[SlashDot]New Video of Challenger Disaster Surfaces After 24 Years

boomboom

 

Insensitive *******.

That sent a chill down my spine. Not so much the video itself, as I've seen the explosion multiple times in the past. It's more hearing the reactions as they wondered wth was going on.

 

SuperBeeKay, that wasn't Funny at all.

I wonder why he didn't turn in the video sooner?

 

a girl (Alison Smith) whose father died in the disaster was in my biology class that year at clear lake.

 

I remember watching this as it happened while I was in elementary school. Crazy.

 

We were watching the launch in class.. I was in grade school and I remember it distinctly. We had been following the story on Channel One (I think it was still called that back then) where they had a bunch of footage of the teacher Christa on the shuttle.

That's an interesting shot of it.. very clear.

 

me too, and they handled it the same way as the OP stated. just turned it off and didn't really tell us what happened. led us all to believe that the explosion was part of the launch.

amazing how we can remember something so vividly from that young of an age.

 

That image is burned into my brain.

 

They didn't explain it? Really?

Wow, they kept it on all the rest of the day in our school. Maybe it depends on your age. We were 4th graders so maybe that's why we continued to watch and wait to hear about what happened in the capsule.

 

I remember where I was when I found out about the Challenger (sixth grade gym class) and when I first heard of the 9/11 attacks (college biology class). They had really built up the Challenger trip because of the teacher going up.

This video is really moving for me now that I can have a little better appreciation for what happened.

 

yeah...I think I was in 3rd grade when it happened...remember watching it on a tv in our school library

 

He's making a reference to the OP's name. No?

Or is the joke on me?

 

Wow, I still remember that day, was in 2nd grade and we were watching that as it happened, my teacher was really torn up about it for obvious reasons.

 

You know, of all the ways to die, I think that has to be one of the most honorable ways to go out.

Literally pushing the boundary of science in order to give humans a better understanding of our universe and the place we hold on it.

Talk about sacrifice.



*edit

Knowing that they did not die in the explosion, but rather from the impact of the shuttle carrier on the ocean, is very unsettling thought. You have to think they all passed out before then, or hope, at least.

 

We studied the Challenger disaster in college and were told by our professor that there is a very good chance that the astronauts were unconscious when the lander made impact in the ocean.

My in-laws also work for NASA and they had the same conclusion about the accident. Definitely a dark time for NASA and very traumatizing for many people who worked with the people who lost their lives.

 

Man this part makes me want to start balling at my desk... so sad.

From wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster

Cause and time of death

The shuttle was designed to withstand an acceleration of 3 times the acceleration of gravity on Earth (g) (30 m/s2) with another 1.5g (15 m/s2) safety factor built in.[13] The crew cabin in particular is a very robust section of the shuttle because of its design and construction of reinforced aluminum.[13] During vehicle breakup, the crew cabin detached in one piece and slowly tumbled into a ballistic arc. NASA estimated separation forces at about 12 to 20g (120 to 200 m/s2) very briefly; however, within two seconds, the forces on the cabin had already dropped to below 4g (40 m/s2), and within ten seconds the cabin was in free fall. These forces were likely insufficient to cause major injury. At least some of the astronauts were likely alive and briefly conscious after the breakup, because three of the four Personal Egress Air Packs (PEAPs) on the flight deck were found to have been activated. Investigators found their remaining unused air supply roughly consistent with the expected consumption during the 2 minute 45 second post-breakup trajectory.

While analyzing the wreckage, investigators discovered that several electrical system switches on Pilot Mike Smith's right-hand panel had been moved from their usual launch positions. These switches were protected with lever locks that required them to be pulled outward against a spring force before they could be moved to a new position. Later tests established that neither force of the explosion nor the impact with the ocean could have moved them, indicating that Smith made the switch changes, presumably in a futile attempt to restore electrical power to the cockpit after the crew cabin detached from the rest of the orbiter.[14]

Whether the astronauts remained conscious long after the breakup is unknown, and largely depends on whether the detached crew cabin maintained pressure integrity. If it did not, the time of useful consciousness at that altitude is just a few seconds; the PEAPs supplied only unpressurized air, and hence would not have helped the crew to retain consciousness. The crew cabin hit the ocean surface at roughly 207 mph (333 km/h), causing an instantaneous deceleration of over 200 g (2 km/s2), far beyond the structural limits of the crew compartment or crew survivability levels.[11]

On July 28, 1986, Rear Admiral Richard H. Truly, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Flight and a former astronaut, released a report from Joseph P. Kerwin, biomedical specialist from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, relating to the deaths of the astronauts in the accident. Dr. Kerwin, a veteran of the Skylab 2 mission, had been commissioned to undertake the study soon after the accident. According to the Kerwin Report:

The findings are inconclusive. The impact of the crew compartment with the ocean surface was so violent that evidence of damage occurring in the seconds which followed the disintegration was masked. Our final conclusions are:
the cause of death of the Challenger astronauts cannot be positively determined;
the forces to which the crew were exposed during Orbiter breakup were probably not sufficient to cause death or serious injury; and
the crew possibly, but not certainly, lost consciousness in the seconds following Orbiter breakup due to in-flight loss of crew module pressure.[11]
Despite the report, some experts, including one of NASA's lead investigators Robert Overmyer, believed most if not all of the crew were alive and possibly conscious during the entire descent until impact with the ocean.

“Scob fought for any and every edge to survive. He flew that ship without wings all the way down....they were alive”
— Robert Overmyer, NASA Lead Investigator[13]

 

It's 100% believable that they retained conciousness the whole way down. The crew module pressure vessel is a beastly piece of metal. I would not be at all surprised if it survived the initial "explosion"*.



*There was no actual explosion, it literally tore apart.

 

It wasn't so much the explosion, but the G forces and the descent/pressure change that would've knocked them out, no?

 

I was a day old when that happened.