Watching Disaster Strike: Challenger 1986
By Abagail Chartier
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Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
was frigid. It was late January and Alessandro Massarotti was cold. His down
jacket wasn’t enough to keep him warm as he walked from Bucknell University’s
campus to Market Street. The thirteen-minute walk was torturous when it was
around 14° Fahrenheit with
some strong winds around twenty miles per hour. Massarotti had been at Bucknell
for a few weeks now, visiting his then-girlfriend Kristin. In that time, he’d
learned that the on-campus food wasn’t very good, so he was seeking out an
alternative while she was busy with class.
Getting into La Casa de Pizza was a relief. It was warmer
in the small hole-in-the-wall shop and Massarotti was able to hunker down at a
table. The TV was on; but of course, it was. Today was going to be historic.
While an outsider to America, as he was only visiting, Massarotti could feel
the buzz throughout the American population. Today was the day that the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was launching a regular
civilian – a teacher, no less – into space.
***
The Challenger, an
American space shuttle, had been launched into space nine times in the past and
today NASA was working hard to make today the tenth flight. Named Flight
STS-51-L had initially been scheduled to launch on January 22nd,
1986 from Pad-B at the Kennedy Space Center, but there were delays to The Columbia, another space shuttle,
over on Pad-A. The Columbia’s delays
meant focus of NASA workers had to be turned from Challenger to Columbia, but
the public didn’t see it that way. All eyes were on the Challenger, so as the launch date was delayed to the 23rd,
and then the 24th, there started to be complaints which lead to more
pressure on NASA.
When the weather conditions on January 24 weren’t right
over at the emergency Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) site, the mission had to
be moved to the morning of January 25. It was too early and the NASA ground
team wasn’t able to manage the launch time, so it got moved to the 26th.
The weather was predicted not to cooperate on that day, so it got pushed to the
27th, though in the end January 26’s weather conditions were fine.
The final push came on January 27, where the Challenger got all the way to the flight crew boarding the craft
before the crosswinds at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) increased and went
over the established limit requiring an abort mission.
Finally, the mission was set for January 28, 1986. With
the pressure of the public mounting, many key NASA officials were pushing for
the launch to happen on that day, no matter what. That ‘no matter what’ would
end up being despite the temperatures at Pad-B dropping to around 18° Fahrenheit.
***
Massarotti was aware of all the delays to the various
shuttle missions; the Americans around him were aware of the delays Challenger, but he’d been paying
attention far before then, all the way when he’d been back in Italy, his home
country. Massarotti studied Physics in Italy and was working on his thesis, but
his passion was astronomy. His goal was to obtain a graduate degree in
Astrophysics because that’s where his fascination laid. Since the time he was
seven years old, he’s been looking to the stars, to space, for answers. When
he’d heard about the NASA space shuttle missions, Massarotti became enraptured.
Whenever he spoke about them – to his girlfriend, his family, his friends – it
was clear he was hopeful for the NASA shuttles as he repeated confidently his
belief in them:
“The shuttles will make all the difference for
astronomy.”
***
The Challenger was fueled early on January
28, before Massarotti was even awake. The launch was slightly delayed by two
hours from its original 9:30 am launch due to a malfunction of hardware that
monitored the shuttle’s fire detection systems. As soon as it was fixed, Challenger’s external tank was filled,
and the crew boarded the shuttle once again. This time, however, they wouldn’t
be getting off.
Four crew members – Francis Richard Scobee, Michael
Smith, Ellison Onizuka, and Judith Resnik – in two rows on the Flight Deck, and
the other three – Ronald McNair, Gregory Bruce Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe –
sat behind them on the Middeck.
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***
Massarotti
ate a slice of pizza that had been brought over to him and watched the CNN
coverage of the launch. Lucky for him, the man’s voice distracted him from the
not-very-good pizza he was eating. His eyes left the plate and went to the
small TV mounted on the wall. A clock nearby ticked faintly, showing off that
it was 11:38 a.m. Massarotti’s attention was on Tom Mintier and the broadcast with
the CNN team in Florida.
“T-Minus
twenty-one seconds and the Solid Rocket Booster engine gimble now underway.
T-Minus fifteen seconds.” There was a small pause by the CNN correspondent, who
was only a voiceover as the image of the shuttle filled the screen. ‘Kennedy
Space Center’ in white was listed along the bottom of the screen, with the top
left alerting Massarotti that this was ‘CNN LIVE’ in yellow, underlined in red
just to make it pop. “T-Minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six – we have main
engine start! – four, three, two, one, and liftoff! Liftoff of the twenty-fifth
space shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower.”
Massarotti
was exuberant. Finally, after days of delays, the flight had made it off the
ground and into the air. Others in the pizzeria were also excited, watching the
feed on the small TV. The view of the shuttle only got worse as time went on,
as the cameraman for CNN couldn’t focus on it as it climbed ever so high up in
the sky. It didn’t matter though, because it was there, and it was getting to
go to space. It was going smooth just like the other Challenger and Columbia
missions, and even the Apollo rocket
missions. Everything was going to be fine, he was sure of it.
***
“Thirty-five thousand going through one point five.”
Smith said to the rest of the crew in the Flight Deck. He was letting them know
that they were reaching an altitude of 35,000 feet and were reaching a velocity
of Mach 1.5 at sixty-two seconds into the assent.
“Reading four eighty-six on mine.” Commander Scobee
replied.
“Yep, that’s what I’ve got, too.” Pilot Smith and
Commander Scobee had been going back and forth since thirty seconds since
liftoff.
“Roger, go at throttle up.” Scobee assured, just before
the readings changed to show that the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) reached
a hundred and four percent.
“Uh-oh.”
***
Massarotti watched in horror as did the nation as at seventy-three
seconds into the launch, the Challenger
exploded in the sky. Shock hit. He didn’t know what to say. Neither did the
reporter on the TV. Mintier was silent for twenty-four seconds over the air as
the camera showed the nation the single stream of exhaust from the Solid Rocket
Boosters (SRB) turned into two large ones spinning in different directions, and
debris from the explosion fell.
All the hope Massarotti had did not plummet, however. It
couldn’t. He was, instead, in complete denial of what he was seeing. The
Italian was so sure that this flight was going to do good for astronomy. That
it would foster greater intrigue across the US, whose space program far
exceeded Italy’s, and result in more interest in space. It would lead to more
research, more talk, more development. Children across the nation were watching
at school as the first teacher was to be flown to space and orbit for six full
days and was going to teach a couple lessons from space. There was so much
riding on the Challenger’s success,
but now, it was clear that it wasn’t going to be a success. It couldn’t be.
He and the rest of the pizzeria watched silently as
footage was replayed and the clock on the wall ticked quietly in the
background.
https://youtu.be/AfnvFnzs91s
***
Massarotti
was numb and in denial for hours. The twenty-two-year-old left La Casa de Pizza
and headed back out into the cold and then back to his girlfriend’s dormitory
where he was staying with her. He’d been bored most of the time in Pennsylvania
with little to do, but at the moment he was reeling. It all just seemed so out
of the blue. NASA had had continual delays, surely they had checked for
everything, hadn’t they? How could something like this happen?
Grief
set in while he and Kristin kept up with updates. Everyone was talking about
it, glued to their televisions, so there was no avoiding it.
What a terrible thing to happen to
those people on the shuttle. To their families. To the kids that the teacher
had class with. They must hardly understand. Massarotti
thought as he watched coverage carry on that night. It had been confirmed. No
survivors. There had always been so little hope for survival, but he had hoped.
He didn’t know the shuttle design all too well, he was no expert. Perhaps there
was a possibility. Now, with the confirmation, things just seemed hopeless.
What would happen to the dream of
going to space now that there had been casualties? How big of a setback would
this be to the space program? NASA was massive… they wouldn’t shut it down,
would they? Would they shut down the shuttle program? Would NASA ever send
people to space again?
***
The cause of the aptly called “Challenger Disaster” was a small O-ring that was attached to the
SRB, holding parts in place. Engineers the day before had voiced their concerns
that the O-ring may fail to hold the Booster as it was supposed to due to the
cold weather. The shuttle had new O-rings put in after the last mission it had,
but there were signs of wear on them that they had reason to believe happened
because of the temperature. It had been below 53°, which was the lowest temperature that the engineers were
able to promise it would work safely at. They couldn’t prove that it would
fail, but they knew it wasn’t safe. Heads of various departments ignored them
and chose to go on with the mission, knowing that it was 18° out and safety
couldn’t be promised.
Not wanting Challenger to be delayed was cited by
the officials who went ahead regardless.
***
January
28, 1986 was a day that was destined to go down in history for astronomers and
lovers of space exploration. It did, though not in a way that was wanted nor
expected. Seven lives were lost. Later, it was learned that they likely did not
die from the explosion itself. Several of the crewmembers had pulled out
emergency oxygen, but there was no way to escape the orbiter. This means they
died on impact as the orbiter hit the Atlantic Ocean at terminal velocity, the
maximum velocity that it could reach, which is not survivable. Thirty-three
years later, they are still remembered.
Thirty-three
years later, Massarotti finished his undergraduate physics degree from
University of Rome in Italy, as well as his doctorate from University of
Chicago in the United States. He works full time as the head of the Physics and
Astronomy department at Stonehill College and part time at Harvard University
in its Astronomy department. He is still passionate about astronomy but has
grown more cynical about space travel for humanity.
Since
the Challenger disaster from 1986 and
the following Colombia disaster in
2003, NASA’s space shuttle program has since been shut down. With more
information from the International Space Station regarding the effects of space
on the human body, it’s become more and more apparent that the human body is
not fit for long-term space travel. With no way to block the cosmic rays coming
from stars that destroys human DNA and the deterioration of the body without
the effects of gravity, the outlook for long term space travel, according to
Massarotti, is bleak. Humanity has a long way to go before the everyday person
can go beyond Earth.
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