re: Challenger: The Final Flight (Netflix)

Every O-ring from STS-2 to Challenger demonstrated joint failure. It’s kinda amazing how many astronauts lives were put into unnecessary danger.

But would Congress have granted NASA the 2 years they would need to fix the problem? (After Challenger it took 2.5 years to come up with a workable solution to the joint failure problem.) STS-2 was November 1981. The economy went into recession in 1982. Seems like any NASA administrator who requested a overhaul of the SRB would be laughed out or the building and Congress would pull the plug.

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There's officially 4 "Where were you when you heard?" moments: Pearl Harbor, JFK Assassination, Challenger, and 9/11.

Of those 4, it was the Challenger explosion that was most seen live because schools were supposed to be watching it live as it happened. Something like 20 percent of the U.S. population saw it live. Possibly only rivaled by the impact into the second tower on 9/11, but even that was hard to see because it was 9:00 in the morning and while NBC, CNN, etc. covered the second plane live, most people still hadn't heard about the first plane.

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I remember 9/11 also; I had my radio off as I was driving into work and was completely unaware of what I was arriving to hear about at the office. No one knew; we all thought it was a fire. They had the news up on the TV, so I saw the second plane hit.

Watching historical events like those is mind numbing.

I was still in school with 9/11. School was so cheap we didn’t have working TVs. We listened on the radio.


Got a little bit of education because of the rampant false reports the radio hosts had to sift through. In particular, reports of a car bomb at the State Department.

Taught me people are full of shite.

Still can't watch the launch/explosion in its entirety without tearing up.