Challenger go with throttle up.

Phoenix

Phoenix

Ejection Handle Pulled
Joined
Oct 8, 2015
Messages
583
Display Name
Display name:
Phoenix
30 years ago today. I cut school that day and went over to my grandma's house to help with something and it was on TV. No Bud Light. Too soon?
 
Phoenix said:
30 years ago today. I cut school that day and went over to my grandma's house to help with something and it was on TV. No Bud Light. Too soon?
Click to expand...

I was in an EE class, we were watching a video on fourier transforms when someone came running in with the news. The TA stopped the tape, wiggled the rabbit ears and we watched the local coverage.

I somberly attended the rest of my classes and by the time I got back to the dorm it was dark, the lights were out, and folks had set up candles in the big windows on the end that overlooked the valley. We all sat around drinking beer by candlelight discussing life until sunup. I'll never forget that day.
 
Last edited:
It was two days after I enjoyed the Bears mauling the Patriots in Super Bowl XX and I was home from school in Atlanta due to an "ice day". :sad:

Last year I had a management training class where we discussed the roles of the various players in the go / no-go decision: NASA, Morton Thiokol execs, and Roger Boisjoly, the Thiokol engineer who correctly predicted the failure of the O-rings in extreme cold. The amount of pressure put on the launch team to go forward was intense, especially with the addition of a civilian teacher to the astronaut crew and previous scrubs of the launch. Boisjoly wound up a pariah at his workplace after testifying in the Challenger hearings and left to become a lecturer on ethics.
 
I was at work at the A/E firm I worked at at the time. It was a very very bad day.
 
Today is my wife's birthday. 30 years ago, much like today, I was waiting on her to get ready for us to go out for her birthday. Unlike today, back then it had been freezing weather that morning. As I watched the launch broadcast, I told my wife I could not believe they were actually considering making a launch when there had been ice on the rocket just an hour or so before. The rest is history.
 
I was working nights at Aberdeen Proving Ground. During the days I slept in at the local volunteer fire company in case they needed a paramedic during the daytime. My driver woke me up and told me to come check the TV out.

I remember where we were for Columbia as well. We were driving the Navion on a 24' flatbed trailer out to the restoration shop in Nebraska and had stopped for breakfast at the Iowa80 truckstop where we heard the news on a TV playing there.
 
I was in first grade.
The smart kids got to leave class to go to the gym and watch the launch on TV.
The rest of us special ed kids had to stay back and learn about future welding careers.

The smart kids came back into the room a little sad.

That doesn't seem like 30 years.
 
I don't recall why but I was home that day from school watching The Price is Right when they interrupted the program to show the explosion over and over.

MickYoumans said:
Today is my wife's birthday. 30 years ago, much like today, I was waiting on her to get ready for us to go out for her birthday. Unlike today, back then it had been freezing weather that morning. As I watched the launch broadcast, I told my wife I could not believe they were actually considering making a launch when there had been ice on the rocket just an hour or so before. The rest is history.
Click to expand...
That's nuts
 
I had just moved to Kansas City. Took time off work to drive to the DMV to get my car registered and turned on the radio. There was a lot of dead air as the NASA feed people were trying to figure out what happened and the occasional news guy would try to add something. It took me almost 10 minutes to figure out what happened. I stayed in the parking lot that whole time, listening.
 
I was in college at the time. Myself and other students were huddled around the TV in a break room watching the coverage. When I went to my next class it was very somber. A sad day in our nation's history.

The lesson we can take away from that event is to avoid "go fever" when flying. It is better to scrub a flight when warranted by conditions rather than take unnecessary risks.
 
Reporting for duty at Ft. Hood.
 
I was a still green A1C with the Air Force Band of The West at Lackland AFB. Some of us were in the recording studio listening to some recent takes for a jazz band album we were working on when it happened. We watched the replays on the day room TV. Shortly, we were tasked with playing the memorial ceremony in Houston. I was on the music library staff and we scrambled to find suitable music. In the end we played from the Armed Forces Hymnal.
 
Standing in line at the credit union on a military base. One of the bank workers came out of an office and said, "It blew up, they saw a 'chute" and I thought she was talking about one of our airplanes.

Columbia I was raking leaves in my yard. I shared an office with the pilot for a while before his selection :(

Nauga,
and his risk assessment process
 
I was in my law office and my accountant in the building next door called to tell me. I ran over to watch on his TV since I didn't have one in my office. We were dumbfounded. Truly a sad day.
 
Also not alive. I knew about it of course and learned a few things when I visited Kennedy Space Center last spring.
 
I was driving to work while stationed at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. On Armed Forces Network radio, they kept talking about "it" blowing up but never said what. I found out when I got to work.
 
I was a newly minted Test Pilot at Ft Eustis...sitting in a classroom watching the launch with others just completing the course we all were reminded of the unforgiving nature of such things. I still remember the exact words uttered from the back of the class room which at the time were so matter of fact and unsuitable for this board. I cant think of another time that I associate words with an event in my life. True Hero's that will not be forgotten. Dick Scobee went to our church...I grew up in the JSC community.
 
I was at lunch, ordering a personal pan pizza. Quite sobering news, especially for those of us who were pilots (or wannabees). It dominated our local news for months afterwards, as Ron McNair was a local native. I was the assignment editor for a TV station and we covered his funeral live.
 
I was watching it live on a dozen different TVs in a Walmart. I wasn't sure what had happened at first.

I remember they came to the o-ring causing the problem pretty quickly.

There's a youtube video of the launch and explosion that was broadcast live at the time. The camera keeps panning back to McAuliffe's parents in the crowd. They were like me, not sure what had happened at first.

I read something once about it losing control and being self-destructed as to not injure people on the ground but I don't see anything about that now. Does anyone know if that's true?

Also, the announcer just said something about changing the throttle just as it exploded. Did that cause it, or would it have exploded anyway?
 
Was in college, but heading off to my part-time job. I was in So-Cal and it was a bright blue clear sky that day. Was listening to KLOS on the radio when the DJ jumped on and said the shuttle had exploded. Got to work and we dug a TV out and watched the replays.

I remember the chute landing in the water, (Dan Rather pointed it out if I recall correctly) always wondered what that was.
 
Gerhardt said:
Also, the announcer just said something about changing the throttle just as it exploded. Did that cause it, or would it have exploded anyway?
Click to expand...

This was a normal launch procedure for the Shuttle main engines and had nothing to do with the fuel tank explosion.
 
I was home from school sick that day. I watched it and about a half an hour later my dad called and said he would be working overtime, didn't know when he would be home. He worked at Pt. Mugu in range Communacations. After that call I started to put it together, he always worked overtime when the shuttles had missions. After he died I found all of the mission patches he had from each launch, including this one. When he retired to Florida he got a Columbia liscense plate, when he died I kept the plate and its next to the patch.
 
Watched it on a CCTV monitor in the lobby where I worked, with my boss. The receptionist turned, and asked us;

"Do you think they're alright?"

I'm a windy SOB, and a wise a**. But I gave her the kindest, quietest, gentlest head shake I could generate.
 
I was in the Air Force stationed at Sunnyvale Air Force Station in California. That was the control center for most Air Force (and other) satellites at the time. The division I worked in controlled comm satellites, including two launched on the maiden flight of Atlantis the previous October. In so doing we had gotten to know that crew, and worked closely with our sister division upstairs that controlled the inertial upper stage (IUS) that gave the satellites the ride from the low shuttle orbit to GEO. Challenger's payload that day was a TDRSS satellite on an IUS, so our friends upstairs were on console momitoring the launch and prepared to do their job after deployment. The IUS was Ellison Onizka's specialty, and it was his second or third flight with an IUS, so the folks upstairs knew him particularly well.

I was sitting in our control center talking to a fellow Lt when his phone rang and his wife told him the Shuttle had just blown up on the pad. We found a 12" black and white tv and watched the replay over and over.

Sunnyvale AFS was later renamed Onizuka AFS. It has since been closed and all the buildings razed.
 
Gerhardt said:
I read something once about it losing control and being self-destructed as to not injure people on the ground but I don't see anything about that now. Does anyone know if that's true?
Click to expand...
I believe the SRBs were terminated after the orbiter broke up and the boosters 'ran free', but the orbiter itself broke up due to aerodynamic loads as the main fuel tank and orbiter mounts failed.

Nauga,
and his dogeared Rogers Report
 
Gerhardt said:
I read something once about it losing control and being self-destructed as to not injure people on the ground but I don't see anything about that now. Does anyone know if that's true?
Click to expand...

the initial explosion did not destroy the solid rocket motors; they were still burning, but were out of control and posed a safety threat. In the video you can clearly see when they are destroyed later. Whether it was a commanded self destruct from Range Safety, or the automatic self-destruct, I do not recall.
 
I was at home sick with pneumonia watching Challenger...I was NCOIC for the first Military Public Affairs team on the ground for Columbia in East Texas.
 
I was managing a pizza restaurant at the time. People would walk in laughing and noisy as usual, but then would notice the silence and ask what happened.


The restaurant was full and dead silent all through lunch as all eyes were glued to the Tv. So quiet I could hear people across the dining room whisper.
 
I watched it from the FAA Headquarters, where I was working. The hot gas from one of the solid rocket booster (SRB) joints broke one of the attachment points and compromised the external tank. The tank broke up under aerodynamic loads, as did the orbiter itself. There was a cloud of vapor, but no explosion.

The SRBs remained intact and flew away until destroyed by the range safety officer.

In order to stay withing structural limits, it was normal to throttle back the main engines as the spacecraft approached maximum aerodynamic forces -- Max Q. Afterwards, the engines were throttled back to normal power.
 
I was working midnights and woke up after the fact to watch the news replay over and over. My brother had just finished a mission briefing to go refuel an SR-71, walking out through the ready room they paused and watched in real time, then had to go fly their mission.
 
In STS-26, Commander Houck didn't say "Roger, go at throttle up". Instead, he just said, "Roger, go!".

I've heard it said that being the first return to space mission after the Challenger disaster, he was superstitious about rogering that checklist item.

I'm thinking they all had great big ones.

I was preflighting for another VIP sortie from NAS North Island over to an amphib-ex (groan) on the beach off Pendelton. One of the other crew came running out to say the news was reporting it.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I was in first grade.
The smart kids got to leave class to go to the gym and watch the launch on TV.
The rest of us special ed kids had to stay back and learn about future welding careers.

The smart kids came back into the room a little sad.

That doesn't seem like 30 years.
Click to expand...

I was in 5th grade and we were watching the live launch on TV. My dad had been a welder that worked on everything the Voyager probe and the Viking mars lander to the most current (2011) GPS and telecom satellites. JPL would send people to watch him hand weld thrusters that required a tolerance that they swore only the automatic welder could handle. The automatic receive reject after reject but his hand welds passed with flying colors.

He worked on the puffer jets or maneuvering thrusters and not the solid rocket boosters that were produced through a different company. (morton thiokol made the boosters while he worked for Rocket Research in Redmond, WA.)

I thought every kid had space shuttle parts in their room and had met astronauts. I had lunch with Dick Scobee and my dad and later spent much of my training at the Dick Scobee field. (Auburn Municipal Airport)

My dad is gone but every time that you use a GPS or cell phone you are using something he worked on.

I had watcher EVERY launch up to this point from the very fist mission but just couldn't for many years after the disaster. I remember the somber feeling at the US display during the worlds fair, Expo 86, in Vancouver Canada. So sad....
 
Last edited:
I was at MCO awaiting my flight to NEW. As word spread throughout the concourse (it was a lot smaller then) an eerie quiet spread just as fast. Folks peered out the large glass windows for a view of the broken contrails. Those of us from Central Florida knew what had happened long before the media confirmed the tragic news. Our flight crew had a bird's eye view on arrival and were still visibly shaken by the time we boarded our flight some 45 minutes later.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top