DBWI Something happens to the challenger

I was in high school when the Space Shuttle Challenger launged into orbit on it's mission and carried, not just a civilian, but a TEACHER into space.

I sat in my Science 102 class as they trundled in a TV and showed us Miss McAuliffe teachus us and the rest of the country's high schoolers about physics and astronomy in zero G in space!! It was so wierd seeing her just FLOATING in mid air and puttin an object or something i nthe air and just letting it go and it just STAYED there.

Every day that whole school week we had our telepresence substitue science teacher that was in freaking ORBIT!.

It REALLY laid a trip on my head and I was not alone.

It turned a fancy for space into an obsession.

My question is, what if something had happened?

There was something I heard that Reagan wanted to launch the previous week but the Chief of NASA put his foot down and made it stick. I always wondered about that.
 
Well if the Challenger had been lost because of the O-ring problem instead of Columbia I suppose the public reaction might have been a bit worse because of the presence of Christa McAuliffe but the impact of the revelations about bad management at NASA would have been about the same.
 
Well if the Challenger had been lost because of the O-ring problem instead of Columbia I suppose the public reaction might have been a bit worse because of the presence of Christa McAuliffe but the impact of the revelations about bad management at NASA would have been about the same.
Yeah, and my generation would never have hgad our revival about SPACE AND STUFF WOWEEEEEEEE!"

I think that would have been a shame.

I will NEVER forget Miss Macauliffe pointing the cammera out the shuttle's window and SHOWING US the earth below her in real time.

I spent the rest of that dayy in a daze and looking up trying to imagine HER up there looking down at ME!
 

Glen

Moderator
I was in high school when the Space Shuttle Challenger launged into orbit on it's mission and carried, not just a civilian, but a TEACHER into space.

I sat in my Science 102 class as they trundled in a TV and showed us Miss McAuliffe teachus us and the rest of the country's high schoolers about physics and astronomy in zero G in space!! It was so wierd seeing her just FLOATING in mid air and puttin an object or something i nthe air and just letting it go and it just STAYED there.

Every day that whole school week we had our telepresence substitue science teacher that was in freaking ORBIT!.

It REALLY laid a trip on my head and I was not alone.

It turned a fancy for space into an obsession.

My question is, what if something had happened?

There was something I heard that Reagan wanted to launch the previous week but the Chief of NASA put his foot down and made it stick. I always wondered about that.

Well if the Challenger had been lost because of the O-ring problem instead of Columbia I suppose the public reaction might have been a bit worse because of the presence of Christa McAuliffe but the impact of the revelations about bad management at NASA would have been about the same.

Dude, if you are suggesting having Challenger blow with the teacher on board and all those kids waiting anxiously for their space lessons rather than Columbia, that is just, that is just, I don't know, kinda sick! Not to mention out of all those many missions, what are the odds it would be the first one with a teacher on board? It seems a bit of a stretch.

But if it did, I can imagine a lot of schools needing to call in counselors for the kiddies who just watched people die before their eyes, albeit hundreds of miles up and on TV.

Dude, this is a really sick OP. Glad nothing like this happened in real life. Heck, the outcry might have stopped the whole shuttle program.
 
Dude, if you are suggesting having Challenger blow with the teacher on board and all those kids waiting anxiously for their space lessons rather than Columbia, that is just, that is just, I don't know, kinda sick! Not to mention out of all those many missions, what are the odds it would be the first one with a teacher on board? It seems a bit of a stretch.

But if it did, I can imagine a lot of schools needing to call in counselors for the kiddies who just watched people die before their eyes, albeit hundreds of miles up and on TV.

Dude, this is a really sick OP. Glad nothing like this happened in real life. Heck, the outcry might have stopped the whole shuttle program.
Thank goodness it did not. in fact a whole new generation learned to love manned space exploration.
 
Well if the Challenger had been lost because of the O-ring problem instead of Columbia I suppose the public reaction might have been a bit worse because of the presence of Christa McAuliffe but the impact of the revelations about bad management at NASA would have been about the same.
Yeah, in a lot of ways the '86 manifest was NASA's attempt to prove that Shuttle could do all of what it was supposed to, and while the launch of Discovery from Vandenberg, the flights of Galileo, Ulysesses, and Hubble and DoD, commercial, and of course NASA Earth science payloads showed that Shuttle could fly a variety of missions, the costs were still very high, and the slipped flight rate that led STS-61L to be in January of '86 with the bad O-rings...if something like the Columbia disaster had happened a year earlier it would have made Shuttle come off as a massive, unimaginably expensive boondoggle that couldn't meet any of the goals it set out to achieve. You know, instead of the merely incredibly expensive boondoggle that couldn't meet most of the goals set for it.
 
Yeah, in a lot of ways the '86 manifest was NASA's attempt to prove that Shuttle could do all of what it was supposed to, and while the launch of Discovery from Vandenberg, the flights of Galileo, Ulysesses, and Hubble and DoD, commercial, and of course NASA Earth science payloads showed that Shuttle could fly a variety of missions, the costs were still very high, and the slipped flight rate that led STS-61L to be in January of '86 with the bad O-rings...if something like the Columbia disaster had happened a year earlier it would have made Shuttle come off as a massive, unimaginably expensive boondoggle that couldn't meet any of the goals it set out to achieve. You know, instead of the merely incredibly expensive boondoggle that couldn't meet most of the goals set for it.
It still beat the spectre of seven more martyred space voyagers' dded to the cost of Apollo one.
 
It still beat the spectre of seven more martyred space voyagers' dded to the cost of Apollo one.
Well, what you're suggesting is basically that the STS-61L failure occurs during STS-51L disaster, right? I suppose the PR would have been worse if it'd been the "teacher in space" flight and they hadn't gotten the probes and vandenberg launch off before the failure, but...seven dead was seven dead. The O-rings needed redesign, and as long as the same management pressures to launch no matter what existed I think, as morbid as it is, that possibility was eventually going to happen. In that way, the scenerio you present, of Challenger failing instead of Columbia, with all media's eyes on the flight and several critical missions yet to fly is chillingly possible.
 
Well, what you're suggesting is basically that the STS-61L failure occurs during STS-51L disaster, right? I suppose the PR would have been worse if it'd been the "teacher in space" flight and they hadn't gotten the probes and vandenberg launch off before the failure, but...seven dead was seven dead. The O-rings needed redesign, and as long as the same management pressures to launch no matter what existed I think, as morbid as it is, that possibility was eventually going to happen. In that way, the scenerio you present, of Challenger failing instead of Columbia, with all media's eyes on the flight and several critical missions yet to fly is chillingly possible.
Indeed. That is why I am so glad it didn't happen that way.
 
Yeah, in a lot of ways the '86 manifest was NASA's attempt to prove that Shuttle could do all of what it was supposed to, and while the launch of Discovery from Vandenberg, the flights of Galileo, Ulysesses, and Hubble and DoD, commercial, and of course NASA Earth science payloads showed that Shuttle could fly a variety of missions, the costs were still very high, and the slipped flight rate that led STS-61L to be in January of '86 with the bad O-rings...if something like the Columbia disaster had happened a year earlier it would have made Shuttle come off as a massive, unimaginably expensive boondoggle that couldn't meet any of the goals it set out to achieve. You know, instead of the merely incredibly expensive boondoggle that couldn't meet most of the goals set for it.

It'll be interesting to see what Hollywood has cooked up for "Challenger" documenting the drama of the 2003 'successful failure' of that shuttle's last flight into space and sustaining and recovering the crew from orbit after ground control realized the foam insulation strike had damaged the wing beyond repair.

I profoundly glad though that President Clinton finally forced NASA to junk the shuttles for the SSTO's. They cost us a mint and, if they proved anything, it was that we just don't have the tech to implement 'cheap' reusable manned space vehicles.
 
I might have been glued to the tv watching the aftermath of the blowup instead of meeting the woman that became my wife and mother of my 5 kids.
 
I do love the conspiracy theory that the Columbia was carrying a Star Wars test article. Sure, a DoD payload, but space weapons and sabotage? Nah.
 
Im just glad they decided to postpone the launch. The O-ring problem was real even though it didnt fortunately effect that flight.
 
Top