Forty years ago, I was in NASA Mission Control Goddard Space Flight Center for the launch of contender. I was working in data communications. My job was to ensure all telemetry links between the space shuttle and NASA Ground Communications System (NASCOM) Were on. Everything on my board was green, the shuttle launched and a few seconds later, everything went dark. I looked at my controls, tried to reconnect things, and then finally my eyes fell on the TV display.
You know what I saw. We all saw it that day.
In schools across the country, students ranging from kindergarteners to high school were on hand to watch Sharon Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, launch into her classroom. Instead, they witnessed a tragedy.
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By 1986, space flight had become obsolete. Most assumed that the Space Shuttle could be counted on to launch flawlessly time after time. There were disasters there. But most Americans did not know about the parachute failure of Soyuz 1 or the disintegration of Soyuz 11.
Apollo 13? We got our astronauts back. Apollo 1? This occurred in a ground test and had little impact outside the scope of NASA.
The Challenger exploded before our eyes.
Later we learned that it could have been prevented. Roger Boisjoly, an engineer at Morton Thiokol, a manufacturer of solid rocket boosters, has written a memo predicting a potential “Disaster of the highest order” involving the booster’s O-rings.. This would create a real risk of “missing the flight”. Both Morton Thiokol and NASA ignored them and seven brave men died.
They won’t be the last.
On 1 February 2003 Shuttle Columbia breaks up on re-entry.
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Once again, technical problems, including problems with the external tank foam insulation, management mistakes, and poor internal communications resulted in the deaths of seven more astronauts.
NASA’s manned spaceflight initiative is doomed
Some people will say, and I can’t argue with them, that it was the end of the shuttle program and the American manned space program as well. Today, we still have Americans in orbit on the International Space Station (ISS), but they are hitchhiking on Russian spacecraft.
Long before that, NASA’s manned space flight initiative was doomed. Even when I worked at NASA in the 1980s, we were working with very old equipment. One of the tertiary communications links I monitored in 1984 was a 1950s telex line to the Bermuda Tracking Station.
Why? Because America never wanted to spend money on space once it won the space race to the Moon. NASA’s billions only seem big when taken out of context. NASA’s budget is a mere 0.5% of the federal budget.
Today, the future of manned space flight belongs to the private sector. If we ever get beyond near-Earth orbit, it will be because of companies like Jeff Bezos blue originElon Musk’s spacexand Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
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When, if, we do that, we will have more deaths. We’ll try to get it right, and sometimes we’ll fail.
The price of exploration is always paid in blood.
January 28, 1986, was one of the worst days of my life. But, if we ever have to leave this island Earth – and I believe we must to survive as a species – there will be more days like this. The price is high, but worth it.
Editor’s note: Steven Vaughan-Nicholls wrote this 10 years ago, and we’ve updated it in honor of the 40th anniversary.
