Astronauts: The Columbia Disaster

On the morning of January 28th, 1986, Americans watched in shock and horror as the space shuttle Challenger exploded only 74 seconds after its launch, killing all seven crew members on board including a high school teacher Christa McAuliffe. Thousands, including families of the crew and schoolchildren

Rhetorical situation is connected with the catastrophe of shuttle "Challenger" of January 28, 1986. In the beginning of the mission STS-51L the spacecraft exploded on 73 seconds into the flight, causing the death of all seven crewmembers. The shuttle disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean near the central part of Florida peninsula.

On January 1986, the Challenger Shuttle blew up shortly after it took off. The accidents took seven lives including aerospace engineers, the specialties pilot, and scientists. The tragic accidents occurred 73 seconds after the flight and caused by the fuel leak from one of the two Solid Rocket Boosters. The explosion represented one of the most significant events in 1980s. However, 17 years after the explosion of the Challenger Shuttle, the Shuttle Colombia also had an in-flight explosion leading to the loss of seven lives.

The Challenger space shuttle exploded after its launch. “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,” (Reagan 1). The obstacles of the Challenger exploding caused a period of grief and anguish for the citizens of America.

The case study of the two shuttle disasters, the Challenger occurred on January 28th 1986, and the Columbia occurred on February 1st, 2003. Both majestic and yet mournful due to the loss of life on both mission. The Challenger shuttle flight, OV-099 mission STS-51-L, broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of all crew members which included five astronauts and two payload specialists. The Challenger disaster was especially traumatic because young students watched television that were placed in their classrooms so they could watch the launch that day. It was fascinating that a school teacher was on-board as a payload specialist (NASA, 1986.) With a school teacher aboard the flight, it had sparked many interests because at several at young age, understood that education was vital as to why there was such a failure and prevent future disasters.

In 1986 when the space shuttle Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center people watched in awe for a little more than a minute before the shuttle exploded in flight. This was the first of only two major accidents that occurred during over two decades of NASA’s shuttle program and many would consider it to be a fluke that could not have been prevented or predicted. In truth the Challenger disaster was an accident waiting to happen and was a symptom of systemic problems that were occurring at NASA during that era. The 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster was cause by a number of factors including structural failure of the shuttle, a change in NASA’s work environment from the days of the

The Space Shuttle Challenger and the Coulmbia Accidents present the risks involved with spacecraft. Both disaster were different outwardly.

On April 10, 1975, Nasa discovered a long, spooky, undesirable creature looking at a spacecraft landed on Neptune. Nasa believes that the creature was unhappy and looked threatening. People from all over the world realized that Voyager (An Astronaut), is the one who travelled on that spacecraft but came back to Earth on a different spacecraft. Anyways, Voyager reports Nasa that the alien looked like a dangerous alien with red eyes and was bold. Voyager also states that the creature was wearing a black and red tuxedo which he couldn’t see that well because the creature wore a huge blue coat over it.

On 1st of February, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia exploded when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after finished a 16 days mission in space. All seven astronauts were dead because of this incident. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had stopped the space shuttle program for more than two years to investigate this tragedy. In the 16 days period, the astronauts did approximately 80 experiments on different categories, for example, life science and material science [1]. An investigation later has found out that the disaster was caused by a problem on the day that took off on 16th of January.

While driving frantically through the lush farmland of the Livermore Valley to rescue a 9-year who, along with her classmates had just witnessed the destruction of the Challenger on live television, the question of why was all consuming. Growing up in the sixties and witnessing the moon landing led many to believe NASA was infallible. However, nearly twenty years before Challenger, this proved untrue, as the dangers of space travel were tragically demonstrated when the crew of the Apollo 1 died in an onboard fire during a test run (Howell, 2012). Following the Challenger tragedy, President Reagan (1986, para. 8) stated, ‘We will never forget them, nor the last

The artwork above are pictures of different settings from the book, Almost Astronauts: 13 women who dared to dream. The picture at the top left is Eileen Collins in a space shuttle preparing for a launch into space. Like the book’s setting, my picture also shows Eileen getting dressed properly. She was the first woman to command a space shuttle. The picture on the top right shows a woman caring for her child. The book’s picture also explains that women in the 1960’s had to do all the household chores while caring for their families. My image expresses the same idea about women in the 1960’s. On the middle left, you can see a person in a space centrifuge. A space centrifuge is a piece of equipment that rotates with extreme speeds on an axis.

The Challenger has had a total of 10 space missions. Including the Challenger Tragedy. The first ship was the STS-6 spaceship. It was launched on April 4, 1983. The mission was to deploy the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) into orbit. There were 4 people on that spaceship. Their names were Paul J. Weitz, Karol J. Bobko, F. Story Musgrane, and Donald H. Peterson. They landed on April 9, 1983.

"What do Astronauts Eat in Space?" starts with a key point of what kinds of meals astronauts can eat. These space explorers experience limited meals due to no access to kitchen utensils, via ovens, refrigerators, and cutlery. During space adventures, astronauts only consume dehydrated foods. In order to develop more tasteful powders and meals such as ice cream, fuel cells are placed into the water-deprived foods. Because this dehydrated food can become dangerous if tiny parts of it breach the shuttle's instruments, scientists must take precautionary measures, like eating tortillas rather than bread.

One of the greatest tragedies in history occurred on January 8, 1986. Shortly after it was launched, the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire schoolteacher chosen to be the first teacher in space (“Challenger Disaster, n.d.). The explosion was caused by a failure of the O-rings of the solid rocket boosters. The O-rings were unable to seat properly, causing the leaking of hot combustion gases, which burnt through the external fuel tank. The malfunction was not any one person’s or organization’s fault; it was caused by many factors including the decision to launch despite the cold weather, the poor communication between management levels of the National Aeronautics and

Rockwell, the shuttle’s primary contractor, did not support the launch due to the possibility of ice leaving the structure and damaging the thermal shield tiles during takeoff. Their concerns were relayed to NASA, but in such a way that NASA chose to proceed with the launch [2]. Though this was eventually determined to be a non-issue in the Challenger launch, the true nature of the problems that can occur when an object strikes the shuttle during takeoff would not be learned until 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry due to damage of a heat shield tile that occurred during takeoff [2]--[3].