Being an Auld Pharte, I was working in Huntsville, AL in the Advanced Planning Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in 1964. At that time NASA in the early planning stages for a MANNED MARS FLY-BY MISSION. (During my time at Marshall, I did get to witness the first test firing of a Saturn V engine. 1.5 million pounds of thrust, and there were 5 of them in the rocket that lifted astronauts to the moon. Awsome. But then Wernher von Braun had a large hand in all that.)

I later worked, as a contractor, for the Space Station Program in Clear Lake (Houston, TX, Johnson Space Center) and as a result of my experiences and subsequent events have one opinion of NASA - tear it down and start over. It has to be one of the most wasteful, inefficient, ineffectual bureaucratic organizations on the planet. And those may be its good points. It gets an amazing amount of free promotion (How many Hollywood films?), not to mention its own PR efforts. And for some reason, we are never supposed to question what anything costs. The shuttles are 25 year-old technology (Columbia, designed and built circa 1975-1980, first flew in 1981). I could go on, but you should have the point by now. Bah.
Auld Pharte | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 12:36 am | #

I understand and agree with your statements about NASA and the space missions, but after reading your posts I am primarily left with overwhelming emotion for you and for the families, friends and coworkers left behind. Thank you for sharing your feelings and perspective. Even though I lived through Challenger, you've made me see it in a new light.
DRJ | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 1:18 am | #

Thankfully, private enterprise seems nearly ready to take the reins. And for far, far cheaper than NASA.

Cheap, mostly reusable rockets:

http://www.spacex.com/

The amazing inflatable space station:

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/

It'll be a long road, but we'll get there.
JonBuck | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 2:52 am | #

Thanks for sharing this story. NASA sounds like the post office....
Jan | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 10:25 am | #

Wow. An exceptional piece. Sadly, NASA's problems seem endemic to bureaucracies in general. Thank you for sharing your experience and opinion with the rest of us.

Mike
Mike | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 12:12 pm | #

Auld Pharte,

Try THIRTY FIVE years old technology, notwithstanding periodic upgrades. The Shuttle Project officially gathered full steam in 1970; the shuttle "Enterprise" rolled out of the hanger at Rockwell International in 1976.

See: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/s...lvs/ shuttle.htm

and

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/spa...tle.enterprise/

Imagine driving an AMC Gremlin with a new paint job and OnStar and XM satellite radio added, and you'll have a good idea of what astronauts have been flying into space.
Mike | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 12:24 pm | #

Awhile back I produced a musical tribute to the lives lost in the 2 Shuttle disasters. You can download that here.
Kevin D. Korenthal | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 1:40 pm | #

Thanks for sharing your memories of that tragic day. I vividly remember my own "insanity" that day when after hearing about the malfunction, while a student at the university, I went home and watched and re-watched and re-watched the incident on the news reports over and over and over again for hours, hoping for a different ending, just once! Alas, it never changed, and I remained absolutely crushed and withdrawan for quite some time afterwards. Anyway, w.r.t. the idea of travelling to the ends of the cosmos, I fancy that we are already doing so. I aver that we aren't really "stuck" here on this wonderful playground called Earth, nay, for "there are many mansions in my Father's house," just as the Master has told us. All that is necessary for traveling there, is the proper state of mind--the appropriate spiritual connection, if I may assert.
jOjOEofArcadia | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 1:43 pm | #

I got a freebie TShirt at the 1978 ?World Science Fiction convention in Phoenix - Iguanacon - that had a picture of the Shuttle on the front with the caption "A Spaceship has landed on Earth." On the back was a Rockwell logo and the caption "It came from Rockwell."

If gured we'd see more, and better. Instead... well, NASA turned into a damn jobs program instead of working towards advancing into space. The important thing was to not rock the boat, not take any chances, not take anything that might be a big risk. Look how long it took them to get the ISS even started - they made a career out of pursuing design perfection.

The dream died for them... but not for private industry. Thank heaven!

J.
JLawson | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 1:43 pm | #

Dang. Can't type this morning. "I figured" we'd see more and better.

Sigh.

J.
JLawson | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 1:45 pm | #

Mike,

You are partially correct. If you read the CNN article you reference, 2nd link, you'll see that Enterprise never functioned as a space shuttle. Also from that article, "The first shuttle space flight was in 1981."

I agree with you, though, in that there was probably little technological improvement introduced into the program between 1975 or so and 1981. Just speculation on my part, however.

And I like the Gremlin analogy. I find it disgusting that NASA regularly put astronauts at risk for not much more than good press on many occasions, and I am thankful that no more tradegies occurred than did.
Auld Pharte | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 3:02 pm | #

Dr. Sanity,

A heart-rending tribute.. I worked at Redstone Aresanal on the Nike and Redstone missiles in the 50's.

When Challenger fell apart, I was Computer Systems Administrator at a private school in Miami FL. All the kids were in the Auditorium watching Challenger.. I was in my office.. One of the young girls came up to me and said with a blank stare, "The Challenger went into the ocean!" I assumed it was an escape hatch landing so I said, "It must have been one great ride!!" She walked away.. Later after I turned on the radio and realized it was a total disaster, I cried. I hunted for that young lady, found her and apologized profusely.. We both were quietly tearful together.

I'll neverr forget it... and it WAS one of Ronald Reagan's finest hours.

Thanks, Dr. Sanity, for all you do for our country. God bless you!!
ExPreacherMan | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 4:33 pm | #

I was outside Concord High School, where Christa McAuliffe taught, when the shuttle disintegrated. The students were all in the auditorium watching. I didn't realize that I could even hear them through all the brick walls, until there was this sudden silence. It was clear something horrible was wrong, though I couldn't tell what until I walked into the Cumberland Farms across the street, where the TV was on.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 01.28.06 - 11:10 pm | #

> to seek out new civilizations and go where no one has gone before

Doc, Doc, Doc...

Use the non-PC original version...

"..where no MAN has gone before."

MAN==HUMAN, not MAN==MALE.

Only an idiot feminist couldn't grasp that.
Oh Blutige Hölle | Email | Homepage | 01.29.06 - 12:50 am | #

> Thanks for sharing this story. NASA sounds like the Post Office....

...Except that the Post Office actually delivers to its terminals...
:-/

Wastefully, but at least it's successful.

It's time about half of NASA's budget was put into X-prizes.
Oh Blutige Hölle | Email | Homepage | 01.29.06 - 12:53 am | #

My memories of the Challenger incident are of the media. The film crews were following the liftoff when it disintegrated. They immediately realized something had gone seriously wrong... and the cameras panned instantly to the crew's families and friends watching nearby to catch their reactions. Most did not understand that something was wrong anywhere nearly as quickly as the news cameramen did.

>:-/
Oh Blutige Hölle | Email | Homepage | 01.29.06 - 12:59 am | #

I live in Central Florida and was watching the launch with a telescope from my front yard. What I remember most was how long it took for the debris to fall. It felt like it was in slow motion. My mother kept insisting that the media was reporting parachutes so I kept searching until finally, what felt like a several minutes later, there was no debris left in the sky.

Thank you for reposting your account from that day. I remember it from last year and I think it still stands as a fitting tribute to the astronauts and their families.
Janette | Email | Homepage | 01.29.06 - 1:40 am | #

I can, as I'm sure most others do, remember exactly what I was doing and where I was on the day of the Challenger explosion. Contrarily, on the day of the Columbia, everything that surrounds it is a blur, just the event it self stands out.

The point of this note is to point out something of human nature that I learned years after the fact. The company I work for went in for team building in a big way. One of the scenarios that they use is a demonstration of how easy goal orientation/group think can take over even a small organization. We went through the scenario, using the data from the Challenger seals (presented as a race team/engine failure data). I was the only one who saw the flaw in the way the analysis was done and argued against racing. I failed; and when the true context was displayed on the large presentation screen, I was devestated.

Run forward a few years, new team, and the same training excercise is being presented. I remember it from previously, so I use every dirty team trick I know to fight with, all the things they tell you not to do as a facilitator. Even then, I just barely, and with great resentment from everyone involved, get a no go decision. Even when the context (the shuttle disaster) was revealed, some refused to accept. Such is the power of human nature.

I am still haunted...
Clayton | Email | Homepage | 01.29.06 - 11:46 am | #

Great post, thanks Pat.

Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/
Chris Meisenzahl | Email | Homepage | 01.29.06 - 4:26 pm | #

At the time, I was a former Air Force pilot who grew up in thrall of the space program and I idolized (still do) everyone involved in the program.

I was working as an engineer at a Fortune 10 company when someone came down the aisle and said something about the shuttle 'blowing up'.

My stomache fell and my breath went away. I ran for the conference room where I knew a TV was kept and found it had no antenna or cable. I quickly made a makeshift antenna from a coat hanger and got good enough reception on two channels to watch the repeated replays of the disaster.

A crowd gathered quickly. A few questions were asked and answered, but mostly silence except for the TV and the sounds of soft crying. I must have watched the horrendous site twenty times in that room. I cried. Six foot, 190 pound former fighter pilot, and I cried.

We had a lot of non-American's on site at the time, workers from the company's foreign offices visiting. One, whom I knew well, saw me and others returning from the conference room and it was visibly obvious that we were very upset. Though he knew of the disaster already, asked me what was wrong. I reiterated what I knew of what had happened. He just looked at me and said dismissively, "Well, what's the big deal?".

I looked at him. I just did not know what to say. American's knew without saying what the big deal was, but explaining what the space program and those astronauts meant to so many of us was not possible at that moment - if ever.

I shook my head and walked away.

Thank you for your article and I thank you for the job you did that day and in its aftermath.
F15C | Email | Homepage | 01.29.06 - 9:55 pm | #

Thank you Dr. Sanity, for your intimate account of Challenger.

I went to work for NASA in the '90s and I was proud to work with some of the most talented people in the world on the Chandra X-Ray Telescope Project. My chief impression was that the lack of political will (White House, Congress, and NASA HQ) to give NASA the unqualified support for ambitious long-term goals has inflicted terrible wounds on the agency.
RollCast | Email | Homepage | 01.29.06 - 11:00 pm | #

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