Apollo 1/Challenger

[ASUHATER!]

49 years ago Wednesday and 30 years ago Thursday were the Apollo 1 and Challenger disasters. Space flight seems so routine but we must still remember what it took to get where we are and that we are still in the infancy of human space flight. I don't remember either disaster (was born shortly after Challenger) but the Columbia disaster is still fresh in my mind almost 13 years later.

[Puerco]

My god. 30 years ago? Doesn't feel that far back.

[ASUCatFan]

Challenger was one of my earliest memories. I was 4 and I was in the back seat of our station wagon with my little sisters. We were headed to the grocery store, and my Mom was listening to the launch on the radio. I had no comprehension of what happened or what it meant, but I remember my Mom pulling over and crying. That really upset me.

[BearDown89]

I was in my apartment casually slurping cereal and watching the launch live before leaving for class. The shuttle just burst into flames and disintegrated. I remember calling to my roommates to come check it out. Definitely one of those moments that gets stamped on your permanent memory.

[pokinmik]

I never heard about this before yesterday...

http://gawker.com/thirty-years-ago-the- ... 1755727930" target="_blank

[catgrad97]

This is a reprint of the definitive investigative piece into the Challenger recovery from the Tropic, the Sunday magazine for the Miami Herald, from 1988.

Required reading:

http://www.lutins.org/nasa.html" target="_blank

"One day I received a call to go down and look at a foot. A woman from Miami had found it on a beach up here. She figured it was from the shuttle, and for some unknown reason decided it would make a good souvenir. So she took it home with her. After a couple of days, she decided it wasn't such a good souvenir after all."

There, like a ghost, was a pair of white legs, sticking out from under the debris, waving gently in the current. He high-tailed it for the surface.

What Bailey had seen was the lower half of an empty space suit, aboard Challenger for use with the Manned Maneuvering Units, which allow astronauts to go outside the crew compartment. It had been stowed at the time of launch, so it wasn't as grisly as it was eerie.

The bodies were not sundered in the way one might have expected, certainly not as badly as those from particularly bad jet airliner crashes. But they had been in 95 feet of warmish ocean water, in an area teeming with life, for six weeks. They were not really recognizable as former people. Such soft tissue as remained had become almost gelatinous and very delicate. Some had taken on a waxy, soapy texture, due to a hydrolysis reaction that takes place in seawater over time. Recovery was not a simple task. There was damage from shrimp and crabs.

As the main portion of the cabin was hoisted to the surface, part of it -- containing some human remains -- broke away. It couldn't be located in the murky water.

NASA, in a panic, hired a local scallop boat, the Bigfoot, to drag its dredge over the area until, at last, they found what they were looking for.

Even though I'm familiar with most of the grisly details of the recovery, new finds like this continue to surface and absolutely chill.

[ASUHATER!]

And 13 years ago today, the Columbia disintegrated on reentry. I vividly remember this one. Sd86 and I were on out first official visit/tour of the UA campus as high school juniors looking at colleges. We were in a presentation by the school of science being given by an astronomy professor when someone came in the room and interrupted the presentation and told us what happened. The professors were completely shaken.

[Puerco]

I was in my apartment casually slurping cereal and watching the launch live before leaving for class. The shuttle just burst into flames and disintegrated. I remember calling to my roommates to come check it out. Definitely one of those moments that gets stamped on your permanent memory.

I was in my room at Yavapai, some guys came and told me what happened, but I thought they were just joking. They dragged me upstairs to the TV lounge to watch the coverage. Sobering.