Remembering the crew of space shuttle Challenger

The space shuttle program has a special place in my memory. I was in sixth grade when I saw a National Geographic magazine with the cover story, "When the shuttle finally flies." I still have that issue, borrowed and never returned.

I was too young to remember the moon landings and barely remember Skylab from the CBS "In the News" shorts in between Saturday-morning cartoons. So the space shuttle was my program, even more so since it had the potential for anyone to fly on one of the orbiters - and not just the payload specialists, either. Career astronauts included a woman who used to be on welfare, a pro-football player, and a ex-CIA officer who used to also fly on B-52s.

This is an article I wrote for the 25th anniversary of the Challenger accident, little modified. I enjoyed writing this, interviewing three of the crew which launched on the shuttle mission prior to Challenger. I wish I could have interviewed Charlie Bolden, 61C's pilot, but the article was already running long.

Jan. 28 marks the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, which killed seven astronauts - Francis R. "Dick' Scobee, commander; Navy Cmdr. Michael J. Smith, pilot; Ronald E. McNair, Air Force Lt. Col. Ellison S. Onizuka and Judith A. Resnik, all mission specialists; and payload specialists Gregory B. Jarvis and S. Christa McAuliffe - when the spacecraft broke up above Florida in 1986.

At the middle school named for McAuliffe in Jackson, N.J., a student expressed it best on a poster displayed in the hallway: "It is in part because of the excitement over McAuliffe's presence on the Challenger that the accident had such a significant impact on the nation.''
 

S. Christa McAuliffe was a schoolteacher from New Hampshire, the first of what was envisioned to be a line of "private citizens" making the journey into space. Jackson's newest middle school was named after the school teacher because McAuliffe spent her whole life honoring students, school board member Lyle "Peggi' Sturmfels told the Asbury Park Press in 1991.

 

When the building was dedicated in 1993, Grace Corrigan, McAuliffe's mother, was present at the ceremony. Corrigan provided the school with an autographed lithograph of her daughter as well as two patches from the Challenger mission.

 

As well, McAuliffe's iconic quote looms large on a wall in the school's entry foyer: "I touch the future. I teach.''

"She represented every teacher who stood before a group of students and had them see beyond themselves,'' Sturmfels said at that time.

  

And McAuliffe was an inspiration to many people, Barton said to his students. Typical comments resemble that of another student, who wrote on her poster: "Christa McAuliffe is a person I can look up to. She was a woman of bravery, courage and honor.''

To be sure, the entire crew of the Challenger, not just McAuliffe, serve as an inspiration to many people. When in 1987, a memorial to the crew was dedicated at Windward Beach Park in Brick, N.J.,  then-Mayor Daniel F. Newman said he hoped the memorial would provide an opportunity for children to learn about the space program, and the sacrifices Challenger's seven astronauts made for it.

Robert A. Cenker, a resident of East Windsor, N.J., said he remembers that day, perhaps a little better than most Garden State residents. He was a satellite designer for RCA, and in 1986 flew on the space shuttle Columbia, landing just 10 days prior to Challenger's lift-off.

"I trained with Christa, and the entire crew was conducting their terminal countdown demonstration test while we were in isolation for our launch,'' Cenker said by e-mail.

 

During their training, he and McAuliffe, as well as their backups - Gerard E. 'Jerry' Magilton, also of RCA, and Barbara R. Morgan, a teacher from Idaho - had several conversations about the risk of what they were doing, Cenker said.

 

Cenker added: "Christa knew there were potential failures that could cost her life. We both agreed, the potential reward outweights the risk. And though Christa was not formally trained in aerospace technology, she was an intelligent lady who understood what she was getting into.''

  

NEVER ON A FLIGHT

Prior to Challenger, NASA had lost astronauts before, mostly in training. The most notable happened Jan. 27, 1967, when the crew of the first manned Apollo mission - Air Force Lt. Cols. Virgil I. "Gus' Grissom, who flew the second suborbital flight for the United States, and Edward H. White II, who made the first American spacewalk, and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Robert B. Chaffee, who was to make his first spaceflight - died in a fire during a prelaunch test.

   

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration also had close calls from the start. Grissom's spacecraft hatch blew prematurely, causing water to flood not only the capsule, but also seep into his spacesuit. Most people are familiar with the travails of Apollo 13, largely due to the movie which starred Tom Hanks in the role of mission commander Navy Capt. James A. Lovell.

 

However, astronauts had never died on a mission before, not until Challenger.

For NASA, 1986 promised to be a busy year. The space agency flew nine flights in 1985 and plans called at least 13 more missions following Challenger’s flight during the calendar year. A second launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. as well as another launch site at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., were to have been used in meeting the ambitious agenda.

 

But it had problems not only in launching the last mission of 1985, which became the first mission of 1986 - Cenker's flight on Columbia, known as Mission 61C, which deployed a communications satellite - but also in bringing the mission back to Earth.

 

There were six launch attempts, starting Dec. 18, 1985, and three landing attempts, including a try at bringing the shuttle back a day early. There were also attempts at landing Columbia back at Kennedy Space Center. Columbia finally launched Jan. 12, 1986 and touched down Jan. 18 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., an alternate landing site.

 

Launching Challenger proved to be just as difficult. Lift-off was originally scheduled for Jan. 22, then slipped twice in two days because of difficulties with 61C. A new launch date was set Jan. 25, but bad weather caused it to be postponed twice more.

 

And it was the bad weather which caused the loss of Challenger and its crew. The cold caused an O-ring, which is used to seal joints in the segmented solid rocket booster, to lose its resiliency. As a result, a combustion gas leak erupted from the booster and impinged on the external tank, destroying it.

The space shuttle itself was destroyed when it was exposed to severe aerodynamic loads which caused it to break apart. 

 

 Fifteen years ago, in an interview with the Asbury Park Press, Cenker made a prescient statement.

  

"The fleet is 10 years older. It doesn't matter how many changes, how many improvements NASA has made … accidents happen. Every time one of those shuttles goes up these days, I say a prayer for the crew,'' Cenker said.

  

 LESSONS LEARNED?

 

"We learned a lot of things with the Challenger accident and we put in place a lot of safeguards after we lost Challenger,'' said retired Navy Capt. Robert L. 'Hoot' Gibson, 61C's commander, who participated in the Challenger accident's investigation.

 

Following Challenger, astronauts would not die on a mission until Columbia broke apart over the skies of Texas, again killing a crew of seven, on Feb. 1, 2003. Those safeguards - methods to manage the space program, the oversight, the rigor with which NASA would conduct everything - were re-learned after Challenger only to be forgotten with the loss of Columbia, Gibson said.

Columbia disintegrated during re-entry. But its problems began on launch, when a piece of foam broke up during ascent and tore a hole in the shuttle's left wing. That hole allowed hot gases inside the largely aluminum wing, melting and causing its failure.

"With Challenger we said, 'Well, it's worked 24 times before, it'll work again.' And in Columbia we did pretty much the same thing. We said, 'Well, it's probably OK, so we didn't check the wing leading edges.' We fell victim to 'we always succeeded before, we'll succeed again,'‚'' said the 64-year-old Gibson, who also served for about two years as chief of the astronaut office.

 

Gibson and U.S. Sen. C. William Nelson, D-Fla., spoke to the Asbury Park Press at the annual Air and Space Gala at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, N.Y. The event honored Nelson and saluted the space shuttle and the satellite industry.

 

Nelson also flew on 61C as a 44-year-old member of the House of Representatives and congressional observer. He called what happened on Challenger arrogant.

 

"Arrogance had set in to NASA management. It's like water; communications was going from the top down and they weren't listening from the engineers on the line for that communication to come up to the top,'' Nelson said.

  

END OF AN ERA

Twenty-five years after the Challenger disaster, the space shuttle program is in its twilight. The Challenger accident changed the program’s focus, prohibiting by law commercial payloads and removing most non-career astronauts – as McAuliffe and Cenker were – from flying, but following the loss of a second shuttle, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board called into question the program’s safety.

“Because of the risks inherent in the original design of the space shuttle, because the design was based in many aspects on now-obsolete technologies, and because the shuttle is now an aging system but still developmental in character, it is in the nation’s interest to replace the shuttle as soon as possible as the primary means for transporting humans to and from Earth orbit,’’ the board noted.

Then-President George W. Bush agreed, and in January 2004 issued a new directive for the space agency, changing the program's - and NASA's focus once again.

As part of a new plan to explore space, which included landings on the moon and Mars and the development of a new vehicle to do so, "The Shuttle's chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station. In 2010, the Space Shuttle - after nearly 30 years of duty - will be retired from service," the President said at that time.

All three space shuttles, what remains from a fleet of five, were decommissioned in 2011.

Space shuttle Discovery gets placed in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Udvar-Hazy facility in April 2012. Photo (c) 2012 Hartriono B. Sastrowardoyo

The three orbiters became exhibits at museums. But there were no replacement for the space shuttle at the time of decomissioning, and for the foreseeable future NASA must rely on Russian Soyuz capsules for US astronauts' access to space. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 called for the development of a “multipurpose crew vehicle,” using features, designs and systems from Bush’s proposed astronaut spacecraft, to be operational no later than the end of 2016 - a goal that will not be met.

But while the spacecraft would be used for missions beyond low-Earth orbit, e.g., to the moon and Mars, such missions have time and again been postponed or canceled – indeed, then-Vice President Spiro T. Agnew said at the time of the first moon landing that a manned landing on Mars should be accomplished by the 1990s. (Citing “staggering expense” in the costs of going to space, then-President Richard Nixon instead favored development of what would become the space shuttle.)

Instead, such a new spacecraft would serve as an alternate means of going to and from the space station. The bill also calls for NASA “to the maximum extent practicable” to make use of private industry in bringing cargo and astronauts to space and back for the space agency. The bill also notes in a familiar refrain that commercial services have the potential to lower the cost of going to space.

"If I had my druthers of course we would continue to fly so there would be no interruption'' between the end of shuttle operations and the beginning flights of its (the space shuttle's) replacement, said Nelson, who serves as chairman of the Science and Space Subcommittee, part of the U.S. Senate Committee of Commerce, Science and Transportation.

 

Cenker would also like to see the shuttle continue to fly, at a lower launch rate, until the United States has a replacement.

 

 "I'm a huge fan of commercial space development, but the jury's still out on when they'll actually be ready,'' Cenker said.

 

But there are also safety as well as financial issues said Nelson, who also serves as a member on the Senate Budget Committee.

"We were in a budgetary crisis and the decision was made after the Columbia accident that you fly the shuttle as long as you build the space station,'' which was completed in 2011, Nelson said.

"I know to each of us, the average American, the NASA budget is an incredible amount of money. But keeping in mind that it's less than 1 percent of the U.S. budget'' - it was actually 0.5 percent in fiscal year 2010 - "if NASA completely disappeared tomorrow, the national budget would improve by about one percent,'' Cenker said.

But Cenker also acknowledges the shuttle infrastructure was intended to support many launches each year. And flying the shuttle at a low launch rate only drives the cost of a launch higher.

 

"Recognizing the reality of a budget, any budget, and any money going to support the shuttle program would have to come from other NASA programs,'' he said.

 

Cenker added: "I struggle with the decision (to stop flying the space shuttle.) And I don't have sufficient insight into the details of the issues to resolve that struggle.''

 

Gibson, who flew five times on the space shuttle, has a fondness for the vehicle,
calling it one of the more remarkable advances in aviation.

"You have an airplane that can fly up to space, stay up for two weeks, bring back 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of payload and fly at hypersonic speeds - no airplane has flown as high or as fast,'' Gibson said. "I hate to see it go away.''