Challenger: Final Flight on Netflix...

[SteyrAUG]

A lot of this forum remembers watching it live, probably in school when they were younger. It was out 9-11 moment before 9-11 happened.

It's one of those things you remember so vividly, that you really didn't want to see the footage again. Time doesn't heal all wounds and I wasn't sure I wanted to watch a 4 part documentary but I was able and it was pretty comprehensive.

Happened at a time when "truthers" didn't exist so there weren't any "Reagan had to destroy proof of alien contact" nonsense stories, it was simply a national tragedy. I'm sure somewhere there were small groups of misguided retards who cheered the event for some kind of social / political reasons but the media didn't give them any face time.

Investigative journalists did go after the cover up story, but in this case one actually existed and even though NASA exercised gross negligence in the form of hubris, it was simply a matter of getting the truth out regarding a known engineering defect that took second consideration to launches on schedule the the PR motivation of "put a school teacher into space."

There are of course many hard to watch moments, guys who tried to do the right thing but were overruled by committee and the realization that it was a completely preventable tragedy. But if you have any interest in the Challenger event or the space shuttle program it is definitely worth the time.

Learned some things that I didn't know and more importantly got to see the people side of things.

[flenna]

I remember clearly as we always watched the shuttle launches in school, another point of long lost American pride. We were watching when it blew up and the classroom went so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Everyone was shocked and upset.

[Artos]

I was in my Jr History class & it was almost like they were becoming boring to everyone else but me...I was fascinated with the program. Anyway, most all the class was goofing off, I let out an 'Oh Shit' & Mr Walters wasn't able to see the TV & thought I was goofing off myself as I was known to do. Then silence.

I saw a doc where the only person to not sign off on the flight was the actual mfg of the seals that blew & he warned them not to launch in the temps they were seeing that week...said it was the best decision of his entire life as you could imagine.

[Firefly]

There was a second space race of sorts in those days. I remember being a kid and seeing it blow. Nothing you could do.

Columbia’s doomed re-entry was the final nail for America’s Space faring status as we knew it.

I firmly believe that had we pushed through it and not wasted our money on project homes or foreign aid; we’d be on Mars by now with something to show for it.

That said, even as a kid, Reagan’s speech was awesome. I even remember the Punky Brewster episode.

[Diamondback]

There was a second space race of sorts in those days. I remember being a kid and seeing it blow. Nothing you could do.

Columbia’s doomed re-entry was the final nail for America’s Space faring status as we knew it.

I firmly believe that had we pushed through it and not wasted our money on project homes or foreign aid; we’d be on Mars by now with something to show for it.

That said, even as a kid, Reagan’s speech was awesome. I even remember the Punky Brewster episode.

Columbia was another Institutional Negligence, and frankly the Shuttle program was buggered from the minute they chose to put a corner-cutting proof-of-concept vehicle with next to no safety margin into regular service. The concept was good, but we ouldn't have lost fourteen good men and women if they'd done the proper engineering work and added the planned flyback jet engines and other measures before building the production vehicles.

This is the same regret the previous generation had when that criminal waste of viable organs Proxmire spiked Apollo so he could loot NASA's budget to turn into handouts for his buddies. Gee, I wonder what other D-bag shitstain recently that sounds like?

[Renegade]

"Obviously A Major Malfunction".

Words forever etched in my memory.

[chuckman]

A lot of today's top safety programs came straight from that event, risk management, Swiss cheese models, all of that.

I went to a lecture given by a famed physicist who was on the investigation panel, his last name was Feynman, He talked about the investigation from beginning to end, we were captivated.

[jsbhike]

Happened at a time when "truthers" didn't exist so there weren't any "Reagan had to destroy proof of alien contact" nonsense stories, it was simply a national tragedy. I'm sure somewhere there were small groups of misguided retards who cheered the event for some kind of social / political reasons but the media didn't give them any face time.

Going to go out on a limb and say if they had used the event to pass a law on 15 March 1986 indicating the way to keep it from happening again was to vastly increase .gov reach/more control of citizens there would have been plenty of people doubting the claimed good intentions.

[SteyrAUG]

There was a second space race of sorts in those days. I remember being a kid and seeing it blow. Nothing you could do.

Columbia’s doomed re-entry was the final nail for America’s Space faring status as we knew it.

I firmly believe that had we pushed through it and not wasted our money on project homes or foreign aid; we’d be on Mars by now with something to show for it.

That said, even as a kid, Reagan’s speech was awesome. I even remember the Punky Brewster episode.

I remember standing in my front yard and being able to see the remnants of Columbia. When I learned foam tiles were the cause I began to wonder how they imagined any of these people might live on any shuttle mission.

[SteyrAUG]

A lot of today's top safety programs came straight from that event, risk management, Swiss cheese models, all of that.

I went to a lecture given by a famed physicist who was on the investigation panel, his last name was Feynman, He talked about the investigation from beginning to end, we were captivated.

If you enjoy Feynman, you want to see this series. Reagan initially wanted to try and maintain the image and integrity of NASA's image, Feynman was key to making sure that didn't happen.

"Obviously A Major Malfunction".

Words forever etched in my memory.

Understatement of the 80s.