Dying Man Gives Up unseen Challnger Explosion Video

4th grade Orlando Florida outside watching at school. As was previously posted brings back some memories I would have rather forgotten. I was heavily into the space program at that time. And the next year when I finally saved enough for Space Camp it was still fresh in everyone's mind but none of the Camp curriculum even touched the topic. I remember asking a question about why it had happened, this was before the investigation was even started I believe, and all they would say was " it was a tradgedy" and left it at that. And on a side note busted fingers or not I would have done the exacet same thing to that d-bag. Sometimes people need to be reminded about appropriate speech at appropriate times.

WOW I was watching that LIVE as it happened. i was going on 12 years old. Watcing the shuttle go up, as i was jsut beginning astronomy then, and witnessed live on the news, its explosion. all over a faulty O ring and ice buildup on the booster rocket. to this day, my hart still goes out too the Challenger crew*

Now, I was in elementary school when it happened.

However, I had never heard about the cock pit surviving splash down.

I did hear about this - I grant this is not the most reputable source. It is however what I heard about at the time.

Shuttle Body Parts

More

[edit on 2010/2/3 by Aeons]

It's interesting how the exhaust trails dissipate rather quicky, and yet we are told over and over that chemtrails are actually contrails that can stay in the air for hours upon hours.

I don't remember this explosion in detail, but I believe it was one of my first memories (at the age of 2 1/2 yrs). All I remember is sitting in the car repair place while my mother was getting new tires on the car. I was watching the TV, and then people in the waiting room in the repair shop started screaming, and saying "Oh my God!" I distinctly remember seeing this ship blow up on the TV, and then I remember getting scared because of everybody screaming. It was a tragic incident, as was the Columbia disaster, and won't be the last in the name of human exploration.

Aren't there hundreds of people with thier camcorders watching such a launch from as close possible? Why did we not see their recordings of the event?

Or where are the recordings of all those space-shuttle fans who live close to the launch site and did record SS-launches just like this old unfortunate chap did??

Can't believe this the only un-official unreleased version of that painful day.

In January 1986, when this happened, camcorders were still very expensive and didn't really have the capability of taking good video of something like this. Some of today's camera phones can take better video than a camcorder of that era.

Shuttle mission 51L was very nearly launched on 27 January 1986, the 20th anniversary of the launch pad fire that resulted in the deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts. Because the liftoff was delayed until the next day, I was able to go to NASA Causeway East, between Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to watch the launch. It was a bitterly cold day and I almost didn't go. This was the 10th shuttle launch I attended and I expected just another routine mission.

When the vehicle disintegrated in a fireball, a woman standing next to me said, "Oh! look! Booster separation." I told her that wasn't what it was supposed to look like and that something had gone terribly wrong. The two solid-fuel boosters began to spiral and then disappeared in twin flashes as the Range Safety Officer terminated their flight.

The largest pieces of debris hit the water within two to three minutes of the explosion but smaller pieces continued to drift down from altitude for more than half an hour. It looked like a glittering snowstorm. There was even some part of a booster floating beneath a parachute. The entire spectacle played out in eerie silence.

Over the ensuing weeks and months, I watched the recovery ships returning to Port Canaveral with wreckage. I was also present for the burial of the Challenger debris in two abandoned missile silos at the Cape. Within the space of about a year, we lost a Titan III, the shuttle, a Delta, and an Atlas Centaur (I was there for that one, too).

I had hoped STS-51L would be the last major U.S. manned spaceflight disaster but on 3 February 2003, nearly two decades after Challenger, we lost the space shuttle Columbia in a reentry mishap. Ironically, the conclusions of the Accident Investigation Boards for Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia are nearly identical in many respects. I hope this doesn't mean we are due for another fatal mishap between 2020 and 2025. There seems to be a tendency to forget the lessons of the past.

reply to post by The_Brave


Geez,yeah I know.

I was sitting in a military truck in the middle of the night in Guam.

I was getting ready to pick up my troops and head for the mess hall for "midrats"

I had a small portable am radio and was listening to the local radio feed of a national broadcast.Probably CBS.

I remember the announcer saying,"The shuttle has exploded".Over and over again.

And thinking,"Damn,I don't want to tell these guys this".

But I did.

reply to post by Romans 10:9


You're comparing solid rocket boosters with jet engines?

Good for you...

:shk:

Originally posted by Shadowhawk
I had hoped STS-51L would be the last major U.S. manned spaceflight disaster but on 3 February 2003, nearly two decades after Challenger, we lost the space shuttle Columbia in a reentry mishap. Ironically, the conclusions of the Accident Investigation Boards for Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia are nearly identical in many respects. I hope this doesn't mean we are due for another fatal mishap between 2020 and 2025. There seems to be a tendency to forget the lessons of the past.

I thought the same thing, how quickly we forget the lessons of the past (Well I guess 17 years isn't that fast but we should remember longer than that).

I found the video on youtube also, as it's easier for me to play those than live leak, hope it's the same one?



One of the youtube comments is worth noting also:

It's interesting that the woman tells the man with the camera "It's just freezing me to death out here", since it was that fact that doomed the launch. In a simple light, they solved what went wrong 92 seconds after it exploded.

Originally posted by Detailed Perfection

297GT .. I will agree with you that one human life is just as important as the next, however, there is a difference in the tragedy of a brave human being putting their lives on the line for the betterment of humanity.

BS no braver than the local council 3worker fixing the road and being hit by a falling rock or a car or having heart attack...only thing is he is making a difference to life the asstronaughts do what....how are they improving my life?

Originally posted by 297GT

Originally posted by Detailed Perfection

297GT .. I will agree with you that one human life is just as important as the next, however, there is a difference in the tragedy of a brave human being putting their lives on the line for the betterment of humanity.

BS no braver than the local council 3worker fixing the road and being hit by a falling rock or a car or having heart attack...only thing is he is making a difference to life the asstronaughts do what....how are they improving my life?

I've heard claims that lots of technologies are spinoffs from the space program, including perhaps the PC you used to send that question over the internet.

Spinoff is NASA's annual premier publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology.
I think we would have all had this technology eventually anyway, but perhaps the space race did accelerate the development of some technologies for space that found their way into the private sector.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Your right about computers coming from the space program. We also got velcro, wireless tools, smoke alarms, isulation and alot more. If you want a full list of things that have come from the space program then here is a website for you

techtran.msfc.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by JIMC5499
The crew cabin landed in about 280 feet of water. From what I have heard some of the crew were alive after the impact and died by drowning. I also heard that because of the g-forces during the fall it was highly unlikely that they were conscious on impact. One odd thing here was that when Challenger exploded, Columbia was back in the factory having it's ejection seats removed.

297GT

No I don't make a habit of walking around punching people and no I really don't get your point if there is even one there. Sometimes some people need a little reminder of what is proper at the time. In this case other methods failed and he wasn't getting the message. I just made sure that he recieved and understood the message.

Get the message?

[edit on 3-2-2010 by JIMC5499]

The message I get is you are obviously the kind of man who thinks violence is the answer.A shame that guys freinds did not follow you and beat your ass.

reply to post by KANDINSKI


The Irony. It Burns.

I remember it was cold as HELL that entire week. Central Florida had rolling blackouts and the Cape was thinking about pulling her back to the VAB. Florida doesn't often get cold but when it does the seabreeze makes it rough. It was I believe 23 steady and windchill like 11 that day. That was interior Florida can't imagine what it was out on the coasts.

I remember it almost as clearly as I do 9-11...

I've been an avid fan of NASA since I watched Neil Armstrong take that one step for all of us. I was walking to a computer class at the local community college...it was foggy, light drizzle, and cold. A girl that I didn't even know told me that the shuttle had exploded.

Walked into class and there it was on the TV... Over and over again, we got to watch the deaths of seven astronauts...

Deaths will occur in our slow climb to the stars, but I don't ever want to have to watch it on TV again, over and over and over...

Originally posted by seagull
Deaths will occur in our slow climb to the stars, but I don't ever want to have to watch it on TV again, over and over and over...

True, that's a bad feeling. But I'm not sure we saw their deaths on TV, my guess is they were still alive during this footage, though some have proposed that they were rendered unconscious from the blast. I'm not so sure about that, but death probably occurred when they hit the water, which is out of the field of view of the videos.

If they were alive and conscious during the descent, that was the longest minute of their lives I'm sure. If I had to die in a shuttle accident I'd rather die in this one than the one that burned up on re-entry, somehow that one seems more unpleasant. And to think that both tragedies may have been prevented with better management at NASA is the most unpleasant of all.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


That only makes it worse, in a way... That's a horrible way to die. The only mercy would be that they were, hopefully, unconscious during that long fall to the sea.

If they weren't...I really, really don't want to know about it. That's the stuff of nightmares. I'll stick with my belief, correct or not, that they died in the initial explosion.