# Space Shuttle Challenger - 25th Anniversary of the Tragedy **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 28, 2011, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/space-shuttle-challenger-25th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy/569283 "2011-01-28T09:51:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/space-shuttle-challenger-25th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy/569283/61 "2011-02-02T15:36:35Z")
I was staying at a friend’s place. He and his wife had gone to work and I was just getting breakfast when the wife called me and said “Turn on the TV!” I think that, for me personally, this was the first time “Turn on the TV!” heralded something bad happening to the country, but it wouldn’t be the last. ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/space-shuttle-challenger-25th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy/569283/62 "2011-02-02T15:54:00Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > You’re talking about the Personal Egress Air Packs (PEAPs), which were intended to be used for an on-pad egress. Most of the PEAPs could not be reached by the astronauts in sitting position, as the packs were located (for the front seats) on the back of the seats, although it is just barely possible that astronauts in the rear seats could have activated the PEAPs for those in front of them. However, the cabin went into a flat spin once it broke free, and with the dynamics it is unlikely that an astronaut, even if conscious, could have released himself from the restraints and reached forward. More likely is that the activation dials on the PEAPs (and other switches in the cabin) shifted upon impact with the water or another dynamic event on the way down. In all likelihood the astronauts were either unconscious, or conscious but stunned and hypoxiated during descent. They certainly didn’t survive or feel the effects of the impact at a couple hundred feet per second. > > Stranger I’m relying on internet cites for my information (dammit Jim, I’m a singer, not a physicist). According to Wikipedia (not, I know, the most rigorous of scientific sources) some of the PEAPs air supply was also used, in an amount roughly consistent with the length of descent. That source seems to be [this book](http://books.google.com/books?id=8X7ceB3QEWkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA245&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false) by one R. Mike Mullane, of whom I know nothing. No mention is made in the excerpt of oxygen consumption, so I don’t know where that comes from. There’s also the mention of the electrical system switches at Mike Smith’s position. Do you know anything of them? ---
**Author:** ![Philliam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/philliam/32/3011_2.png) [@Philliam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philliam)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/space-shuttle-challenger-25th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy/569283/63 "2011-02-02T19:12:03Z")
[quote=“Duckster, post:30, topic:569283”] It was my day off. I watched the launch. Then … The live broadcast was the only time ever that one could distinctly hear the voice on the loudspeakers where families of the astronauts state, “The Shuttle has exploded…” followed by a screen shot of one set of parents look at each other in bewilderment upon hearing/seeing what just happened. Unquote] Out on the West Coast, I was still asleep but my mom woke me up saying “something might have happened to the Space Shuttle”. When I saw the video I just knew… your heart just goes down to your stomach. A short while later, (days, a week?) I got a call from a friend’s firm in California asking if I would be willing to be on-call to be part of a team to search the debris field (back in the day I was a Marine Surveyor/Hydrographer). As a professional, I would have gone if needed, but I sure didn’t feel like it would be anything but a grim project. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Horizon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Blue\_Horizon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Horizon)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2011, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/space-shuttle-challenger-25th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy/569283/64 "2011-02-26T11:38:26Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6XfCfhGfk0w/hqdefault.jpg "Challenger Shuttle Disaster") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XfCfhGfk0w) Very moving tribute. Fitting music too. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2011, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/space-shuttle-challenger-25th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy/569283/65 "2011-02-26T12:29:09Z")
I was NASA-obsessed as a teenager. Though living in the UK, I had lived in Houston as a kid and knew several astronauts. I had walked inside the Shuttle prototype at Johnson Space Center, I had Shuttle food on display in my room. When I was 14 I persuaded my parents to put Shuttle wallpaper all over my room. That day I came home from school and was watching some crap TV or other when there was a newsflash, cutting straight to the fireball, then showing the disbelieving faces of the people in the crowd. Friends of my family, working for NASA, had been at the launch. I went into my room, in silence, and slowly tore the wallpaper off the wall. That strangely organic shape of smoke and fire, the contrail leading to a ball with two curling antennae coming out of it, haunted me for a while. I drew a huge poster-size picture of it in art class, listened for a long time to [Last Rendez Vous](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0e-hauJ1U) by Jean Michel Jarre, the sax solo for which was meant to have been played in zero G by Ron McNair, and eventually I was exorcised. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2022, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/space-shuttle-challenger-25th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy/569283/66 "2022-11-10T17:48:48Z")
Bumped. > **[Section of destroyed shuttle Challenger found on ocean floor](https://www.aol.com/news/section-destroyed-shuttle-challenger-found-172625020.html)** > > A large section of the destroyed space shuttle Challenger has been found buried in sand at the bottom of the Atlantic, more than three decades after the tragedy that killed a schoolteacher and six others. NASA’s Kennedy Space Center announced the... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/space-shuttle-challenger-25th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy/569283.md?page=3)