http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/the_sky_from_above.html

In one of my psych subjects we learned about that disaster shuttle launch that I can't remember the name of (Discovery?). I'd heard of it before but I didn't realise how unfortunate the whole situation was: massive country wide competition to launch the first teacher into space; some female teacher wins and does all the training and everything; because it's so publicised, classes of children all over the country get to watch the launch, live on TV; parents of the teacher were at the launch site and had a camera covering them; shuttle takes off and everyone rejoices; about 30 seconds after the shuttle is off the ground, there's a massive explosion; millions of children across the US witness the entire crew, including this "lucky" school teacher, get totally disintegrated. We saw the video in class, and the guys who are reporting the event just had no clue what happened. There was just silence, then a slightly calm "it looks like part of the jets have come away from the spacecraft" or something... even the NASA guys didn't really have a clue what had happened for a relatively long time! Very unfortunate indeed.

edit - From memory I think they actually ran the competition in the first place because public interest in the US space program was dwindling... now that's ironical.


last edited by B.Hardball at 09:59:35 15/Jun/08

Challenger?

NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts

NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts

Welcome to jokes from 1986

Challenger, and at one point I think they thought maybe the heat tiles from the shuttle would protect integrity of the vehicle and the crew enough for them to still be alive and get spun out to sea. Obviously in the confusion of it all nobody knew quite what to think or say.

wow that whole blog is amazing, make sure you check out some of the other articles

I saw that page linked somewhere else a few days ago; pretty awesome pics but it always s***s me things like that never link back to the source image so you can get awesome backgrounds!@#