OK, i done gone set Facebook on fire. In honor of Reagan's stirring Challenger speech:

I just said, "What, no more trips to other worlds? What about Mars?"

That's what most 12-13-year old kids were thinking, I suspect.

Who knew Starman was the engineering equivalent of Doogie Howser?

 

Speaking of Republican speechifyin', Trump'll be in seconds.

 

I always hated the "slipped the surly bonds of Earth" quote because it was quite clear from the video that good old Earth's gravity had a hold of them and was going to fuck them on impact with the ocean.

I had hoped they all died instantly and painlessly at the time of the explosion, but there is some evidence that a few of them activated their emergency respiration systems and might have survived until ocean impact. Whether any of them were conscious that long is a mystery - NASA probably knows, but that info is in a lockbox.

 

Yeah, all the real evidence suggests they were alive until they hit the Atlantic Ocean. But NASA has done a great job of making people think otherwise.

http://gawker.com/thirty-years-ago-the-challenger-crew-plunged-alive-and-1755727930

 

Somebody in the front row has Downs Syndrome.

 

The much-repeated "Challenger transcript" is still all over the intertoobs. Officially, it's been conclusively debunked several times, but I stilll have a nagging suspicion that it's probably true.

 

Plus also Challenger had the teacher on board, and schools around the country were teaching about the shuttle, and some were even televising it in the classrooms live.

 

My first reaction was, "Strap a rocket to your ass, and something bad is bound to happen."

 

Didn't the Reagan administration pressure NASA to launch that morning so they could be in orbit for his State of the Union that night?

 

Doubtful ... It was originally scheduled to already be back on the ground by the SOTU ...

 

30 Years After Explosion, Challenger Engineer Still Blames Himself

 

Everything I've read says there was no explicit "damn-the-safety-checklist, get-that-thing-in-orbit" order, but some of the powers-that-be in NASA thought it would look real good funding-wise if they were off the ground by SOTU.