Challenger: The Final Flight

There it goes. I see it in between the trees.

There it goes. It's comin' way over top the trees, isn't it?

- Uh-huh. - That's brighter than usual.

Yeah, it is.

- Well, that's it. Oh, yeah! - Yeah!

- Right over those trees! - Oh, yeah, there it is.

I don't remember it being that bright and big.

I don't either.

What was that part? That must've been one of the boosters.

Oh, look! There's two. It's going off into two...

Hey, is that trouble, or not?

What?

They're not having trouble, are they?

I don't know! I ain't never seen anything like that.

That didn't look right. That's trouble of some kind, George.

I don't know.

They got troubles!

Again, I repeat, we have a report that the vehicle has exploded.

Listening to the announcer,

that's when we knew something really horrible had happened.

That there's no going back.

That…

That it probably wasn't survivable.

Christa's husband, Steve McAuliffe,

his eyes met mine.

I didn't have an answer.

My son, who was a pilot engineer himself…

We didn't have answers.

And I turned and kept looking.

And I thought, "This is not gonna be good."

But, I said, "They're okay, they're trained to land.

They're trained for emergencies. They'll go land over here. It'll be okay."

I remember Rich Scobee said,

"If there's any way my dad can get everybody out of it, he will."

He had total confidence in Dick to do that.

I remember coming down and just running as quickly as I could

'cause I wanted to reach the crew quarters to help out the families.

I was just saying, "Dick, Mike,

El, Ron, Judy, Greg, Christa."

That's... that's what was going through my mind.

Fido, can we get any reports from recovery forces?

Stand by.

We'd had no idea if the orbiter was intact, we had no idea where it was,

or what it might… What kind of condition it might be in.

I never even tried to make a call to the Challenger crew.

We had no way of helping.

We are now looking at all the contingency operations

and awaiting word from any recovery forces in the downrange field.

Staring out at that contrail,

I just felt tears start welling up.

And I remember having to really grip my legs hard

and say, "Leave this. Think about this later."

And I, you know, kinda shook my head and started typing again.

When the Challenger exploded, none of us knew.

We weren't savvy in what it was supposed to look like.

A teacher started yelling, "Stop! It exploded!"

And then it was just, like, a hush.

We all just sat there in awe about what had taken place.

Dad put his hand in his face

and sobbed, sobbed, and sobbed.

I noticed in front of the room, that the senior engineer got up and left.

And I left a little bit after him. And I went down to his... his, uh…

I went down to his office, and he was in tears.

And I was in tears.

And it seemed that there was no question in either one of our minds that, uh…

that what we had feared had come to pass.

And we just felt terrible about it.

There's Larry Speakes in the White House Briefing Room.

The President is concerned. He is saddened.

He is, uh, very anxious to have more information on it.

At the moment, as I say,

we're learning most of our information from what the public is getting.

In unison, everybody takes off

and runs towards the press dome,

which is where the NASA public affairs folks are.

By the time I get there, I mean, it's an absolute chaotic…

event going on and nobody knowing what to do or what to say.

And NASA public affairs was, like…

Nobody planned for anything like this.

They took us on a bus to the crew quarters.

And, sitting in that bus, we stopped at a stop light.

Around me, everywhere on the streets, people were parked,

out of their cars on major thoroughfares.

Some people were at the steering wheels, weeping.

Some people were out banging on the hood of their cars.

I knew... I knew something really, really bad had happened.

There are rescue ships and other vehicles now, other helicopters,

other vessels are attempting to find out what they can.

The silence is deafening.

There is no word from NASA, no word from the rescue vehicles,

no word whatsoever on what may have happened.

First thing everybody wanted to know was what caused the accident.

So it was a mad rush to try to get experts to tell you what could've gone wrong,

what are some of the likely candidates.

In slow-motion now.

To my eye, at least, it appears that the entire external tank just came apart.

Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say something with the main engine,

since that would be the high probability, but that could be totally wrong,

and it'll take a lot of numbers crunching and data analysis to really sort it out.

It was what, uh, engineers call a catastrophic failure.

Several things had to go wrong at once,

and from the looks of those tapes, that was certainly the case.

The shuttle had a telemetry stream that was really unbelievable.

I mean, they had enormous amounts of data

all the way up to the moment they lost the orbiter.

So we were waiting for NASA to tell because they must know

what happened, or have a pretty darn good idea.

J.C., all operators, contingency procedures in effect.

They locked the doors to keep people out.

And then, for the next four or five hours,

we sat there and tried to go back through everything we'd seen,

just trying to figure out if there had been

anything that we could have seen and prevented.

We had to collect all the documentation

of everything that we had done, said,

or thought, or knew before we could leave the control center.

Okay, everybody, stay off the telephones,

make sure you maintain all your data, start pulling it together.

The first comment came by was that "anybody that's at a console

must not change the screen. It must be left where it's at."

And that all of this data is going to be treated as secret-level.

No one can leave the room. Not even to go to the bathroom.

No one can use a telephone.

And they made it very clear

that no one should be talking to the press.

We pulled up to crew quarters. We all stepped into the lobby,

and there was the announcers for NASA. NASA reporting.

And, you know, it's obvious… They were saying it was an obvious disaster.

Obvious total loss of the orbiter, the crew.

"Obvious."

Um…

And…

that was confirming.

I knew… they were all gone.

Not all the crew members' families really understood

that their crew member is not coming back,

even though that was pretty obvious. But not all of them understood that.

I had seen Ron come through difficult times before

and I, for some reason, um…

Yeah, I thought he was gonna make it somehow.

The NASA official, George Abbey,

came out and looked at all of us,

including parents, and children, all brought together in the same room…

and he said, "No one could've survived. No one could have survived."

I had heard that and I remember just…

…like, hyperventilating, 'cause, up to that point, I thought,

"Well, surely they're..." I mean, here's me, like, optimi...

"Surely, they're floating somewhere.

Like, surely somebody figured out how to get them out of there."

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

This wasn't the end of the story.

Well, the doctor said, "Can I give you something for your nerves?"

And I told her, "I am not nervous.

If you give me something for heartbreak, I will take it.

I will take it.

But I'm not nervous."

I went into Dick's room by myself, so that they couldn't see me.

And I reached over to his closet, where his clothes were hanging,

and hugged his clothes, all hanging in that closet.

And picked up his briefcase and opened it.

I saw his astronomy maps

and I saw a Valentine card,

"To my wife."

January the 28th, he was already prepared to come home and give me a Valentine.

Mr. Vice President, can you tell us further details about the shuttle?

- Were you briefed on this? - No. No more than anyone else knows.

- A terrible tragedy. - How would you react to this?

Great concern for the families. I really don't have any detail on it.

Vice President Bush flew down to the Cape to meet with family members

that same day, along with Jake Garn, who had flown on the space shuttle earlier.

Jake Garn was a senator from Utah who bumped Greg from his first flight.

So that was hard for me to see Senator Garn there.

At that time, I think… I believe I walked out of the room.

I regret that I have to report,

that based on very preliminary searches of the ocean where the Challenger

impacted this morning…

these searches have not revealed any evidence

that the crew of Challenger survived.

The American space shuttle Challenger exploded 60 seconds into its flight.

…obliterated the shuttle Challenger...

My heart sort of stopped beating, you know, just feel for the families,

you know, 'cause that school teacher, you know, was involved in it and,

you know, it's just a really, you know, terrible thing to happen.

Seven really brilliant and beautiful people got killed.

I was shocked.

Reminded me a lot of President Kennedy's death in '63.

I don't know where the analogy comes, but it was a national tragedy.

Many schools had broadcast the launch,

and it was horrible for the kids.

We felt connected to it.

Like, "That's us! That's a teacher!" We were invested.

And for many, it was the first dealing of death.

It was somewhat of a loss of innocence.

Just… She was just really special.

It's hard.

Well, I was really amazed to see it

'cause I never thought an explosion would really ever happen.

I felt as if, um,

my whole body blew up inside when I saw that.

And I can, just, never be as shocked as I am now.