24 years ago?! No way...

I was working in the shop at MTN in Baltimore, it seems like yesterday.

Kevin
 
I was still working at the High School, and trying to fly my Cessna 170 when ever I could.
 
Dan Thomas said:
I was operating a crankshaft grinder, a mindless task after several thousand crankshafts, at had the radio on when the news of the explosion came on.

24 years went by in a hurry. In another 24 years I will be past the average life expectancy for a Canadian male.

Dan
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Small world... If I had a dime for every crank I have ground I could buy a Citation 10. :yesnod: And you are right. it is a mindless task.. Thank god I quit that stuff years ago.
 
Sitting at work at Tandem Computers. I had worked on "stuff" that flew on the shuttle when I was at Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace.

A friend of our son's had been at KSC to watch the launch, but had come home to return to school due to the launch delays. Skouby was a family friend of theirs. Matt was pulled from class. He's an Annapolis grad and a Naval Aviator today.
 
I was working a forecast shift at the Ann Arbor NWS Office when we heard the news. Everyone dashed to the A/V room to tune in the news. Quite a shock for all concerned.

To add some perspective, I had a 2 1/2 year old daughter at home in '86 - I'll be walking her down the aisle in July.

John
 
I was in college in the DC area. Being a ham radio geek, I had my 2-meter radio on listening to the live NASA retransmissions that the Goddard Space Flight Center Amateur Radio Club was broadcasting (I used to volunteer to man the club station during other shuttle missions). Right before the launch, they were describing the payloads and experiments that were on this particular mission. I was distracted for a moment, then heard something about an explosion, and about seeing a parachute. It was not until I got to a TV that I realized what had happened.

I never figured out what that parachute was for...do any of you remember comments about seeing a chute right after the explosion?
 
Erice said:
I never figured out what that parachute was for...do any of you remember comments about seeing a chute right after the explosion?
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It was one of the chute for the SRBs. After the SRB are spent they are jettisoned. Parachute slow their descent into the ocean where they are picked up and brought back to the Cape for refurbishment.
 
This Old-Thread showed up in my search:

I was home watching the Price is Right when it was interrupted. It didn't come back on as they continued to re-show the footage.

Interesting how that event caused me to remember that day. Seeing the disaster didn't deter me from wanting to be an astronaut. Considering the Discovery has flown the last flight, I guess I'll never get to pilot an STS.
 
Sitting on the couch of my college apartment eating a bowl of cheerios between classes. Turned on the tube and caught the countdown at 2 minutes; thought cool I'll watch. I remember watching the two solid boosters going off in opposite directions while the NASA announcer saying something to the affect 'we have an anomoly'; yeah think.
 
I was outfitting a trawler for Alaska. Heard the first report on the radio. Went up to the bar to watch TV reports.

I guess I have lived a full life for it seems like a lot more than 24 yrs ago.
 
I was at an IBM manufacturing plant in Charlotte NC finishing up on a machine control software project. When the tragedy occurred I was having lunch in their cafeteria.
 
I was working through all of the business, personal, legal and family issues after my partner was killed in the crash of our 340 on Jan 31. Most of them involved taking care of his kids and securing their financial future. It became a pretty-much full-time job for about six months.
 
I had a Physics class that night where we discussed the dynamics of chemical propulsion. I pointed out that both of the detached the SRBs went seeking back to course before the range officer detonated them.
 
Home on a rare sick day from school. Can't remember if it was a real illness, or if it was just playing hookey to watch Shuttle. ;) Watched live.

Always was amazed at the announcer's mix of coolness under pressure, while also hearing the controlled emotion in his voice, as he said those famous words, "Obviously a major malfunction." He knew they'd had an LOCV event. The out of plane tracks of the SRBs made that really clear.
 
I was working in an architectural resto shop in Hoboken, NJ... had to go into the office for something, and everyone was gaping at the TV. My first thought was "I didn't even know they had a TV in here"; next thought was "oh no..." :no:

That was a bad day.
 
I was in the Physics building at ISU. Don't remember what I was working on, but a very upset looking grad student burst in and announced that the Challenger had exploded. First thought was, Oh s***, second thought was, how awful for all of the elementary school kids around the country that were watching the launch because of the big PR buildup...very sad.
 
N801BH said:
We all drive in weather that sometimes goes down to -40 f and the 80$ tires on our cars/trucks are still plyable and don't fail.. NASA specs out some O rings that are so brittle at 33 f they fail .. Go figure.
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And what are the UPPER temp limits of those tires? and of the SRB O rings....?? Hmm?

If it makes you feel better, that the government doesn't have a monopoly on overlooking simple things, I once had to run like hell to get out of a petrochemical plant because the o-rings on some flanges were not spec'd to withstand the temperature excursions of the product stream.. and this was in the mid 90's..
 
It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
Alan Shepard


​
 
Doggtyred said:
And what are the UPPER temp limits of those tires? and of the SRB O rings....?? Hmm?

If it makes you feel better, that the government doesn't have a monopoly on overlooking simple things, I once had to run like hell to get out of a petrochemical plant because the o-rings on some flanges were not spec'd to withstand the temperature excursions of the product stream.. and this was in the mid 90's..
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And technically they wewit outside the flight limits that NASA said they would follow, and chose instead to make the crew test-pilots that day. The engineers tried to say no. They were ignored. Flight management caved to pressure not to scrub, and killed the crew. Good lesson there for the rest of us in our go/no-go decisions, and never to fly the aircraft outside of the design envelope.
 
denverpilot said:
And technically they wewit outside the flight limits that NASA said they would follow, and chose instead to make the crew test-pilots that day. The engineers tried to say no. They were ignored. Flight management caved to pressure not to scrub, and killed the crew. Good lesson there for the rest of us in our go/no-go decisions, and never to fly the aircraft outside of the design envelope.
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Remember this happened at Thiokol, not NASA though.

It's a case studied by many/most engineering students now, though - Perfect example of an ethics dilemma.

The line I'll never forget, uttered by an exec to the head engineer on the conference call with NASA that morning, after they took a 10-minute break: "Take off your engineer hat, and put on your manager hat." Then they called NASA back and said "Go." :frown2:
 
I was a 20-something musician living in Chicago. Woke up late morning, grabbed a cup of joe, flipped on the tube and stood transfixed by the bad news on TV. All I could think of was . . . what was going on with the astronauts as they fell back into the ocean for those long minutes. BSBD.

I had a teacher back in the 60s who was really gung-ho for the space program and we watched all the Apollo launches on TV. I feel for the kiddies who must've been mighty confused and sad while watching the shuttle blow.
 
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