Challenger
Jan. 28th, 2011 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filkertomHard to believe, in some ways, that it's been a quarter of a century since the space shuttle Challenger blew up.
(Yesterday was the 44th anniversary of Apollo 1. NASA has a remembrance site for those lost to the stars.)
I don't think of it much nowadays, but when I do it's as fresh as it was that day, with several of us sitting in an office listening to a radio, calling friends and family, and generally just feeling a huge hole in our hearts. But with that came the need, the desperate irrepressible need, to get right back on the bike and go... the imperative of not stopping, not slowing down, but reaching onward and upward.
Twenty-five years later, forty-four years later, the legacy of Challenger lives on.
One day, we'll get back to space. This time, to stay.
I hope we're all around to see it.
(Yesterday was the 44th anniversary of Apollo 1. NASA has a remembrance site for those lost to the stars.)
I don't think of it much nowadays, but when I do it's as fresh as it was that day, with several of us sitting in an office listening to a radio, calling friends and family, and generally just feeling a huge hole in our hearts. But with that came the need, the desperate irrepressible need, to get right back on the bike and go... the imperative of not stopping, not slowing down, but reaching onward and upward.
Twenty-five years later, forty-four years later, the legacy of Challenger lives on.
One day, we'll get back to space. This time, to stay.
I hope we're all around to see it.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 01:29 pm (UTC)I started getting over my fear of space as a teenager, and the first SciFi movie I saw was Star Trek: First Contact. Now I'm writing a book involving space flight.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 02:05 pm (UTC)On the same note, I saw the news about the Columbia while in line to pay for groceries at Walmart.
Mom and Dad remember the details of where they were and what they were doing when they heard Kennedy was shot. Their kids remember the Challenger and Columbia.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 02:44 pm (UTC)We're goin' to the stars, see our Fire In The Sky...
The one redeeming quality about January, with so much death, is it has Conflikt.... g-ds know we need the healing. So I shall go where you were GOH last year... heh... the singalong this year just *happens* to be that Fire In The SKy.
Onward!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 02:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:10 pm (UTC)Oh, and I goofed, Hope Eyrie is the Conflikt song this year. Same subject matter, entirely different treatment. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:30 pm (UTC)I think they picked better than they realized with 'Hope Eyrie" as the Conflikt 4 singalong for the CD.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:50 pm (UTC)Over in Titusville, there's enormous nostalgia for the space program, and there's a museum with tricked-out surplus control panels showing how complex the whole thing used to be, set up in a "NASA museum." People there remember how they used to be paid for launching missiles, and the quasi-military pride they had in participating in the program. Now that area is going back to a quiet, economically-depressed community of retirees. Kind of reminiscent of those places around Civil War battlegrounds and the home-museums of famous Americans.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 04:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 04:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 04:53 pm (UTC)I was 18 at the time, and was home from school (teacher's meeting). I was preparing for my Eagle award ceremony later that day, when I turned on the TV< and saw a news report showing a view of the Atlantic Ocean. While wondering what happened, I noticed the news ticker said 'Live from Cape Canaveral'. I remembered there was to be a shuttle launch that day, and I thought 'Uh oh'...
It was especially tragic for my community, because one of the astronauts, Gregory Jarvis, grew up in my area.
To this day, it really moves me when I think about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 05:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 05:06 pm (UTC)My husband's a NASA brat. His father (among other things) was one of the people tasked with analyzing the data to figure out what went wrong. He still doesn't talk about it. Not that we ask.
The best memorial for the seven is that we keep on going.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 05:07 pm (UTC)That was the weird bit. I'd never seen anyone die live, and even though I didn't see it then, I saw it. We all saw them killed.
Yeah, my next thought was what damage this would do to the space program. We've not been so high since.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 05:13 pm (UTC)I am tearing up now just thinking about it again.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 05:32 pm (UTC)Something everyone in government seems to be pointedly ignoring is that the race to the Moon was the greatest economic stimulus and jobs program this country has ever seen. We were in a bad recession when Kennedy made his famous speech. By the time Armstrong stepped out of the Eagle, we were at the lowest unemployment we have ever had.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 06:15 pm (UTC)I had a doctor appointment that day, probably to get my ears suctioned out, and Mom and I had gone to a thrift store afterward. Mom was poking through clothes (keeping me clad as I hit 6' tall was a chore) and I watched the launch, and disaster, on a blurry old console television. Then I called Mom over to see the replay.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 06:59 pm (UTC)God, I hope not.
After Apollo 1, Soyuz 1, Challenger and Columbia, as well as all the other fatal incidents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents#Astronaut_fatalities_during_spaceflight) who the fuck in their right mind would actually want to take that 5% chance of dying, especially since there's nothing worth seeing live and in person out there? With even Mars four years away, send robots instead. Then we'll still get the few benefits without having to have so many memorial services.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 07:22 pm (UTC)I wanted to make an intelligent, reasoned reply, but all I can say is FUCK YOU, to you and all the other Luddite fucks who want the dream to die because they personally don't give a fuck.
Go back to your latte, and leave the future to the people who care.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 07:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 07:43 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRN6d-QUa5c
And as far as dying, Frank Drebin said it best: 'You take a chance getting up in the morning, crossing the street or sticking your face in a fan.'
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 07:46 pm (UTC)Space re;ated stuff, I recall my mom taking me out into the back yard to try to point out Sputnik. I didn't really understand what she meant, so I looked at the wrong "moving light" in the night sky.
A few years later in first grade we got herded into the school gym to watch a black & white TV when they launched the first two Mercury flights.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 07:53 pm (UTC)That'd leave NASA doing payloads and building *experimental* rockets to test new propulsion systems and the like.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 07:58 pm (UTC)There may or may not BE something worthwhile out there, but we won't know until we go and see for ourselves.
I will take my 95% chance of survival, thank you very much. That's a better odds than my ancestors on the Mayflower had.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 08:00 pm (UTC)Keep in mind that *Alaska* was thought to be not worth anything at one time. Ditto for the Louisiana Purchase.
And far too many of the deaths have been due to Congress nickel and diming things to death forcing equipment to be built *too* cheaply.
Yes, there are risks. But life isn't about avoiding risks.
Hell, if we'd kept things going after Apollo, we might actually have Solar Power Satellites in service. In which case we'd long ago have told the folks in the Middle East to go fly a kite because we wouldn't *need* their oil.
And there are a lot of other things we *know* we can get or do out there. And there are lots of others we won't know about until we go and look (and robot probes can't really do the sort of exploring that's needed. They can only look for what you *expect* to find).
Heck, long term space missions would require developing *working* long term closed enivormental systems. Which would teach us a lot about how to keep things working here on Earth.
And This Goes For The Rest Of You
Date: 2011-01-28 10:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 10:37 pm (UTC)Wow. That's a pretty parochial POV, considering that almost the entire universe is out there to see. Heck, even Earth is out there to see -- in ways we can't see while we're on it.
As for "who", I'd suggest that if you asked for volunteers, you'd have more than a lifetime or three's worth of building launch vehicles' worth of volunteers, starting with me. I don't have the really valuable skills, and I'm both too old and out of shape, but if I had the chance, I'd be head of the line.
Gods, I hope you're mistaken about us being marooned on this little mudball.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 10:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 10:51 pm (UTC)Now, I feel it as keenly as if happened yesterday, but without the comfort of having shared it with the world at the time.
OTOH, JFK's death, Martin Luther King's death, RFK's death are like little diamonds in my memory, along with Columbia. I lived those along with everyone else.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 11:34 pm (UTC)I wish you'd had the chance to see Earth to the Moon. You would know how we feel.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 11:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 12:40 am (UTC)*facepalm*
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 12:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 12:48 am (UTC)Columbia was a much more vivid memory. My employer sent me to NYC to help with some programming there and let me stay the weekend to do "the tourist thing". I just saw what remained of Ground Zero and walked to the park where I would catch the ferry to Liberty Island. (Amazing how EMPTY the streets were on a Saturday morning.) I was waiting in line when I heard the announcement. I wanted to sit down but had to settle for leaning on a pole.
The tribute songs "The Challenge" and "Columbia" still make me misty-eyed.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 12:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 02:50 am (UTC)Daddy's little boy turned 4 some years ago.
A day imprinted and burned into me.
He told me what he'd seen - an airplane catching fire.
He saw it at the daycare on TV.
There was nothing I could tell him
And nothing I could say.
For January 28 is Jason's natal day -
When fire, fire, fire burned the Challenger in a flash!
Fire, fire, fire turned our dreams to molten ash.
A day of joy and pain for me, the lesson that I've learned
Is how to smile, and how to hold back tears.
As Jason's birthday comes around each year.
DAMN THEM!! - CHORUS
Damn, them, damn them, damn them!
They made the same mistake!
The bottom line's out there
And not the profit that they'll make!
Grissom, Chaffee, White, McAuliffe
Scobee, Jarvis, McNair,
Resnick, Onazuka, Smith
Demand we stay out there.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 03:37 am (UTC)And then the NASA announcer said, "The vehicle has exploded," and I started to cry.
Challenger
Date: 2011-01-29 05:41 am (UTC)I remember lying my the hospital bed watching the TV, and getting irritated they were showing the same footage over and over - until I got the sound turned up and realized what had happened.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 06:50 am (UTC)Every lift-off since then, I hold my breath... waiting until the ship is "safe".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 02:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-06 03:48 pm (UTC)Politically I'm a libertarian, and therefore consider myself a conservative, but absolutely not in alignment with the current Republican Party. I do not consider those Tea Party yokels to be conservatives, they are extremists.
I think Obama has done a better than decent job on most things, and while I appreciate an opposition party as a check valve to prevent run-away government in any direction, I think this constant criticism of everything Obama does to be highly counter-productive. Time and again Obama has endorsed programs originally proposed by the Republicans, only to have the Republicans switch sides just because Obama favored it. It cannot be possible that they suddenly realized all their ideas were bad only because the president agreed with them. They are like a pack of small children ganging up on the unpopular kid and turning against everything he says just because he said it. This is not government, this is schoolyard bullying.
So yes, once again, someone on the right is criticizing the president for doing something they would have applauded had Reagan done the same exact thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-06 04:00 pm (UTC)After all, 95% of the astronauts and cosmonauts returned safely. That's not a bad average for an experimental program.
I also believe that the payback will eventually exceed the investment. There is enough H3 lying on the surface of the moon to meet the energy demands of earth for a thousand years. We should be harvesting it. There are rare metals in abundance in space. We should be harvesting them. We need to plant our feet on more than one place to keep from being wiped out in a massive man caused or cosmological accident. We should be on permanently stationed on te Moon and Terraforming Mars, just to be in more than one place. We already know other planets and their moons contain exotic compounds not found on earth. Who knows what science and engineering can do with these compounds if they could get their hands on them. We should be collecting them.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-06 04:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-06 06:02 pm (UTC)