A nice mid-afternoon edition, whilst I delay work I should be doing.
I read this article online today. Regardless of what the accident reconstruction people find out, having to plan 8 funerals is too much for anyone. I can't imagine what this family is going through. And to be perfectly selfish, I don't want to.
In between the heavy story at the top, and the one to follow I give you (especially Joe, Dwight, and Tom) this. I still say Mike and I would have made a good Steeler's tandem.
This was another article that caught my eye. Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of this tragedy. Carnegie Mellon always took an extra moment to salute the astronauts due to Judy Resnik's association with the University. After reading the article, apparently I did not watch live action, though since I don't remember the footage cutting away, I still say that I did see it live. We were home from school on a snow day. My brother and I had been out sled riding and my mom called us in to warm up and watch the launch. The gifted program that I was part of in elementary school had been doing an in-depth study on the space program and this launch in particular since every teacher in America was pulling for Christa McAuliffe. The other 5 members of the crew, Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuke, Ron McNair, and Greg Jarvis can be seen in this picture of the 7. I still have a copy of this picture stashed among my childhood memories along with a mission patch.
The one thing that I didn't need to realize after reading the article is that the astronauts didn't die from the initial fireball. They lived for another 2+ minutes (possibly conscious, though no one knows) until the capsule hit the water at 200 G's of force. I didn't need to know that to remember them as heroes. I didn't need that piece of information for historical accuracy. Thinking that they had died instantaneously and not suffered was good enough for me. There are some records that don't always need to be set straight. Knowing that there were subsequently crushed to death instead of exploded is almost a matter of tomato/tomato for the general public. I'm sure NASA needs to know, but John Q. Smith doesn't. (Wow, the tomato/tomato joke doesn't work on paper.)
Well, not much else to report on, I guess. Just felt the need to vent after reading the "myth-busting" article on the Challenger, which some people call the Gen X/Y's Kennedy Assasination (everyone remembers where they were or what they were doing). 20 years. Wow.