mcgeer%ji@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU (Rick McGeer) (01/28/86)
At 8:39 AM PST today, the shuttle Challenger exploded at about a minute into the flight. NASA is searching for survivors now. It appeared that the orbiter and external tank exploded completely: television pictures showed the SRBs moving away from a cloud of debris. Thus it appears that the first inflight disaster of the NASA space program has claimed the lives of six astronauts and NASA's first passenger. The disaster occured 17 years and 1 day after the Apollo I tragedy. -- Rick.
klr@hadron.UUCP (01/29/86)
After watching the videos of the explosion, there can be no doubt that there can be no survivers of the explosion. I am also fairly sure that the crew never really had a chance to know what happened. Perhaps this is best. Jake Garn was interviewed about 5 hours into this tragedy. I have nothing but respect for this man (now). He stated that he would not hesitate to go up on the next flight, even tomorrow. He also stated that although we must hold future flights till we determine what went wrong, he feels that the space shuttle program shuld and must continue. I am going to be collecting reactions to this tragedy that come in in net.space, and net.columbia, as well as the 2 FIDONET nodes that I operate. I hope to present these to Senator Garn later in the week. Sen your replies here, to me at my net address, or to Senator Garn's office directly. The Dream is (and must stay) Alive Kurt Reisler ..!seismo!hadron!klr