Challenger!!!

NASA….

Mission 51-L (“Lima”) and the world blew up that day.
Challenger rolled out, over on her back…and then all hell broke loose. The conflagration was unimaginable.

I was coming home from work that day…I’d worked on Challenger. My roommate told me Challenger blew up. I was crushed. Never more crushed than that moment. He’d recorded it, over and over.

When I saw the boosters separate, tears were in my eyes. I knew it was over. I’d been out there in the valley and witnessed the testing. There was NO way the Shuttle could survive a booster separation at that altitude!

I sat and blinked my eyes, over and over. I just couldn’t believe it. I’d just come home from setting the booster supports.
We built the rail cars, which hauled the SRB’s to the Cape. It was an “All-In” proposition. That was how it was back then…we’re “all-in”………or you were out! We built the supports, on the rail cars….3/4” stainless plate.

They’d bring the rail-cars out to the desert and load the SRB sections. My Gawd, they stink!! (like Sulfur).
Just one spark…40,000,000 million pounds of energy. Everything had to be perfect. BUT….
Just a wrong seal, in the freezing morning.

The boosters all came together well, along with the vehicle.
Just one wrong seal. The crew were so hopeful, so bright. I think I cried for four days. They were sitting on top of ten million tons of TNT.
I saw the SRB’s separate, and I knew it was over. Nothing could survive that. I knew it was over. The main (liquid oxygen) tank had exploded. I remember being amazed at the SRB’s flying off until detonation.

And so I sat there, in front of the TV, watching incredulously. I was just in shock. Total shock.
In the weeks ahead the investigators would drill us for days, but nothing ever took the pain away from that day…January 28, 1986.
A day which will live in infamy, in my mind, forever!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I could take the accident. It sucks but it does happen ... and space is a dangerous place.

But later, to find out there were warnings and they gave the green light anyway ...

I also read the one guy who tried to stand up ... who knew there was a risk ...

I feel for that guy.

There was no need for a race. NASA got a wake up call that day, it is a pity that people ... good people ... had to die because of a management problem.

Brave souls were lost.

P

I have a NASA sticker on my hard-hat. People sometimes laugh at it.

All the grease, scars and other stuff, I don't take many prisoners over that sticker, but people do ask about it.

I'm proud of it. It's a bittersweet thing.

I also have United 232 and NWA 255 on my hard hat too.

"Jessica" and "sole survivor" on the back.

My ex-wife used to work for United (she's retired now). I flew on Al Haynes last flight. (UA-232)

We were both working at that airport in Detroit when NW-255 went down. Clipped a light pole and slammed down under a bridge (under I-94). There was only one survivor..."Jessica"

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
My ex-wife used to work for United (she's retired now). I flew on Al Haynes last flight. (UA-232)

We were both working at that airport in Detroit when NW-255 went down. Clipped a light pole and slammed down under a bridge (under I-94). There was only one survivor..."Jessica"

The only survivor was 4 year old Cecelia Cichan.

a reply to: RazorV66

Yes, you're correct!

I was mistaken.

Sorry...thanks!!

Her name is "Crocker" now though.

It's funny you brought this up, my father and my brother were machinists, and they machined parts on the shuttle, particularly the doors and window openings.

My father passed away in a car accident in 1995, but I know he would have been so upset over the Challenger exploding. He worked on every space project through the aerospace industry in southern California since the Mercury program. I still have the plaque all the machinists received for their hard work, because the tolerances for spacecraft are very, very tight. All I know is, they made a lot of it out of titanium.

I lived in Texas when it exploded, and I drove out that day along I-20 into east Texas and saw crime tape all over where pieces of it, blackened, had landed. I felt so horrible, I couldn't imagine their terror knowing it was the end, and they had several minutes to realize it.

I got lucky to go into the flight sims at the UA DEN flight training center. I was rated for 737's, so that's where I went (actually a DC-8)

There were (2) DC-10 simulators there then. They'd run the UA232 sim on the cocky pilots. No one ever landed it. No one!! No one even close!!

a reply to: FissionSurplus

Was that Challenger, or Columbia?

Columbia broke up over Texas on re-entry. Challenger (51-L) broke up over the N. Atlantic..

The Columbia break-up was especially ugly. There's video's of it.

that's the scariest thing I can think of!! Unlike Challenger, they knew the ship was coming apart....and they fried!!

I know a woman that had debris from the Columbia crash through the roof of her house.
Hell of way to wake up.

And yet some crazy conspiracy theorists will tell you the crew from challener are still living

fellowshipoftheminds.com...

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

My friend died on flight 255, she was flying to Phoenix. I was in Middle School when the Challenger blew up. That was one sad day.

a reply to: stonerwilliam

Yeah, well... Shrug

Some people believe second hand smoke from a cigarette is worse for people than the 100s of thousands of tons of toxins tossed into the atmosphere by chemical plants everyday too... So...

No, I don't believe that people survived Challenger either. Heh.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

The crew actually didn't die when the external tank exploded.
The orbiter broke apart due to aerodynamic stresses when it separated from the tank. It is all in the NASA report.
The crew compartment was relatively intact and a number of the crew had donned emergency oxygen masks.
NASA reports that the crew probably lost consciousness in a few seconds, but they have no way to be sure.
They could have been conscious for the 2 plus minutes that it took for them to fall back to the ocean.
Any way you look at it, it sucked.

Here is a decent 28 minute Youtube video that has a rundown of the accident with videos and stills from many NASA cameras showing how everything happened.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Hey, I was in another country and was horrified.

I can barely imagine what it would have been like to have worked on it.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

The shuttle losses were part of the gamble taken to cover up the real space efforts under way from early on. The black triangles were being lofted even back then. The entire UFO coverup has many factors that prevent the simple "Disclosure" that some seem to think will happen any day. Too much is at stake for a purposeful revelation of what has been done to us.