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Challenger 25 Years Later
25 years ago, I peered inside through the playground window of my school. I was never particularly interested in being outside, and there was a shuttle launch on the library TV! The images of what I saw that day will stick with me forever. I didn't know what it really was I saw; I just made jokes. It's still how I deal. But I think I'm a bit wiser today, having maybe learned that the bleeding edge is sometimes literal. The technology we take for granted descends directly from the people willing to do what we never could. Thanks to the crew of Challenger,
Columbia and Apollo 1.
Every single person in a mission control facility is trained to deal with disaster. And part of that training is... don't stop doing your job.
That telemetry data that he sits there and reads off "like an asshole" is actually quite invaluable data from a post-failure analysis point of view. He wouldn't be helping any if he were to stop reading the data and scream "Oh, the humanity!". He'd just be making noise and contributing to an already chaotic environment.
To be honest, my memory if it is actually a funny one. I remember chuckling at the guy still reading the telemetry data as if nothing had gone wrong after it blew up. I remember thinking "Hey asshole, you might want to look at your monitor." And even when he did realize something had gone wrong, I remember him calling it something like a "major malfunction." Yeah, major malfunction, no shit.
In his defense, there's not a lot of room for emotion in that line of work. And said emotion often leads to inefficiencies. Imagine what sort of data might have been missed had he exploded in tears and rushed out of the room. While information is still coming in, remaining stoic is probably the optimal course of action for such a position.
My work here is dung.
I was in grade school... home from the day for some reason (sick maybe?) and I was watching cartoons on the local CBS/NBC affiliate. Then they cut in with the shuttle launch. KABOOM. My parents weren't home. I just sat there watching the news for hours on end. It was the first time I was ever interested in what was on the news. By the time my parents got home I knew more about space shuttles than any grade school student should ever know.
This was a waste of perfectly good life. Not a race to push technology to new limits.
Like Columbia, this was an example of short-cutting and not listening to nay-sayer engineers who turned out to be correct. And simply not following the safety rules that NASA itself established.
It's a hell of a thing watching people die on live T.V.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It was on a Commodore 64, connected to a local BBS.
"What were the last words spoken on the shuttle? Okay, fine. Let the bitch drive."
Followed closely by:
"You hear Christa McAuliffe had dandruff? Yeah - they found her head and shoulders on the beach."
I still recall it very clearly, almost like it happened only a year or two ago. I was a senior in high school at a private school up in New Hampshire, which is probably part of the reason why I recall it so well. I had a free period so I was relaxing in my room just before heading down to the cafeteria for lunch. My friend came in and told me the shuttle had blown up so we listened to the radio for a little while before going to lunch. When I got to the school cafeteria the woman serving the food apparently saw I was distressed and asked if I was ok. I mumbled that the space shuttle had blown up. She just laughed and said something like "yeah, right". I was so incensed by her reaction that I stared right back at her and practically yelled at her, "Turn on a radio if you have one around here" then went out to eat my lunch. About 15 minutes later I went back for seconds. This time when she saw me all she said was "I'm so sorry" and I could hear they had a radio on in the kitchen. Most of the rest of the afternoon most of the students were hanging out in a large auditorium where they had a projection TV running the news. The teachers pretty much let anybody stay there if they wanted rather than going to class the rest of the day.
I was living in Orlando at the time. I can remember going outside to watch the launch. All the neighbors did it, shuttle launches in my neighborhood were like tailgating is for sports in other towns. It was of course obvious something wasn't right but to most of us watching we thought one of the canisters simply dropped early. A few minutes into the launch one of the neighbors came running out of the house screaming that it blew up...I just remember a lot of screaming and crying., the shuttle was something Floridian's have a sense or pride and ownership with, its something that others identify the state with. The shock and grief pretty much killed my neighborhoods enthusiasm for launch parties, perhaps its superstitious but the rest of the time I lived there no one I knew made a point of watching launches again it was just too painful. The only lauch I personally watched live after that was when my father had been invited to watch from one of the observation decks on base, we were both extremely nervous the whole time, but it was rather healing when the launch went off without a hitch.
I was at school in Port Orange (small town next to Daytona Beach). We could see it from the playground, they sent us all home. All the teachers were crying, got home, parents had come home from work and they were crying. It was pretty surreal for an elementary school kid.
I distinctly remember the SRB's winding down from the explosion.
Oddly enough, I am now living in Dallas which wasn't far from ground zero for the Columbia breakup. I remember hearing it thinking it was thunder, it was early enough in the morning that I was half asleep and didn't think it odd to hear thunder on a clear day. My sister called me to tell me to turn on the television. A buddy of mine was a brand new journalist in Tyler/Longview and covered much of the disaster. I think one of his stores or photographs was picked up by the NYT.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Major malfunction is just NASA-speak.
The guy was struggling with what to say. I think the quote was something like "umm... obviously, a major malfunction".
What do you expect someone to say in that situation?
It's an example of a culture of remarkable achievement that had become susceptible to groupthink after a while.
Did you become an astronaut?
Or at least maintain a great interest in the subject?
My own reaction was how awful it is that everybody focused on the female school teacher, and not the six others that died.
And then it was all about "who can we blame for this", and not "what can we learn from this".
Yes, it was a valuable lesson in the shallowness of fellow man in general, and US media in particular.
It wasn't even completely that. I read a fascinating excerpt of a book by Edward Tufte in college that basically showed that the engineers HAD the data, but it wasn't compiled in a way that clearnly said to any reader, "hey dumbass, nothing below this temperature is likely to be remotely safe".
A quick summary: http://www.asktog.com/books/challengerExerpt.html
The book: Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative ( http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_visex ) by Edward Tufte
Excerpt: Visual and Statistical Thinking ( http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_textb ) by Edward Tufte. (This is what I read in college. It's a reprint of chapter 2 of the aforementioned book. It was amazing.)
this is my worst nightmare: something that I performed work on malfunctions and lives are lost. Mishaps occur. Sometimes, it is preventable. Sometimes, there is no amount of planning/engineering/contingencies that will allow for recovery. The amount of second-guessing and contemplation of "what could I have done?" can't be described in a number that I know of.
An earlier comment talked about remaining stoic at mission/launch control. It's the same for the knuckle-draggers on the ground as well. If anything, those directly involved with the launch have the hardest job. I personally don't think that I could have handled something like this the way that they did, so for that, I salute them and only hope that I can be half as awesome as they were on that day.
My own reaction was how awful it is that everybody focused on the female school teacher, and not the six others that died.
Fully trained astronauts who have devoted their career to getting into space understand and accept the risks associated with their line of work, she was a school teacher who had "gotten lucky" to get on that flight. The great reversal of fortune combined with the fact that she was not a career astronaut made it in some sense a greater tragedy and in addition a better story for the media.
This was the first "tragedy" that was instantaneously burnt into my mind forever. I was 5 years old and numerous other classes from various grades where gather around TV watching the launch. Shuttle launches were pretty common but this one was special for the educational school system, so we all were engaged.
I remember when the shuttle blew, one the teachers covered her mouth in shock, froze for a few seconds and then began sobbing. I was, of course, to young to fully understand what was going on but it certainly left an impact. In fact, I was certainly affected by 9/11 but I had late classes (in college) that day, so when I awoke all of the events had already taken place. Learning about 9/11 second-hand from friends that day left less of an impression on me than this memory because this was one I witnessed as it happened. I can still get a little choked up about it when I think about.
My thought and prayers still go out to the families of NASA who have lost loved ones and friend in the name of space exploration, especially on days like today.
I mised the bus that day. My mother was painting the hall ceiling. It was cold outside so I turned on the tv to one of the three channels we could get to see if there was anything on. I was just in time to watch the launch countdown (or a commentary-free replay). I remember it feeling like an eternity between the first "that doesn't look right" twinge of adrenaline to my brain grinding through the "there are too many things on the screen producing exhaust trails and none of them are going straight" analysis to the "oh no" conclusion. I did nothing but sit on the couch watching the replays over and over all day.
The last thing to cross my mind that night before finally falling asleep was the old line "our reach has exceeded our grasp" and I drempt all night of falling from the stars.
Ummm no it didn't when this was a complete PR stunt. Interest in shuttle launches had be waning for years.
This was an accident that did not had to happen as the late great Physicist Richard Feynman point out.
NASA has a history of taking chances with people's lives.
I was a Marine corporal stationed at Camp Lejeune w/ 1/6, 3 months away from my EOS. I had just gotten back to my barracks room from the Dental unit, getting my last checkup and a cavity filled, when I turned on the TV to find the count down in its last couple minutes. I thought, what the heck, slap a tape in my VCR and record it. Imagine my horror to know that I had captured the event live. I was working for the battalion S3 shop so I carried the VCR and TV, on foot, the quarter mile across the parade deck to that office. Nearly all the officers and senior NCOs that worked in the building stopped in, the battalion CO included, to take a look at what happened that morning. If I look hard enough, I could probably find that tape in amongst some of my stored belongings.
From working with telemetry data myself the data has a lag that can be a few seconds long from when it is received to when it is displayed. Control systems on the vehicle work in real time of course. That guy was probably just looking at the data as it was still rolling in and was trained to not let his attention stray from it.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The guy was watching telemetry data, not watching the rocket. For example:
Altitude Downrange Velocity
09,124 0345 0734
10,097 0390 0810
10,582 0424 1027
11,M$@ 000 0000
00,000 0000 0000
00,000 0000 0000
Of course he's going to call out that there is a malfunction. All his telemetry is dead.
Speaking of major malfunctions, I guess the TT tags are no longer working
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
When I watched it live, being as young as I was (2nd or 3rd grade IIRC), I was in too much shock to really register what he was saying or how he was saying it. I was just staring at the screen while my space-obsessed brain tried to make sense of what had just happened. I probably sat there just staring for several minutes while they replayed it over and over again.
When I've watched it in later years, though, I'm most struck by his professionalism and commitment to his job. This guy had to know his voice was being broadcast around the world, and that this was the most watched shuttle launch in years (possibly ever). He was probably himself just realizing from the data (I'm not sure he even had the video feed available to him at the time) that something horrible had just happened, and people he probably knew and worked with had likely just died. Through all that, he kept a measured tone and suppressed whatever emotion he might have been feeling. His calm monotone and understated assessment of the situation was the perfect backdrop to the utter shock everyone was feeling at that moment. Having that guy panic or lose his shit would have made the whole thing much much worse.
One of my professors at the time noted that there would have been no O-ring to fail if the thing had been built in one piece. And it could have been built in one piece if built local to the launch site. Which it could have been. But it had to come by train because the bid was won by someone who did not manufacture locally. And since train cars aren't big enough for a whole fuel tank, they had to make the tank in pieces. Supposedly the winning bid had been landed with help from someone in elected office to help out their district. It can be very hard to predict the consequences of our actions.
It is unwise to ascribe motive
/salute those who lost that day
Today it's been 25 years since the Challenger explosion. Today, I turn 25 years old. Word has it that I clawed my way into this world at almost the exact same time as the accident. And here I am, working in the space industry as an analyst, to ensure the safe launch and function of the rockets the USA launches today. Sometimes you have to love irony. Cheers, fellow slashdotters!
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
25 years ago this morning I was huddled next to a tiny fire with a few other grimy, cold and tired soldiers in brief respite from a long training mission when our Lt. walked up to us with a stricken look on his face to tell us that the space shuttle Challenger had blown up just after lift off. He said "The shuttle blew up." and walked off and we just looked at each other and tried to figure out if what he said was real or not. Training continued. A few days later, back at the barracks watching a recording of the event, I realized it happened on my otherwise forgotten 21st birthday. I count this day among others of personal significance like November 11th and December 7th.
He wouldn't be helping any if he were to stop reading the data and scream "Oh, the humanity!"
No, it would be more like, "Looks like I picked the wrong time to quit taking tranquilizers.... How 'bout another cup of coffee Johnnie"
"No thanks"
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
"Thanks to the crew of Challenger, Columbia and Apollo 1." Lets not forget the crews of Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11.
I was working at the old IBM facility at JSC in Houston, as an operator on a mainframe server that housed a database called SED that tracked every part on every shuttle. My manager walked in and told me what happened, and told me to lock the mainframe down until instructed otherwise. Some of the engineers were trying to run some tests on some shuttle computers, and were miffed that they couldn't get in until I told them why.
I wasn't allowed to leave the computer room for another two hours, but when I did, the cafeteria was full of crying people watching the news coverage on several TVs which were brought in to watch launches on. To a person, all of the engineers were worried that it was a software fault because they wrote the code. So the tears and horrified looks were very fearful.
It was a creepily similar feeling when 9/11 happened... everyone sitting around the TV feeling totally helpless.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
> Thanks to the crew of Challenger, Columbia and Apollo 1.
And Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11 and all the astronauts and engineers of whom we seldom hear who are listed here but who all gave their lives for the cause.
I was a 24yr old sailor on the USS Koelsch (FF1043).. I happened to see the lauch on the mess decks TV (we were off the coast of Jacksonville doing remedial engineering ops since we failed our last OPPE). It was a snowy picture, since it was antenna reception from off the coast, but I remember seeing it happen. Six hours later we were enroute to Cape Canaveral. The SAR Helos were flying the area and dropping smoke floats into the sea where they identified floating debris. We launched our small boats (Captain's Gig and whaleboat) to recover the flotsam. Over a period of 18 hours, we collected 2500lbs of the wreckage. The entire skin of the shuttle was honeycomb aluminum and floated, as did the cermaic tiles. Some of the pieces we recovered were larger than 4 X 8 sheets of plywood. We stored it all in our hanger bay. Quite a collection of stuff. And yes, we DID take a ceramic tile and test it out with an acetylene torch. Problem was, no one would touch it while it was glowing, but it WAS touchable, we ultimately found out. Then, under cover of darkness at 3am, we moored at Cape Canaveral and silently unloaded everything under the watchful eye of guys in white labcoats and blue hardhats. Fast forward to 2001. I was an invited guest of NASA for STS 103 when my software (Emergency De-Orbit Program) was making its maiden flight into space. Peace be with them all.
"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing
It turns out that President Ronald Reagan was due to deliver the State of the Union Address on that day, 25 years ago. The event was cancelled, and, instead, he gave this very moving speech, perhaps the best of his presidency. In case anyone doesn't recognize the two lines he quotes at the end, they are from a poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., called "High Flight".
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Nesbitt's job, as the official public voice of NASA going out to the world during the launch, was to provide a running stream of information. The data came from what today seems like an amazingly primitive source — a single black and white, 9-inch monitor with lines of numbers and cryptic letters scrolling across constantly.
On a piece of paper in front of him Nesbitt also has the mission timeline, a listing of what was supposed to happen second-by-second with the shuttle. "About every 15 seconds there was a new milestone coming in on the timeline," he says.
Nesbitt was focused on the 9-inch computer screen in front of him, reading off numbers. The only actual visual of the launch he could see was a small television off to his left but he couldn't watch it and the computer so he wasn't looking at it.
Sitting next to him was the Navy flight surgeon for the launch, a young captain. "I heard her say 'What was that?' " Nesbitt remembers.
He finished reading the numbers off the screen and then looked over at the TV screen. "At that point there was just the trail of smoke. And I thought 'Oh, crap. There's something not right.' "
Note: Mission control may get a different video feed than the cross-cut CNN feed that we are all familiar with. Also, they are in a windowless concrete bunker a thousand miles away from the actual launch. The telemetry and the video feeds from the various tracking cameras are all they've got to go on.
There's a 15-second pause between his last words, "seven nautical miles," and the next ones. Neither Nesbitt nor anyone in the room knew what had happened. "I'm not hearing anyone in Mission Control saying 'The spacecraft just disintegrated.' No one's saying anything," he says.
Something was horribly wrong, he knew that. But he had no idea what it was, what had happened to the spacecraft and, most importantly, what had happened to the crew.
What Nesbitt did know was that it was his job to explain to the public what they were seeing on their TV screens. "I had this feeling 'I've got to comment on what's happening,' but I didn't have any information."
So the next words he uttered were the now famous quote: "Flight control is here looking very carefully at the situation, obviously a major malfunction."
Some at the time expressed surprise that his voice never changed during the next hour as the full extent of the tragedy became evident. But that wasn't Nesbitt's job: It was to give accurate information as quickly and smoothly as he could.
Nesbitt did an amazing job in my opinion. Sadly, sometimes no matter what you say it is the wrong thing to say.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!