Remembering the crew of space shuttle Challenger, part two

And here's the sidebar to the article I did on the anniversary of the Challenger accident, on a seldom-heard counterpart to the Teacher-in-Space Program:

The Teacher-in-Space Program was just the beginning. There was a Journalist-in-Space Program, too. Largely forgotten, the Journalist-in-Space Program would have flown a press representative on a September 1986 space shuttle Challenger flight. Navy Capt. Michael J. Smith, who was named to pilot the mission, which would have been his second spaceflight, died when Challenger disintegrated after lift-off that January. "It seemed like a fantastic opportunity to do some truly original reporting. I mean, if you can't go with Lewis and Clark, perhaps you can head to the next frontier,'' said Frederick K. 'Ted' Conover, who, as a 28-year-old freelance writer from Denver, applied for the program. The Challenger Center notes on its website that in the early '80s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was looking for ways to better connect the space program with the public, and came up with the idea of sending a civilian on a space shuttle flight. Conover said for him there would have been endless opportunities to publish articles about the experience, perhaps even a book. "NASA considered sending a journalist, an explorer, or an entertainer, but ultimately decided on sending a teacher as the first civilian in space,'' according to the space-science education center. Byron K. Lichtenberg, 26 April 2011. To be sure, NASA had been sending civilians - non-career astronauts - into space two years after the shuttle made its first launch. In 1983, Byron K. Lichtenberg, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, flew as a scientist (along with Ulf Merbold of the European Space Agency) on the first Spacelab mission. Others followed, not only other scientists, but representatives of companies (McDonnell Douglas, RCA, Hughes) which built or designed experiments and satellites and of countries (Saudi Arabia, Mexico) which used the shuttle to launch satellites. There were also congressional observers and though not strictly civilians, "manned spaceflight engineers," mostly Air Force personnel selected to accompany classified Department of Defense payloads. Slightly more than 1,700 people applied for the Journalist-in-Space program, said Liz Suckow, a NASA history office archivist. There were household names, familiar to people who read a newspaper or tuned in to a nightly news broadcast as well as freelancers. The program was administered by the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina. Work progressed even after the Challenger accident. One hundred journalists were selected as regional semifinalists in April 1986 and further pared down the following month to 40 semifinalists, including Conover. The expectation was that out of the 40, there would be a final group of five journalists to be chosen during a week-long evaluation conference in October 1986, Suckow said. As with the Teacher-in-Space program, it could be assumed that a prime and alternate journalist would be selected from the five. But that never happened. The space shuttle's return to flight took longer than an expected year (indeed, the first post-Challenger flight took place in October 1988, 32 months after the accident.) In July, NASA officials issued a statement that the selection process would remain on hold until the agency was able to identify a definite mission which could include a journalist. And that never happened either. "I very much hoped the program would resume after Challenger, though I was not too surprised when it did not: the risks of space travel obviously remained higher than was generally appreciated,'' Conover wrote in an e-mail. "I think the exuberance of the civilian-in-space program was forever tempered by the Challenger tragedy.'' True enough, in the post-Challenger NASA, civilians would find limited flight opportunities. What changed? NASA officials barred payload specialists from the first five flights. The first opportunity for such non-career astronauts would not come until a December 1990 mission devoted to astronomy, following the flight of backlogged payloads which could only be flown on the space shuttle or cargo deemed a priority, just one month shy of five years after the accident. Gerard E. "Jerry" Magilton and Robert J. Cenker of RCA Commercial payloads were banned from being carried on the shuttle, so there would be no opportunities for representatives from companies or countries accompanying such cargo. (Robert Cenker of East Windsor was the last commercial payload specialist, flying on Mission 61C, the flight immediately before the Challenger accident.)   As well, mission specialists - career astronauts - would often take the place of payload specialists - the civilian scientists - on some flights. Including Challenger, 22 payload specialists flew on 12 flights in three years. Just 29 other civilians flew between 1988, when shuttle flights resumed, and 2003, when the last such payload specialist flew.     That last person was Israel Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon, who died - along with the other six astronauts - during space shuttle Columbia's re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, over the skies of Texas.