23 years ago today: Challenger

I don't recall much about Challenger, except the twin smoke plumes. I clearly remember Columbia because I was at a swim meet, and the high school happened to have a television in the hallway right outside the pool. I don't know whether someone came onto the deck and told me what happened, or I was near the TV and then passed the news along. The lasting image in my head is of a high school boy in the pool, the water level over his waist, with his head bowed during a moment of silence.

 

Was at my first shop when our receptionist alerted us, and we were all silently gathered around the TV when our editor/publisher (with a voice like Dana Carvey as Bush 41), who had applied to NASA to fly the shuttle, came in.
E/P: What happened?
R: The space shuttle blew up.
E/P: Well, I guess I won't be the first journalist in space.

 

Huh?

 

Wow. That may be the first time I've let the Jan. 28 anniversary go without thinking back on where I was in 1986.

This was two careers ago, and I had just been hired as the morning news anchor for WMEL-AM in Melbourne. I took the job sight-unseen after a phone interview with station manager Tom Weberling. The deal that sold the job to me was the ability to do launches from the Cape, as CBS Radio was planning on dropping its national coverage after the Teacher in Space mission. That meant $90 for every report that was carried by the net -- and NASA had an ambitious launch schedule for the next two years, hoping to launch a shuttle every two weeks.

So the job seemed like a great opportunity to get some national exposure and generate a steady stringer income, in addition to the regular station salary.

My girlfriend (who would become my wife two years later, and last June we celebrated 21 years of marriage) and I drove from Davis, Calif., to Melbourne the week before Christmas 1985. We packed everything that would fit in a 1980 AMC Concord -- and I left my winter clothes and jacket in California, to be sent later.

When we finally saw the station in person, I was horrified. It was one of those classic 1960s radio station layouts, a one-story concrete block building in front of the tower. The parking lot was nothing but hard-packed sand.

I watched the first Shuttle launch of the year from the apartment on Lake Washington Road. That was the one with Congressman Bill Nelson on board. What was impressive was how long it took for the roar of the engines to reach us, some 40 miles from Kennedy Space Center. I think the solid rocket booster separation had already occurred by the time we heard them light.

Anyway, I had credentials for the next mission -- STS-51-L Challenger -- but Christopher Glenn had come down to handle things for CBS, so I was just supposed to watch, listen and learn.

And then the nice Florida weather turned seriously ugly. I had no idea that it might get down to freezing in central Florida in January, and only had a thin windbreaker with me. On Jan. 27, the station engineer and senior sales director spent 14 wind-whipped hours at the Cape without success -- I think that was when they had issues with the bolts on the hatch. You have to remember the viewing area was nothing more than a covered wooden grandstand, just like a high school football field.

Things were supposed to be even worse the next day, so news director Don Germaise assigned me to cover the Brevard County Commission meeting in Merritt Island, just a mile from the south gate of KSC. His thoughts were to pull me out of the meeting if NASA somehow got close to launching.

I remember filing a story about library expansion and asking Germaise (who is now working TV in Tampa, I believe) about activity at the Cape. He said there was ice on the launch pad and assumed there was no way NASA would even attempt anything. I went back into the meeting, and there was an announcement that the countdown had been picked up at around 10:20 a.m., so we hustled outside to watch.

I remember standing and shivering in the cold next to Thad Altman, one of the commissioners, on the north side of the building. Someone had a car radio going, so we could hear the broadcast. Several other county employees joined us, and moments after we heard "ignition" on the radio, the Shuttle rose over the roof of the Chinese restaurant on the other side of the parking lot and completed its roll in what was a picture-perfect blue sky.

From there, the sound was tremendous. The Shuttle climbed to about two o'clock in the sky, and then suddenly there was a large reddish glow in between the boosters. I heard one woman gasp and then everyone screamed as the entire orbiter and tank disappeared in a ball of flame.

For a few moments, I thought maybe that was what solid rocket booster separation looked like up close, but when the orbiter failed to appear from behind the smoke, I knew something terrible had happened. I immediately ran back into the building, called Germaise -- imagine, pay phones! -- and he told me to high-tail it to the Cape.

The one thing that kept going through my mind: "Man, this is going to turn out to be a VERY LONG DAY."

So I dashed to the car, drove across 528 -- and found the gate locked and no one inside the guard shack. Seems that the guard decided to find a better vantage point to watch the launch. The one thing that sticks in my mind, however, was a small dog inside the shack sitting on a pillow because it's rear legs were missing. (Why I remember that, I have no idea.)

After what seemed like hours -- but probably was less than five minutes -- the guard returned, checked my credential, and allowed me through the gate. From there, it's a good 10 minutes to the media center, so by the time I reached it, all of the families and VIPs had been escorted away.

It was an odd and eerie sight. I'll never forget that the large clock in front of the viewing area was still ticking off the seconds, and the contrails from the launch, the explosion, and the hundreds of spiraling pieces of debris hung in that sky for what seemed like the rest of the afternoon as a constant reminder of what had taken place.

We listened to Reagan's speech on the closed circuit TV, and then were told V.P. Bush would meet the families that afternoon. So I kept feeding reports to Germaise, freezing my ass off in the cold, despite having no one to interview.

One of the biggest rumors floating around was that the Soviets may have shot down the Shuttle, because there were Russian trawlers that would sail back and forth in the prohibited area under the launch path. That obviously turned out to be false.

At one point, another reporter turned to me and said, "Hey, do you know what NASA stands for?" I told him, but he replied, "No, it means Need Another Seven Astronauts." Man, I don't know how somebody could be that cold -- and funny -- that quickly.

Anyway, Bush showed up and spoke. I filed one last report, packed up my stuff and got in the car. I was driving back towards Merritt Island, following what looked to be a large silver metallic bread truck that was going quite a bit below the posted speed limit. I was following fairly closely when suddenly the back doors of the truck opened and two men with machine guns waved them to say, "Back off." Apparently they were escorting the Vice President back to the plane.

Florida Today did a special section, and I now wish I had bought one on the way home.

I ended up making good stringer money for post-Challenger stories on CBS and CBC and some Australian network, but I never did get a chance to do a Shuttle launch for the station.

-- Mark

 

Oh, and I still have the credentials (on which they misspelled my name) and the Teacher in Space lesson plan that Christa McAuliffe was going to broadcast back from orbit. Cool stuff.