They spread astronauts and an Idaho grade school teacher Christa Macauliff all over the Ever Glads. This after they knew they were burning through two of three oring seals on the schuttle boosters. They were warned. It’s the money, to hell with the people.
Overall his record as POTUS was stellar, but Reagan did blow a few calls along the way.
The idea of sending a teacher into space was one of them.
Promising to nominate a woman to SCOTUS, taking a Democrat deal on border security, caving to MADD to use Federal highway money to blackmail states, and pulling the Marines out of Lebanon (which encouraged the OBL types to do more terrorism) all come to mind.
She was from NH.
Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who did go up that time, was from New Hampshire (originally Massachusetts).
It was not the money it was the politics that made them launch. Thikol engineers that made the boosters advised not to launch due to the temperature at the time of the launch. They knew full well the O Rings would probably not seal properly at the ambient temperatures at the time of launch.
NASA politics killed.