Challenger Launch & Explosion from 1986 captured on multiple camera angles simultaneously
Posted Aug 21, 2019, 12:41 PM UTC
512106
I watched this IRL. The worst thing, to me, was how everybody kept hoping they would somehow survive. It was very obvious they were either dead or dying, even to a middle-school kid like me. There was a lot of denial that day, but it didn't last long.
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I was in 3rd grade at the time and my whole school watched it live as well. We were all rooting for the school teacher, Christie McAuliffe, who was aboard. My little friends and I kept rewatching believing we could help discover what caused the failure.
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Me too, second grade. Our teacher, Mrs. What'sHerName, was a huge space nerd. She was talking about McAuliffe for weeks before the launch. I remember he in tears at her desk. It remains one of my most vivid memories of childhood.
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Second grade here. One of our teachers had applied to be the teacher in space. As it happened I looked to the teachers right away. That’s the first time I ever recall seeing someone’s face had actually gone white.
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Yeah my school had a teacher who applied too. Her daughter was my classmate and we were all watching in the gym. First time I ever saw someone just fall apart.
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Also third grade, also watched with the rest of class/school - though we watched from our home classroom using one of those AV carts rather than in the auditorium/gym.
I remember being let out for recess shortly after (probably immediately after the explosion) and thinking about it on the playground.
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I was in high school at a boarding school up in New Hampshire when this happened. I was relaxing in my dorm room before heading to lunch when a friend came in and told me what happened. We turned on the radio and listened for 20 minutes or so before going to lunch.
When I was in line to get lunch at the cafeteria one of the workers asked me if I was ok. I guess I looked shocked, no surprise. I told her the shuttle had just blown up and she laughed and said something like "Oh, sure it did." I snapped at that and practically yelled at her to turn on a radio if they had one in there then went out to sit down and eat. I came back into the cafeteria about 15 minutes later to grab something else and they had the radio on at that point. The same woman saw me come in and couldn't apologize enough.
It's one of those sorts of things that you can still visualize clearly over 30 years later...
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Me too I was In third grade. I remember it like it was yesterday. We where all sitting in class with the tv on a cart. Brings back so many memories. Wow.
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That being said, it was found later that they possibly did survive the initial blast as the cockpit broke free. They free fell in that cockpit to the ocean... it’s hard to know if they would be conscious at all for any of it but this article claims they were: https://gawker.com/thirty-years-ago-the-challenger-crew-plunged-alive-and-1755727930
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They where likely concious into the water. Buttons had been pushed in the cockpit indicating they knew something was wrong
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Source?
(Believable, I just haven't heard that before.)
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Mike Mullane talks about it in his book as well, that certain suit functions were triggered, indicating the explosion did not kill them but impact to the water most likely did /edit: https://www.nhmagazine.com/the-unthinkable-fate-of-the-challenger-crew/ 3 PEAPs (emergency oxygen tanks) were manually opened
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I don't remember where I read it. Google is my suggestion
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[deleted]
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Dark.
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I remember seeing it live and when it blew up was very excited because i thought it was part of the show and it looked really cool.
That lasted for a split second before I saw all the teachers reach their hands up to their mouths and gasp in shock then it registered something wasn't right.
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5th grade for me, we watched in class. I can still see my teacher bursting into tears and everyone crying, we all got sent home. Sad day.
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I was 5 at the time and it’s one of the very few things I remember from that age. It’s implanted in my memory forever.
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That’s 9/11 for me, I can’t really remember the events, but I remember watching the TV all night with mom clueless and begging for cartoons instead
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Was in middle school also. We weren't watching it, but the gym teacher told us in the locker room. Sad day.
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The thing I most remember is hearing someone say the 'What does NASA stand for?' joke, within 20 minutes of the explosion.
Dark humour doesn't waste any time.
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5th grade here. Fellow student with the biggest shit eating grin burst into the classroom and yelled “the space shuttle blew up!”
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You can see the failure begin on the ROTI camera, at around 1:10; that little cone of light isn't supposed to be there, and about 15 seconds later, they throttle up and it detonates
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Holy shit. That little cone of light broke through to a huge failure which took a few seconds to, I suppose, compromise the main tank. I've never watched the failure from that angle before your comment.
Edit: Based on other comments, technically the massive failure burned through a connecting strut and the top of the booster rotated into the main tank, which caused the breech.
Also worth noting according to a doc I watched there was a puff of smoke right at launch where the failure initially happened but the booster managed to self-seal in a way that held for a minute. Can't imagine the insanity that an explosion on the launchpad would have been.
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The engineers who knew about the O-ring problem were sure that if the shuttle was going to explode, it would be at liftoff. They were initially relieved when nothing appeared to happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#Vehicle_breakup
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Challenger experienced the worst wind shear at altitude of ANY launch in the Shuttle Program.
There has been speculation that without the wind shear acting upon the vehicle, she might possibly made it into orbit. The wind shear forces reopened the seal in the SRB that had melted at launch and caused the flame exhaust to impinge on the tank and strut.
Just a terrible day all around. Ad Astra...
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The documentaries have mentioned the wind shear, and the only reason I didn't mention it was that to me it doesn't matter much what caused the failure to get worse.
But here's something else that really gets me. The docs gloss over this a bit. But someone had to make the call to self destruct the boosters after the main tank explosion.
I mean, sure you know the crew is already lost at that point but Jesus Christ that has to be one of the worst jobs anyone ever had to do.
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Agreed. Ocean's 11...
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How different this would have been if NASA had a viable escape plan. Maybe something like the F-111. IIRC the life support systems indicated that several of them were alive, if not conscious, when the shuttle hit the water. Even if only one of them lived I think the context would have been completely different.
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How different it would have been if they had listened to the the engineer telling them it was an accident waiting to happen. The hubris always gets you in the end.
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The report, especially Feyman, was scathing.
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It was already overweight. It couldn't reach anywhere near the orbits that had hoped. They had zero leeway to add an escape system.
The original design called for the shuttle to be mounted ahead of the tanks and engines, like a rocket. Mounting the crew capsule right to the side of a fucking bomb was never a good idea.
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Launching 7 people and all the life support systems for them at a time is stupid on the face of it.
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Launching 7 people and all the life support systems for them at a time is stupid on the face of it.
The stupid idea was to put people onto a space craft that had no abort modes for the first two minutes of its ascent. Other human rated rockets have an abort system which can safely recover the crew at any point during and before the flight, and there's nothing preventing such a system from working with a capsule designed for 7 people. By the way - that is also the maximum capacity for the Dragon capsule currently being tested by SpaceX.
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I don't think that even if they had an escape plan it would have worked in this specific case.
From reading about what happened, they know at least 3 were conscious before hitting the water, but no telling for how long. They were also going down at great speed, which probably kept them from leaving their seats.
Also, NASA had been thinking about this before hand. Couldn't use ejector seats in Challenger because the cabin was multi-leveled, and it would have probably been fatal at that height anyway. They could have possibly put an ejector for the cabin itself, but the weight would be too much.
The only possibility that I can think is to somehow store a drogue chute for the cabin if it were to detach like that again, but probably a weight issue too.
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Columbia had a pair of ejection seats but there was no plan for anyone on the mid-deck. The ejection seats were taken out after the fourth flight.
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Chilling.
I don't recall ever seeing the parachute. What was that? Weather balloon?
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SRB recovery parachute.
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Okay. Makes sense.
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You didn't see it because this guy didn't let you. He knew his shit enough to not use that image to prevent people from thinking there was hope.
It's really interesting to hear the director call this, especially having worked in a live broadcast production environment.
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Actually, he does put one of the chutes on the live feed (top left) for a bit near the end.
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This is the best angle I've seen of the break-up of the orbiter. Watch towards the bottom right of the cloud. The cabin and payload bay emerge from the cloud and quickly break apart. You can even see a darker, orange-brown cloud caused by fuel in the forward RCS system.
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Girl be like « yeahh fireworks!! »
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That's Barbara Morgan, the runner-up for the Teacher in Space Project, who then became the alternate/backup for Christa McAuliffe. Because of her backup status, Barbara went through all the exact training and prep work Christa did, side by side, and the two of them became really close friends. What you're seeing in the video is her complete joy and excitement for her friend at what she thought was the realization of their dream. From that angle on the ground, from where she was (relatively isolated), and from not having experience in what shuttle launches are supposed to look like, she had no idea that anything had gone wrong well past the point of the shuttle stack's disintegration. As you can imagine, she was devastated once she found out.
But perhaps one of the most inspiring things about this entire disaster is Barbara did afterwards: Years later, Barbara took a sabbatical from teaching, and trained to become a full-time astronaut, and started working at NASA (part of her duties included working at mission control during shuttle launches, and you can bet by then she was more than fully versed in what shuttle launches are supposed to look like), as part of the roster of people they could call up for missions. And many years later, in 2007, she finally got her chance. She went on STS-118, one of the shuttle missions to the International Space Station, where she was in charge of delivering the payload and operating the robotic arm.
So at long last, she got to actually realize the dream she and Christa had all those years ago, in a bigger and more ambitious way than either of them had imagined back then. She and Christa are both incredibly brave and inspiring people.
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WOW.
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Barbara also gave two of the lessons Christa was to give from Challenger on STS-118.
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:'(
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I saw that too. Don't know why you're getting downvoted, she literally jumps with excitement when it exploded. Then she realizes what happens.
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I was also wondering why she was so happy, or if I misunderstood her reaction, or the video was out of sync.
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That's Barbara Morgan, who was the alternate Teacher in Space selectee. It could've been her on board instead of Christa McAuliffe.
She did fly on STS-118 in August 2007 -- more than 22 years after being selected.
13
Literally just watched this video the other day because I was watching GLOW on Netflix and it showed the Challenger exploding which sent me hours down the rabbit hole of reading what happened.
Crazy how they knew the o rings were a problem but just couldn't be bothered to fix it.
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Very sad, especially since it was preventable
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Bet that reporter regretted clapping for joy when the rocket blew up.
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I was watching this live on the line crew's TV. RAF working in TWCU at the time. I was stunned and just walked out and started crying. Still tears me up each time.
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I remember this day. I was in school in the classroom with my fifth grade classmates watching this unfold live. I'm forty-two years old today and I still remember the reaction of horror from the adults in the room.
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Wouldn't there be at least a separate engineer dedicated to each of these shots? And wouldn't the ones watching the ROTI Tracker have seen the huge anomaly around 1:12 and alerted Mission Control not to go full throttle?
I know hindsight is 20/20, and that it may not have saved anyone lives anyway, but it seems like that ROTI Tracker shot anomaly is something an engineer would have alerted to immediately.
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Lorem ipsum, flotsam jetsom.
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After 6 years on reddit, I'm sure someone has told you it's it's, not its.
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After 8 years on Reddit, I'm sure someone has told you it's Reddit, not reddit.
I bet even more people have told you not to be a Grammar Nazi and find a better hobby.
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Hey, not-too-bright-dude, did you see his username? It's a grammar dig, but one that makes its own grammar mistake (hey, look, I just used its/it's properly and twice in one sentence!).
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[deleted]
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Some bad stuff happened in 1986
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What is the parachute on cam11/Rot1 https://youtu.be/FCh2PBeG6Do?t=218
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SRB parachute; they comment on it later
Director says 'ignore that, orbiter has no chutes' to save giving false hope to the viewers
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this just makes me sad
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It should’ve never flown that day
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I remember seeing that on live tv in my classroom in 2nd grade.
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Has anyone seen Koyaanisqatsi? The footage on that follows the fragment all the way down for a long time
0
Challenger exploded in 1986.
Koyaanisqatsi was released in 1983.
Wikipedia says that the explosion you see in the movie was the May 1962 explosion of the first Atlas-Centaur rocket.
--- And by the way, I LOVE that movie. LOVE it.
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Ohhhhh TIL thank you
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Simultaneously, what are the odds of that?
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1/133
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This is pretty amazing because it includes the director calling the shots as he knew he was live on every TV station and was trying to give people correct context. 100% professionalism.
That professionalism was impressive. You know he wanted to scream and agonize like everyone else but he just rolled right through it.
The Columbia control room was crazy too. Everyone just dying inside but doing their jobs.
I trust that their professionalism came more from being liable for what happened...
The control room was not liable.
Not the fact that maaaaybeee they were highly trained highly payed professionals? Could that be why they were professional? Pfffftttt
Think before you type.
I suspect he knew it was also important to track everything for the inevitable investigation.
I can't imagine calling that shit.
at about 3:50 on the ITEK(bottom right), that parachute is different than the one on the ROTI tracker. Plus you can see something rotating at the bottom of the chute that does not resemble an SRB, but is more triangular like the orbiter with a missing wing. Could the landing drag chute have been deployed either accidentally or on purpose?
If you mean the shuttle drag chute, that was only installed after the Challenger was destroyed due to the safety audits they did later. The Challenger was never equiped with a drag chute, just the srb's.
EDIT: It was specifically needed for abort scenarios which weren't developed until after the Challenger was destroyed.
huh, didn't know that. TIL, thanks,
It looks fabricky-flowy to me.
The SRB has a drogue chute and then a completely separate triple parachute system. I think we're either seeing incomplete deployment of one or two of the parachutes, or some interaction of the drogue chute and the main.
ah, that makes sense. thanks,
There was no landing drag chute back then. It was added post-Challenger RTF.
LOL, why the spoiler cover?
I felt like watching it without knowing about the parachute was an interesting experience =)