Lori Bockhorst: A Short Story

January 28, 1986, marks the day of the Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion. A day that will go down in history as a horrible tragedy for both NASA and America. Seven lives were lost that day, including the life of a high school teacher from New Hampshire. Former President Ronald Reagan was tasked with explaining this tragic event to the US people. Because of this, Reagan postponed the State of the Union Address and spoke about the Challenger Explosion instead. In his address to the nation about the explosion of the space shuttle, Challenger, President Ronald Reagan effectively commemorates the loss of the Challenger crew while also celebrating the crew’s achievements and encouraging further space travel by establishing pathos through his show of empathy, employing strong positive connotation, and alluding to the great explorer, Sir Francis Drake.

On January 28, 1986, the United States eagerly watched as the Challenger Space Shuttle launched from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral Florida. On board were seven crew members to include a teacher from New Hampshire. Within 73 seconds after liftoff the Challenger exploded, and it was followed by President Ronald Reagan's public national Challenger address. On this specific day, President Reagan had arranged to deliver the State of Union Address, but instead he spoke to the nation about the tragedy that just unfolded in front of millions of Americans eyes. President Reagan's Challenger speech offers encouragement and solace to all who was impacted and watched, he also commended the bravery of the seven heroic crew members while reassuring future space exploration.

On January 28, 1986, Ronald Reagan, comforting and empathetic in his speech entitled “Speech on the Challenger disaster”, facilitates the mourning process of the American people following the Challenger Disaster. He is able to accomplish this by connecting on a personal level with everyone affected by the tragedy: the school children, family of the deceased, and the entire American population. In addition, he explains specifically addresses the children with lessons to be learned, and how to move forward. Finally, He applauds NASA for their hard work and commitment to the space program. Through Reagan’s use of empathy, optimism, and composure, he effectively persuades America that we can mourn together and there is a bright future ahead of

The space program was exciting news back in 80’s. However, watching the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster was especially difficult. It was a sad time, not just for Americans, but for all people interested in what we could learn from the space missions. This speech expresses ethos throughout, and President Reagan reached out not only to America, but acknowledges the children of that time period as well. He wants them to understand that something ill has happened, yet he is encouraging them to be understanding, and strong. With his words, I believe he was helping our future to become stronger from the

Lastly, Laura shared the historical event that she remembers vividly, the 1986, space shuttle challenger. It was part of a program called TISP (Teacher in Space Project), started by President Ronald Reagan; schools were interested and made their students watch the launch live on tv. It was meant to inspire and help children in math and science programs. The shuttle was taking off from the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, about 11:40 a.m. on January 28. As Laura states: “We all did the countdown, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Blast off!” When the rocket went up in the air, she says, “We all sat there watching the tv amazed that the rocket was taking off with a high school social studies teacher on board”. “While the radio tower was saying that all was good”, Laura narrates, “the shuttle split in half with an explosion. The radio tower reported a major malfunction, where all the crew was

In the year of 2003, on February 1, a tragic accident had occurred in the atmosphere above Texas as the space shuttle called Columbia was on it’s way to land at the Kennedy Space Center. The shuttle itself was on its 28th mission and was just one of the five space shuttles that was used amongst NASA. But on this particular day, it wasn’t like the rest because astronauts are supposed to return home safely; that’s not what happened on this day. There were seven astronauts that were inside the shuttle. Their names were Rick Husband, David Brown, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, William McCool, Kalpana Chawla, and Ilan Ramon. They had all died in an explosion within the shuttle itself.

In conclusion, the book Last Flight, by Amelia Earhart, portrayed a critical moment in American History; traditional viewpoints were challenged, aviation became ingrained in the American culture, and women became major players in the ‘American Dream.’ Amelia Earhart’s accomplishments have jarring similarities to Valentina Tereshkova –the first woman in space, orbiting the earth forty-eight times. She put the previous four American astronauts – all male – to shame with their combined total of thirty-six. These

And so was the world. This was such a bad idea. That the world kicked her out and sent her to space. They gave her a sucky space ship. A sucky space food supply. This was bad she had already not ate for a week. This also affected her reactions to things.

At the beginning of the twenty-first episode of CBS’s television series Men into Space, Colonel Edward McCauley, played by actor William Lundigan, presents a powerful, but human side to space exploration: "No matter where he travels, one thing will always be the same: man himself. Human nature will not change in the strange outposts of space. There will always be love and hate, courage and fear.” Yet, in 1960 when the program first aired, the Astronauts were not the ones who experienced the thrill of Space, but rather the 180 million Americans ingrained with an utter sense of awe, fear, excitement, and admiration at the possibilities of space travel in the future. The emerging television culture of the 1960s enabled Americans to experience

In January of 1986, the Spacecraft Challenger was ready to launch. Challenger was a large spacecraft that was fueled up and ready to go. On the day of the launch, as Challenger was launching the spacecraft exploded and seven people died. In 2003 a Columbia Spacecraft was returning to earth when the shuttle malfunctioned and blew up causing the death of seven crew members. In space camp in Alabama kids and teenagers are learning how Space worked and the robotics that go along with it.

“Rominger also spends some of his time educating today’s youth. He spent an afternoon at Club Heights Elementary talking to students about his career in space. The young students were very eager and anxious to learn more about his space career as they looked at his pictures from space. The students were very excited when they got to ask him questions about his career.” (http://www.standard.net/Education/2015/03/18/Astronaut-Wows-Students)

In the beginning of an unusually warm spring, a little girl was born into a family of carpenters. The first signs of her oddness were shown in her appearance. While all her grandparents and parents had dark, thick hair and piercing black eyes, she had pale blonde hair with light gold eyes. Everything about her was opposite of the dark, so her parents chose the name Elaine, meaning shining light.

This book is an autobiography that explains the origins, accomplishments, and the struggles of Astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield. As a young boy, he showed great interest in aviation and space. He then showed strong desire to become an astronaut, and described how he had reached that goal. Everything he did in school and outside of school were related to the aviation and space. It was a way of basically giving himself the preparation and education needed to the ready for this certain type of career.

On October 4th, 1957, Spunick 1 was the first artificial satellite to be launched into outer space by the Soviet Union. On April 12th, 1969, Yuri Gagarin was the first person to orbit the earth in a space capsule called Vostok 1. On July 11th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to take foot steps on the moon through the Apollo 11 mission. On February 14th 1990, the Voyager 1 space probe took a picture of the earth from a distance of 6 billion kilometers, the farthest anything man made object had ever been from home. Carl Sagan wrote a book with the same title stating: “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” These events, and many after them, are some of the most important and revolutionary in space exploration history. These events show why we should learn the importance of space exploration, why we should continue it, and why space is the final frontier.

The weekend of January 16th to the 19th of 1965 will forever go down as a monumental event. Seeing as though this year rings in the fiftieth anniversary of this event, it was widely talked about amongst Astronomy and Space Travel classes at the University. Maria arrived to lecture late on Friday January 17th to find her professor deep in conversation about the first time a group of friends had traveled to space together.………