of the questions he was raising.
It takes excellent senior management to establish and then maintain top notch communication between workers and middle management, and middle management and senior management.
Less than 10% of senior managers can do it.
The NASA story is all too typical of any reasonably large and complex organization.
I was watching it as I was working on the newspaper at school that afternoon.
I was in Junior High at the time, I remember it clearly because I had a bad case of the flu and had stayed home from school that day. I was lying on the couch watching game shows on TV “The Price is Right” I seem to recall, when the network broke in for the shuttle launch. I watched it take off an explode, jumped of the couch and ran and told my mom, she didn’t believe me at first then finally went in and saw it on TV for herself. We just watched the reports for the rest of the afternoon, totally stunned. By that time shuttle launches and become almost routine.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
