On this day, 25 years ago-Challenger Shuttle Disaster

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

I was in grade school when this went down. I still remember hearing the announcement and watching the news in class.

It came about six months after my divorce. That ended up being a very depressing year for me.

[sharkbit]

I believe yesterday was the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts.

I think people, in 1986 and now, get complacent on how dangerous space travel really is.

[yubba]

I was standing on top of my garbage truck at the county landfill could see the pad and omg. My landlord work for NASA at the time, as a recovery diver, he told me some grizzily details.

[razark]

Originally Posted by sharkbit

I think people, in 1986 and now, get complacent on how dangerous space travel really is.

Exploration has always been a dangerous business. Always will be. The people who choose to fly know the risks, and they choose to do it anyway.

[Armistead]

Geesh, has it been that long. I can remember exactly where I was...

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by sharkbit

I believe yesterday was the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts.

I think people, in 1986 and now, get complacent on how dangerous space travel really is.

Especially in late January. Not a joke, It just seems odd to me.

[breadcatcher101]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

Especially in late January. Not a joke, It just seems odd to me.

The two shuttle losses can be tied to low tempertures at launch resulting in seal failure and excessive foam loss from the external tank.

As for Apollo 1, I suppose it just happened to be in January. I don't remember it as well, was pretty young.

[Platapus]

I was working the swing shift at Offutt. We came into work and people were talking about the shuttle exploding. We did not believe it... until I got home and turned on CNN.

I think I watched CNN for about five hours straight 0000-0500 in disbelief and sorrow.

It is strange but for this 25th anniversary, multiple websites are posting video clips of the accident. I have not opened a single one. Don't need to. I can still remember everything.

I can now understand how old guys can talk about how they remember everything about where they were when JFK was killed.

[Tchocky]

I remember it like I wasn't born at the time

That said, have spent many hours picking over the story of what happened as part of a course on operational decision-making, it's all the more harrowing for knowing the ending in advance.

We came into work and people were talking about the shuttle exploding. We did not believe it... until I got home and turned on CNN.

The closest I can come to that feeling is when Concorde crashed at CDG. My dad woke me up to tell me (it was early morning in CA), I told him that Concorde doesn't crash, so why was he waking me up?

[Growler]

Originally Posted by Platapus

It is strange but for this 25th anniversary, multiple websites are posting video clips of the accident. I have not opened a single one. Don't need to. I can still remember everything.

I can still see it, too, as clearly as the day it happened.

I did go back and watch Mr. Reagan's address that evening, though. It is still a powerful 5 minutes.

Tchocky - I remember thinking the exact same thing: "Concordes don't crash." It was unimaginable.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I can now understand how old guys can talk about how they remember everything about where they were when JFK was killed.

It's an odd part of human nature. People die all the time, and as catastrophes go the Challenger was fairly minor. But when something is so public, so visible, it affects us much more deeply. Thousands are starving, or die in an earthquake somewhere, and I think "That's too bad. I wonder if I can do something". But one famous man is murdered, or seven complete strangers die on camera, and my heart stops, and I remember it for decades.

Just questioning my own attitudes, and wondering why we see things the way we do.

[Growler]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

It's an odd part of human nature. People die all the time, and as catastrophes go the Challenger was fairly minor. But when something is so public, so visible, it affects us much more deeply. Thousands are starving, or die in an earthquake somewhere, and I think "That's too bad. I wonder if I can do something". But one famous man is murdered, or seven complete strangers die on camera, and my heart stops, and I remember it for decades.

Just questioning my own attitudes, and wondering why we see things the way we do.

One useless death is a tragedy; one million, a statistic. (A paraphrase, but the essence of the meaning is there.) I don't recall who it was who mentioned that the human brain just can't conceive - can't mentally picture - large numbers (beyond, say, 100,000, for the sake of argument). We're just not wired to comprehend numbers that large. We can see a stadium of 75K people, so we can sort of see the effect 75K people have on a local sense. But once the numbers get too large, our brains just go, "Uh, wut?" and sort of shut down that measurement part. Many of us have experienced death on individual scales, personal and impersonal, but on the individual, small-scale. Maybe the guys who could best tell us about "bodies stacked like cordwood" are the guys who discovered the concentration camps, or the guys in Soviet Russia who cleared out Stalin's millions of dead.

The concept is so difficult to try to describe.