The mission was to be the first to carry a civilian into space, a teacher named Christa McAuliffe. President Ronald Reagan was planning to mark that milestone in his State of the Union address, coincidentally scheduled for the same day as the launch.
Walk in at 9:30 am off of a graveyard shift from the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory. Turn on the news because your kids are at school watching a teacher become an astronaut. Then find out an engineer told the brass that it would happen. They were spread all over the Everglades and I got to sit down and explain to my kids politicians suck.
They act like Reagan personally wanted it to go ahead because of a couple lines in his speech. NASA has a decades long history of putting bureaucratic glory over safety.
The managers didn’t want to have a scrubbed launch on their record. It meant their careers to them. To Reagan, it meant a quip during a speech.
I don’t see how President Reagan’s planned speech was coincidentally the same day as the launch.
It seems like a logical day to have it.
I don’t see how President Reagan’s planned speech was coincidentally the same day as the launch.
It seems like a logical day to have it.