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In Memoriam
Twenty years ago today, human spaceflight took a big hit, and it really hasn't recovered yet. Separate from wehther you support NASA, or the USA, the seven crew took a gigantic risk in volunteering to leave Earth for a while, and it's unfortunate that they couldn't return home.
From the current Wikipedia entry:
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on the morning of January 28, 1986. Space Shuttle Challenger, on mission 51L/STS-33 (the 25th of the STS program) was destroyed 73 seconds into its flight because of the failure of an O-ring seal in the aft field joint of the right solid rocket booster (SRB). The seal failure caused a leak with a powerful lateral flame from the SRB that impinged on the adjacent external propellant tank and aft SRB connecting strut, and within seconds the flame caused full structural failure[1]. All seven crew members were killed when their surviving and slowly tumbling crew compartment impacted with the surface of the ocean. That compartment and many other vehicle fragments were recovered from the ocean floor. U.S. manned space flights did not resume until over two years later.I believe that our reaching into space could help us come together as a planet, rather than as warring factions. It's fun to make fun of NASA's dubious track record, but I don't want us to turn inward any more than we already have.
Among the crew was Christa McAuliffe, scheduled to be the first teacher in space as well as the first "civilian" (non-aviator) in space. Students worldwide had expected to watch her deliver a science lesson from space on television. Instead, countless people watched the disintegration of the shuttle, either as it happened live, or later that day.
United States President Ronald Reagan postponed his State of the Union address and gave a national address from the Oval Office of the White House where he said, "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.'" The pictures of Challenger disintegrating remain some of the defining imagery of the late 20th Century for many Americans.
More: Popular Challenger myths, Wikipedia Entry.
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The BF has the front page of the Concord Monitor from that day framed and hanging in the guest room. I've never been clear on his ties to the paper, but he was a journalist in Vermont and New Hampshire during that time.
The other big stories, besides the State of the Union address, were that L. Ron Hubbard died and they believed that a significant number of the New England Patriots were drug addicts.
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"May I have your attention, please. Um... we're about to report... um... what has been announced over the... uh... major news... outlets this morning. Moments ago, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded immediately after takeoff. We, uh, don't have any other information right now, but we will be setting up tv monitors in the Commons [central area of the school] to find out what we can."
And the room I was in just went deadly quiet, and someone mentioned there was supposed to be a teacher on that launch. The rest of the day is something of a haze, until President Reagan's speech, which moved me to tears.
I have always been interested in astronomy, astrophysics, and space travel, so I was always reading and watching programs about this stuff. It was an incredibly sad loss. Like you said, it isn't about the country or the program, but the people who were chasing the dream.