Challenger Flies High-a TL

The Space Shuttle Challenger landed successfully yesterday morning, completing mission STS-51-L. All of the mission's objectives were accomplished smoothly, from the deployment of a satellite to the "Space Lessons" of teacher Christa McAuliffe.

-New York Times,
February 4, 1986.

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When I saw the shuttle landing, I thought how could NASA have sunk this low? We've gone from landing on the moon to this? Flying a teacher in orbit, just for some stunt?

And I knew that stuff like this was an enabler. Soon I'd be seeing the space program reduced to an even more irrelevant zoo. What's worse is that I knew that Christa would become a Space Expert (tm), just because she'd flown in it once. Meaning that she was bound to serve on some board, and kick a real expert off it, just because she was a teacher.

We should have been landing on Mars or at least putting robots on other worlds. I'd bet that would be more inspiring to school kids than just having Mrs. McAuliffe teach from outer space. I know I was more inspired by watching Neil Armstrong land on the moon than I would've been if I'd seen a teacher talk to me from a capsule.

-Lori Wiedenseld, Diaries of the Unlikliest President.
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-I looked at the booster after it was recovered. It was this close to breaking. Less than half a second more and the astronauts would be dead.

Really, was NASA so afraid to admit that its Shuttle program wasn't going to be self-funding? At the rate it was trying desperately to launch one shuttle mission after another, the boosters would be more than just close to breaking.

-John Marist, former Thoikol engineer.

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