Posted on 01/28/2016 8:50:30 AM PST by bigbob
Thank you all for posting this story and President Reagan’s speech excerpt.
I remember the moment the tragedy was reported.
I was shocked, as were my customers at Armstrong Tire Headquarters.
I miss Ronald Reagan and the sober adults who lead us during those years.
God rest the Challenger crew and the Gipper.
RE: “The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. 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.â€
- Ronald Reagan”
A few years before, I was at college, my dad called me at six am to ask me something b I said “what’s with the six am wake up?”
He said “you’re not up watching the space shuttle launch?”
He was naval academy. Went to school with the engineers and astronauts. He had an appreciation that I hope to have for all that went into the space program
I watched every one live since then and I saw this one live.
My wife was monitoring telemetry for Challenger. That day stayed sharp in her memory the rest of her life.
I was at A&M about to go into a lab at the Engineering Technology building, where that teach students what happens to things like o-ring seals at cold temperatures.
I was in the Helm Club at NTC Great Lakes while attending FC ‘A’ school there. We sat in stunned silence as we watched the TV screen above the bar.
Have you ever read Edward Tufte’s “The Decision to Launch the Space Shuttle Challenger”, one of two essays in his “Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions”?
If not, you should - it’s an excellent companion to what you provided.
Thanks, I will look for that.
Found it! Thanks again.
At the time I worked for the independent testing laboratory that performed thermal tests on the external tiles of the space shuttles. That day, the project engineers were sweating it out, worried that a problem with the tiles caused the disaster.
Cynically, prior to the accident, I figured that we’d never hear the end of it if an accident occurred due to the fact that such a big deal was made over the teacher being aboard the flight. A PR stunt turned tragic....
I was at A&M sitting in my room in Moses Hall and watched it live. I ran out into the hall and yelled “the Shuttle blew up” once I realized what had happened.
I saw one live launch from Cocoa Beach. it was beyond cool.
My son has a robotics merit badge patch from when he was in Boy Scouts. The patch was one of 100 that was part of a mission payload and is certified as having flown in outer space.
I know where I was...at work. I was getting ready to drive to the Hartford Civic Center to deliver a boat when I heard it from our tenant who saw it on tv. I heard his speech on WTIC...
Armstrong Tires in New Haven? Interesting building design.
Luke Air Force base headed to the dentist.
Came over the radio on the local rock station.
I do recall thinking that the shuttle missions had become routine and not as many folks were watching.
The live images to ground control must have been very difficult to witness.
I called my squadron to let them know when I arrived at the hospital.
I was working for JVC and interviewing the sales staff in the TV section of Davison’s Department store (Northlake Mall in Atlanta) about our new VCR when we saw all 75~100 TVs on display light up with the weird smoke trails left from the explosion.
We went to turn up the sound of one to see what was happening. And it was cold in Atlanta that morning.
I also remember Richard Feynman and his glass of ice water and O-Ring material at the commision table.
If he were alive today, he would expose these climate change fakirs for the frauds that they are.
I went to an Edward Tufte seminar on graphic presentation of data a couple years after the Challenger blew up. He made a good case for poor graphic presentation of the data on the part of the engineers being a cause of the decision to launch. With proper graphics, the danger could have been made too obvious even for managers to ignore.
Richard Feynman was selected by Reagan to study the accident and report on it. At the time, he was dying, but he did it because the country asked him to help. Although the problem was the o-rings, the real problem reported by Feynman was people and their organization. This simple rule, “if everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible” went by the wayside at NASA (and most businesses in the US) about then, and in came “matrix management”.
Today, 30 years later, this is EXACTLY how most US companies run. And, it’s ingenious; if something fails on your watch, it’s incredibly easy to spread the blame, because this capability has already been built into the system for you. It’s the equivalent of all kids playing soccer getting a trophy, even if they stink.
To easily demonstrate how worthless Obama is compared to a great leader like Reagan, when the accident happened, Reagan asked for “the smartest scientist in the country” to investigate it. He didn’t ask about their politics. Feynman was _certainly_ not a Republican or a conservative.
Compare and contrast this to Obama, when the BP oil spill was ongoing; the first thing the “team” looked at were the political leanings and “greenness” of the prospective members of the panel.
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