Mission STS-107…
Another space shuttle gone.
I was a senior in high school when the Challenger explosion took place in January of 1986, and the news came between classes as I headed to Ms. Wendell’s chemistry class. I distinctly remember hearing the news as I crossed the Los Gatos High basketball courts heading towards the small flight of stairs leading up to the science wing. A student, he or she leaning against the upper wooden railing, shouted down the awful news to the thronged masses. Similar to September 11th (although lesser in magnitude), the reaction by the student body and everyone I knew at the time was one of horror and grief, another one of life’s tragic experiences that you are never prepared for, that had never been experienced by anyone before, and that you never fully forget throughout your lifetime.
The first shuttle was a Main Propulsion Test Article (MPTA-098) called Pathfinder. Its purpose was to test out the procedures for moving and handling the orbiters, and was not capable of flight. Enterprise, the second shuttle, was used for suborbital approach and landing tests and did not fly in space. The next shuttle, Challenger, was completed in 1978 as a Structural Test Article (STA-099), created to run real-life intensive vibration tests to simulate the expected stresses of launch, ascent, reentry and landing. In 1979, the process of retrofitting Challenger began, converting it into a fully rated Orbital Vehicle (OV-099) that had its inaugural flight in April of 1983. At 73.124 seconds into Challenger’s tenth mission (51-L), the onset of the structural failure of the hydrogen tank led to a sudden thrust, pushing the hydrogen tank upward with 2.8 million pounds of force. The rest was history, caught on tape and broadcast on every television station for days on end, forever embedded into our unconscious — paralleling the visual impact that the more recent incident of passenger planes crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11th had.
In April 1981, space shuttle Columbia (OV-102) became the first shuttle to fly into orbit. Today, 15 days and 22 hours into the flight, while traveling at 12,500 miles per hour at approximately 200,000 feet over Central Texas (not the ridiculous 200,000 miles as reported by a major news network), Columbia also earned the dubious distinction of being the first landing casualty in 48 years of space flight history. Unfortunately for the memories of the latest seven astronauts lost in today’s explosion, the impact on our lives will be much smaller than that of the Challenger. The only visible evidence of this recent accident was streaming contrails of unidentifiable debris burning up in reentry, not shocking enough for today’s hardened viewing audience to evoke any long-lasting impressions.
The entire summary of mission STS-107 is succinctly and stoically summarized by NASA as “Crew and Vehicle lost during landing”. My apologies, regrets, and well wishes go out to the families of astronauts Husband, McCool, Anderson, Chawla, Brown, Clark, and Ramon.
I was working when Challenger blew. It was the first time I experienced one of those “You’ll always remember where you were when it happened” events. The TV was on in the office down the hall and I wandered over to watch the launch. I remember trying to think what it was like for Christa McCauliffe (spelling looks wrong?) finally getting to go, imagining it from her point of view. It made the more shocking when it blew up. For this one, I watched a few minutes of news. But the only real question (What happened?) won’t be answered for ages and I really have no patience for the efforts to fill air time by interviewing every Tom, Ðìçk and Harriet who felt some bit of tremor yesterday morning. I’ll watch the news when they have some news.