When I first heard the news, I was walking out of a high school mid-term and eager to make my way home after the end of a half-day of school. When one of my classmates told me what happened, I didn’t believe it at first. The Space Shuttle ? Exploding ? Impossible. Then, I got out to my car and turned on the radio and the reality of the situation was made clear in seconds. It was gone, and so were the astronauts. I went straight home and spent the rest of the day watching television. This was in the day before cable news, so Americans were limited to what ABC, CBS, and NBC could give them and woke up the next morning to the tragedy played out on the front pages of America’s newspapers.
If you didn’t live through it, its hard to explain what it meant at the time. It was, in many ways, the mid-80s equivalent of September 11th — a national tragedy played out (mostly) live on television and a symbol of American might destroyed in the blink of an eye. Later investigation would reveal incompetence, bad design, and bad decision making on the part of NASA. There would be a commission appointed to investigate the tragedy headed by Neil Armstrong. Changes would be made and we would be told that things were different; only to find out 17 years later, almost to the day, that this was not the case. But on that day, all that mattered was the fact that the American space program’s near-flawless repuation had been forever changed and that seven astronauts were dead.
Perhaps understandably, much of the focus of today’s memorials will be on Christa McAuliffe, the schoolteacher. For example, the only story in today’s print edition of the Washington Post focuses almost exclusively on her family and community. There were six other men and women on that ship, though, and they shouldn’t be forgotten by history.
President Reagan was supposed to have given the State of the Union addess on the night of January 28th. Understandably, it was postponed. Instead, he addressed the nation from the Oval Office and delivered one of the great addresses of his Presidency:
Ladies and gentlemen, I’d planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.
(….)
We’ve grown used to wonders in this century. It’s hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun. We’re still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
(….)
I’ve always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute. We’ll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.
(….)
There’s a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, “He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.” Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake’s, complete.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”
The poem that Reagan quoted in the final lines of the address is called High Flight and was written by George Magee, a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. During the days after the Challenger disaster it acheived a new notoriety as it seemed to communicate what had happened in the skies above Florida:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds,–and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew–
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
I remember watching the speech as well as I remember the other events of that day. As he did on so many other occasions, Reagan found the right words to communicate what we were all thinking that night.
Others blogging about the anniversary:
Dr. Sanity — Pat Santy was flight surgeon for the Challenger mission and his post his riveting. (Hat Tip to Dave Schuler in the comments)
Mike’s Noise
Michelle Malkin
Technorati Tags: Space Shuttle, Challenger, NASA
