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The Space Shuttle Challenger was hurtling through the air at twice the speed of sound when pilot Michael Smith noticed something alarming.
Seated on the right side of the plane’s deck, Smith looked out his window and likely saw a flash of steam or fire.
“Ah,” he said.
On the ground in Mission Control, a computer screen indicated a pressure drop in the right booster rocket. It was leaking fuel.
As it was later learned, the cold Florida morning had hardened the rubber O-rings that held the reinforcement sections together, and contained the explosive fuel inside. The rings failed to fully expand in the cold, leaving a gap of less than a millimeter between the reinforcement sections.
It was enough.
The breakthrough allowed a few grams of super-hot fuel to be burned.
At one minute and 12 seconds after take-off, a small flame grew, and it only took three seconds to penetrate the aluminum skin of the fuel tank.
The tank quickly ruptured, igniting the hydrogen fuel and causing a massive Hindenburg-like explosion.
The booster missiles separated and continued to explode upwards on divergent paths. An unknown Air Force official whose title was Range Safety Officer quickly hit the self-destruct button, causing the boosters to explode and fall into the sea instead of any populated areas.
The crew of the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle.
Inside the Mission Control Center in Houston and Launch Control Centers in Florida, rows of computer screens lined with S sign “static.” All audio and communications from the shuttle were lost.
But the capsule in which the crew was sitting did not explode. It was ejected in the explosion and remained intact. Brave crew members—Smith, Dick Scobey, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnick, Gregory Jarvis and Krista McAuliffe—were conscious, at least at first, and were well aware that something was wrong,” he said. Author Kevin Cook wrote in the new book “The Burning Blue: The Untold Story of Christa McAuliffe and NASA’s Challenger” (Henry Holt and Co.), which is now released.
teacher in space
McAuliffe, 37, was a social studies teacher in Concord, New Hampshire, who won the NASA Instructor in Space competition and earned a place on the Jan. 28, 1986 mission as a payload specialist.
She was supposed to be the first civilian in space, a brave woman who set out to prove that “teachers have the right things, too,” as one of McAuliffe’s friends put it in the book. Instead, she ended up as the most famous name in America’s worst space tragedy.
Growing up in Framingham, Massachusetts, young Christa Corrigan has always been fascinated by space. She admired John F. Kennedy for his rush to the moon, and as a seventh grader in 1961, watched Alan Shepard become the first American in space.
“But she wasn’t going to make a lot of astronauts anyway,” Cook writes. “The fat Girl Scouts with no talent in science or math got a stomachache on the carnival rides.”
“Fat Girl Scouts with no talent for science or math who had a stomachache on the carnival rides.”
– Author Kevin Cook, describing Christa McAuliffe as a young woman.
Christa McAuliffe, who was seen in 1985 taking a sip of a bottled drink in space before her ill-fated flight on the Space Shuttle Challenger, was supposed to study from orbit. (NASA)
She attended Framingham State College and, in 1970, married her former high school boyfriend Steve McAuliffe.
In 1983, she landed her “dream job,” teaching social studies at Concord High School. She was an attractive and likable teacher. She would bring her guitar to class and ’60s protest songs. She sometimes dressed students in period costumes.
Then, in August 1984, McAuliffe saw a headline in the local paper that said “Reagan wants a teacher in space.”
President Ronald Reagan said, “Today, I am directing NASA to begin the search to select the first citizen traveler in the history of our space program as one of America’s best educators—a teacher.”
The ad sounded pure, but the program was really a maneuver to boost the president’s reelection chances. The administration had previously cut funding to the National Education Association, leaving the group to denounce Bregan as an “American miser in education”.
“With the election three months away, the president and his advisors saw an opportunity to promote the space program and win the votes of teachers in one fell swoop,” the author wrote.
That fall, while attending a teacher’s conference in Washington, D.C., McAuliffe stumbled upon a booth promoting the Teacher in Space program. In the book, one of McAuliffe’s friends said she picked up an app, thinking it might be “a great way to impress students–not because it would make her famous, but because it was something extraordinary, something fun”.
President Ronald Reagan appears in the Oval Office after addressing the nation about the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, January 28, 1986 (Associated Press)
A week later, McAuliffe received a follow-up request by mail, requiring lengthy answers to essay questions.
“Why do you want to be the first American citizen in space?” ask one
McAuliffe wrote, “As a woman, I was jealous of those men who could participate in the space program and who were encouraged to excel in the fields of math and science. I felt that women had already been left out of one of the most exciting careers available.”
About 11,000 teachers applied, and the number was eventually reduced to two from each state. NASA’s Blue Ribbon Panel (containing, oddly enough, Pam Dobber from “Mork & Mindy”) spent weeks evaluating the nominees before selecting 10 finalists in July 1985.
McAuliffe made this cut, in part because of her ease on camera. “They wanted a teacher who would do well in the Johnny Carson program,” Bob Filo, a finalist teacher from Massachusetts, says in the book. “Someone who can help make the love space public again.”
The final ten contestants were flown to Houston for a week of physical and mental testing. A teacher is dismissed after he panicked during an oxygen deprivation experiment, forcing NASA technicians to push him to Earth and press an oxygen mask to his face.
McAuliffe handled everything NASA threw, and on July 19, 1985, Vice President George Bush announced that she had been selected.
The Challenger was scheduled to launch in January 1986, and McAuliffe had only a few months left to get ready. She had a foot-thick training manual to go through, as well as vision, treadmill and other tests to complete.
Snakes from the start?
The launch appeared to be snake-like from the start and suffered several delays, including an attempt on January 26, 1986, which was cleaned up due to rain. Another attempt was called off the next day after NASA technicians struggled to fix a hole malfunction with a cordless drill.
“All three news programs on the network featured NASA’s latest embarrassment,” the author wrote. CBS anchor Dan Rather called today’s high-tech low-comedy an “embarrassment,” yet another costly space shuttle delay, red faces all over the place. “”
“Another costly and costly delay of the Space Shuttle includes red faces.”
Dan Rather Criticizes NASA Before the Challenger Disaster
Dan Rather, who criticized NASA’s delays as CBS news anchor in 1986, is seen in New York City, November 30, 2015 (Associated Press)
This was the sixth adjournment of the high-level mission, and the authorities identified would be the last.
On the eve of January 28, temperatures at the Florida launch pad dropped to 22 degrees. The bulkheads and cameras of the launch tower were covered in ice During a conference call a few hours before launch, the makers of the O-rings worried that the hail could harm the shuttle, but a NASA administrator infamously replied, “When do you want me to launch – next April?”
Challenger went ahead with its launch, despite temperatures cooler than any previous launch. Disaster followed 72 seconds later.
While in the air, the seven crew members were jammed into the crew cabin, with Scooby, Smith, Onizuka and Resnick on the flight deck above and McAuliffe, Jarvis and McNair on the windowless center below. After the booster explosion, the interior of the crew compartment, which was protected by heat-resistant silicone tiles made to withstand re-entry, was not burned.
Instead, the unexpected ignition of the rocket’s fuel gave a sudden two-million-pound thrust, sending it blasting through the sky and crushing the passengers inside with twenty J’s of force—many times the three astronauts used to train them in.
A later investigation concluded that the jump in G-force was “survivable, and the probability of injury is low”.
The space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, January 28, 1986. (Associated Press)
The cabin likely remained pressurized, as subsequent investigation showed no signs of a sudden pressure drop that could render passengers unconscious. The astronauts were equipped with emergency air packages, but due to design considerations, the tanks were located behind their seats and had to be operated by the crew members seated behind them.
Air supplies are running
An examination of the wreckage later showed that three of the astronauts’ emergency air supplies had been turned on, indicating that the crew had survived the first seconds of the disaster.
It is possible that the ship’s pilots tried to take control of the ship.
“What are they going to do next? Scooby and Smith will try to get home,” says Keri Jewels, a former NASA scientist in the book.
Smith apparently tried to return power to the shuttle, toggling switches on his control panel.
However, the reason was hopeless.
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The crew cabin continued rising for 20 seconds before slowing down, then finally plummeting 12 miles over the Atlantic. The object eventually reached a terminal velocity of over 200 mph before hitting the sea. The final descent took over two minutes.
McAuliffe was buried at Concord in an unmarked grave, because her husband feared the influx of tourists to the site.
After the Presidential Disaster Inspection Commission concluded in June 1986, Challenger parts were subsequently buried in an unused missile silo in Cape Canaveral.
As Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana later said, “It was like they were saying, ‘We want to forget this.'”
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