Twenty years ago (1-28-1986), the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch was watched by almost every schoolkid in the country, because one of the crew was a teacher--37 year old Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian to travel into space. She didn't make it.Seventy-three seconds after the launch, the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire as family and friends watched, along with millions watching live television. No one on board survived.
President Ronald Reagan appointed a commission to find out what went wrong. The investigation found the explosion was caused by the failure of an "O-ring" seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. This rapidly triggered a chain of events that resulted in a massive explosion.
It's not nearly so well remembered as the Challenger, but just three years ago, on February 1, 2003, another space-shuttle tragedy occurred when the Columbia shuttle disintegrated entering Earth's atmosphere.
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Moral of this story? - Don't fly on the Shuttle during Republican administrations...
ReplyDeleteWow. I never even thought about that...a new blame to lay at the feet of the G.O.P.
ReplyDeleteGood grief, and I thought I was just being cynical:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202721.html
Also doesn't pay to be a soldier, miner or for that matter a citizen during a Repub administration...
That's pretty incredible...hardware failures compounded by systematic management failures within NASA...
ReplyDeleteWe should probably go back to launching mice and dogs until we get the Administration cleaned up!
/jack