January 28, 1986

[Cypress Sun]

One of the finest speeches ever aired.

 

RIP to the crew of Challenger and to all that went before and to all that went after.

 

 

[Trailrider #896]

Apollo I, Challenger and Columbia could have been prevented were it not for arrogance on the part of certain managers, failure to pay attention to those who knew something was wrong, and bad cases of "go fever"!  As NACA/NASA pioneer Walt Williams once said, "You don't get medals for on-time failures!"  I met Gus Grissom just before his flight in Liberty Bell 7, and, several years later, was watching TV when the announcer broke in to say there had been a fire at the Cape and an astronaut had been hurt!  My instantaneous thought was, "OMG, Gus!"  Grissom tried to tell people in charge about slipshod work, but was ignored. (And any high school chem student has conducted experiments shoving a glowing stick of wood into a test tube full of 100% oxygen!  So why were they insisting on a "plugs out" test with 100% O2 inside the cabin?)

 

Engineers at Morton-Thiokol tried to get the launch of Challenger delayed because of the cold weather, but were ignored/overruled.  Some NASA engineers tried to have the Air Force image Columbia on-orbit to see if there was significant damage from ice falling off the External Tank, but allegedly were browbeaten into silence by their superiors. 

 

There is no question that space exploration can be dangerous, and that we will undoubtedly lose people in the future, but it should only be because of the unknowns we didn't know about, not because of stupidity on the part of someone sitting behind a desk! 

 

RIP Apollo I, Challenger and Columbia! 

|

|

|

[Cypress Sun]

4 minutes ago, Trailrider #896 said:

Apollo I, Challenger and Columbia could have been prevented were it not for arrogance on the part of certain managers, failure to pay attention to those who knew something was wrong, and bad cases of "go fever"!  As NACA/NASA pioneer Walt Williams once said, "You don't get medals for on-time failures!"  I met Gus Grissom just before his flight in Liberty Bell 7, and, several years later, was watching TV when the announcer broke in to say there had been a fire at the Cape and an astronaut had been hurt!  My instantaneous thought was, "OMG, Gus!"  Grissom tried to tell people in charge about slipshod work, but was ignored. (And any high school chem student has conducted experiments shoving a glowing stick of wood into a test tube full of 100% oxygen!  So why were they insisting on a "plugs out" test with 100% O2 inside the cabin?)

 

Engineers at Morton-Thiokol tried to get the launch of Challenger delayed because of the cold weather, but were ignored/overruled.  Some NASA engineers tried to have the Air Force image Columbia on-orbit to see if there was significant damage from ice falling off the External Tank, but allegedly were browbeaten into silence by their superiors. 

 

There is no question that space exploration can be dangerous, and that we will undoubtedly lose people in the future, but it should only be because of the unknowns we didn't know about, not because of stupidity on the part of someone sitting behind a desk! 

 

RIP Apollo I, Challenger and Columbia! 

|

|

|

 

I wish there was a way to put 1,000 LIKES and THANKS emojis to your post..

 

I watched the Challenger launch, live, from the top of a 4 story building in Tampa. Couldn't hear or feel it...but I could see what had happened. Watched seven people die that day. 

 

The word "arrogance" is just a tame word for the people that knew about the dangers of launching in conditions that were present that day.