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Days That Shaped America (2018) Season 1 Episode 1 - Challenger Disaster
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FunTranscript
00:00We have main engine start, four, three, two, one, and liftoff.
00:20This whole accident may well have been my fault.
00:25My God, there's been an explosion.
00:27It was the most shocking, numbing thing, and there are no words.
00:38I just lost a good friend of mine.
00:40We were all just staring in shock and bewilderment.
00:46These were people that were very close to me that were killed.
00:49This failure occurred for exactly the reason that we were concerned the night before the launch.
01:03That picture of the shuttle coming apart, it'll be with me forever.
01:07What the country's space agency has learned is that this is a difficult general time of year to try and launch a space shuttle.
01:27Patience has been a key element.
01:28Including the flight of Krista McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire.
01:34The first launch attempt for the Challenger mission was on Saturday, January 25th.
01:38I was assigned to be astronaut support personnel for the Challenger mission.
01:43We were the liaison for the crew.
01:45We would make sure that the shuttle was in shape to fly and make sure they were ready to go the morning of launch.
01:50I was originally scheduled to fly on Challenger in January of 1986.
01:56But my crew had switched places due to the first teacher in space program.
02:00That was a big deal.
02:02There was a lot more coverage on this mission because Krista was on it, the first teacher in space.
02:07For schoolteacher Krista McAuliffe, the beginning of the adventure of a lifetime is just around the corner.
02:12It just still doesn't seem real that I'm going to be able to go with these guys.
02:18I'm excited.
02:19Crewmates treat her like one of the gang.
02:21This was a little trek up to break the sound barrier with Dick Scobie, her mission commander.
02:26I was at Kennedy Space Center with my husband, Dick Scobie, the commander of Challenger.
02:32I was there to watch the launch.
02:35We lived in Houston.
02:37We had two children.
02:39I'd grown up with Dick becoming a pilot, a test pilot, and an astronaut.
02:44He was fulfilling an amazing dream, and he was finally going to get to go fly as the commander.
02:52Dick Scobie and I were in the Air Force together.
02:54We had both gone through the test pilot school.
02:57I got to know him, got to fly with him.
02:59He was a great pilot.
03:00He was a good friend.
03:01Dick Scobie asked me to be the family escort for the Challenger mission.
03:05The family escort is there to take care of the family ahead of the flight, make sure they get to the right places at the right time.
03:13And also, we had steps that we would take if something goes wrong.
03:17Protect the family, make sure that they got the kind of care that they needed.
03:22Being asked was quite an honor because it's a position of trust.
03:25The weather was not really great that day, but at the end of the launch window, they thought there might be a chance to launch,
03:33and they went to reset the count in order to launch.
03:36But they had inadvertently drained back some fuel, which meant they would not have enough fuel on board to get to orbit as they had planned.
03:44I then went to the crew quarters and was briefing Dick and the rest of the crew.
03:49I explained this to them.
03:51Everyone looked concerned, and on the other side of the table was Krista.
03:54She looked and said to Dick, what does that mean, Dick?
03:58Because she saw everybody kind of look concerned.
04:00Well, it means we'd be dead right now.
04:02I explained that we would try to launch again as soon as they could.
04:06The forecast is for several layers of cloud cover over the Cape tomorrow morning.
04:11We'll sit on the ground until we all believe it's safe to launch.
04:15On the 27th of January, the crew were so anxious, so eager to get on their flight, but it was postponed again.
04:29They ran into a strange problem when they tried to close the hatch.
04:35There was a tool that they were unable to remove, and by the time they got the problem solved, it was an hour and a half later, the winds had come up.
04:43So that mission was scrubbed.
04:45They rescheduled for the next day because the weather they thought would be okay the next day, though it was going to be cold.
04:52As the director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project, my responsibilities was to assure that our solid rocket motors met all of the safety factor requirements for flight.
05:05The first time we had seen data from the boosters in a launch was in January of 1985.
05:12The primary air ring had lost its seal for a very short time.
05:16We finally concluded that that was caused by the fact that that was the coldest launch that the shuttle had ever encountered up to that time.
05:25It was at 53 degrees Fahrenheit.
05:27After the launch scrub on that Monday, January 27th, I received a phone call from one of the fellows in the work for me saying that maybe as cold as 18 degrees at the opening of the launch window tomorrow morning.
05:44The recommendation was made not to launch below 53 degrees Fahrenheit.
05:50And what really surprised me was that NASA challenged the basis for our recommendation.
05:57The teacher in space made this kind of a hypermedia event because of the schoolteacher giving a lesson from space on the fourth day in the mission.
06:08And so that meant that if they launched any time after Tuesday, that that lesson in space would be on a Saturday after school was out for the week.
06:20So there was additional pressure for that.
06:23They concluded that it's okay to proceed on with the launch.
06:27I continued to argue saying, as you know, and I know that you're asking us to fly those solid rocket boosters in an environment they're never qualified to fly in.
06:40On the night of the 27th, that told me that he didn't think we would launch the next day and that we should tell all of our friends to go on home,
06:50that the flights were being delayed so much that he didn't want them to have to hang out any longer.
06:55When I asked him why, he said, it's going to be extremely cold tomorrow morning.
07:02We're being advised that we won't launch because of that reason.
07:12In the early hours before the launch, I'd just been there coordinating the preparation of the vehicle.
07:17At that time, as I came out, I saw ice formed all over the walkways, the order access arm that the crew walks on,
07:23as well as icicles hanging off of the launch structure itself.
07:27I was very concerned because the rocket blast during launch could dislodge them and they could strike the vehicle,
07:33which could damage the thermal protection system, the tiles, and cause it to burn up and be destroyed.
07:38I found my next two superiors up at the chain of command and I explained to them my concern and I asked about the launch commit criteria.
07:46And they said, well, people are going to look at that. Don't worry. Other people are taking care of that.
07:50You know, you just worry about getting the crew out there. With that, I went to bed.
07:53Florida citrus growers this morning are rushing to protect their crops from the potentially devastating freeze.
08:02Arctic air has forced temperatures into the teens and below throughout the south and well below freezing in Florida's citrus groves.
08:08On that cold morning, January 28th, I received a call at the little apartment where I was staying.
08:16Dick told me that they've changed it. We are going to launch.
08:20And I said, but I can see icicles hanging everywhere.
08:24And he said, well, they assure us they've knocked those icicles off, so we're going.
08:29So he said, I love you, bed. I love you.
08:32Those were the last words I heard from you.
08:35At Cape Canaveral, NASA will try again this morning to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger,
08:44which includes a trip into space for schoolteacher Krista McCullough.
08:48Monday's attempt was scrubbed by trouble with a door handle.
08:53I got to the Kennedy Space Center just before 6 o'clock in the morning, and it was 22 degrees Fahrenheit at the time.
09:00Even though I had recommended against the launch, I knew it was my responsibility to be in the launch control center
09:08to make sure that all the data that we were receiving from the solid rocket boosters was acceptable.
09:14I was absolutely shocked by all of the huge icicles hanging on the fixed service structure and on the vehicle.
09:22And I thought, no way they're going to launch this this morning.
09:25They'll stop the count and delay it because of all this ice.
09:30But when they came back to the mission management team,
09:33the only thing that was required was to assess the amount of ice that's actually on the external tank.
09:41If it's too much, it's a huge weight penalty and possibly become a debris issue for the orbiter.
09:47And that morning, they concluded that the actual ice on the external tank was within those guidelines.
09:54So they told the launch team that, as far as they're concerned, from an ice standpoint, it was okay to proceed.
10:08I arrived at the Kennedy Space Center with my cameraman, Steve, and my fiancé, Robin.
10:13Then, of course, we went right up to the press mound and right up to our trailer to, you know, get ready for the launch.
10:19Now, the focus for the Challenger launch was all about the teacher in space.
10:26The crew is going through the routine of having breakfast just before they take them out to the pad.
10:31This will be the second countdown for what's going to be known as the teacher flight
10:35because it will feature lessons to be taught a little bit later by Kristen McAuliffe, the schoolteacher from New Hampshire.
10:41So a lot of people around the country are going to be watching this one.
10:44This was different.
10:46The first civilian to fly, she was going to teach lessons in space.
10:49Outside of the very first shuttle launch, I'm not sure there was an event in the shuttle program
10:55that rose to that level of excitement and anticipation.
10:59There just wasn't.
11:00We had a bus that picked up the families to take us all to Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch.
11:18It was freezing cold.
11:20The weather channel was all about the freezing temperatures, icicles everywhere.
11:24I arrived with the families at the Kennedy Space Center.
11:30Seeing the ice out on the launch platform itself was a bit worrisome because we knew that ice could do some damage.
11:38I was anxious because they were so certain they wouldn't fly the night before.
11:44I felt the tears welling up in my eyes and I was concerned.
11:49I wanted to have a strong face for everyone, but it was a bright, crisp morning and we thought the sun will warm it all up and we'll be okay.
12:02We were joking around with the crew and they had been ribbing me beforehand because they knew this was supposed to be our launch on Challenger for our Space Lab crew.
12:18And I said to them, well, make sure you bring it back in good shape.
12:21We went in good shape so we can fly it in a couple months.
12:23And he said, yeah, don't worry, it'll be fine.
12:25And with that, we kind of shook hands and that was it.
12:26And here comes the flight crew now.
12:29Commander Dick Stobie, followed by mission specialist, E. Riff, Ron McNair.
12:36The pilot Mike Smith, followed by Krista McCall, a teacher in space.
12:40Ellison Onizuka and payload specialist, Greg Jarvis.
12:45Big smiles today.
12:48When we got the okay that everyone was go for launch, we would go with the families and take them up a stairwell
12:55to the top of the vehicle assembly building.
12:59John escorted us all up that staircase to get up on the roof, to stand out there where we could observe.
13:08Steve McAuliffe and his children, Scott and Caroline, were with my family.
13:13Krista's parents chose to be with the reporters.
13:15Right before the launch, all of the media, we would walk down to the end of this turn base
13:24and there was a little bit of a bay and everybody would watch the launches from there.
13:30My cameraman, Steve, he was up behind us on this big mound of earth
13:36that was sort of like a photo platform that NASA had for the photographers.
13:41I really thought that this was just going to be another one of the short days, cover the shuttle launch.
13:47That was our expectation.
13:56At the time of the launch, I was sitting at my console with my headset on
14:02watching the data from the solid rocket boosters.
14:05I was extremely tense because I believed that if these O-rings leaked,
14:10the whole vehicle would explode before it cleared the tower.
14:17I remember holding on to that rail with white knuckles.
14:21Is it going to launch? Is it going to launch?
14:23This is a special report from Channel 4 News.
14:31Good morning. I'm Kent Shoknik and Space Shuttle Challenger
14:33is just a few seconds away from blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center
14:37near Cape Canaveral, Florida.
14:38Let's take a look right now.
14:4010, 9, 8, 7, 6.
14:45We have main engine start.
14:474, 3, 2, 1.
14:53And liftoff. Liftoff of the 25th Space Shuttle Mission
14:59and it has cleared the tower.
15:06I breathed a great sigh of relief
15:09because I thought we had just dodged a bullet.
15:14We cheered because it was finally launching.
15:18Bye, Christopher, my crew!
15:20It's very loud.
15:24The ground begins to shake.
15:26It's a powerful moment.
15:32Challenger going into its roar.
15:34That's planned.
15:41Engines at 65%.
15:43Three engines running normally.
15:44Three good fuel cells.
15:46Three good APUs.
15:47Velocity, 2,257 feet per second.
15:52Altitude, 4.3 nautical miles.
15:54Downrange distance, 3 nautical miles.
15:56T-DL confirmed.
15:57Engines throttling up.
15:58Three engines now at 104%.
16:00Challenger, go with throttle up.
16:02Challenger, go with throttle up.
16:09My God.
16:11There's been an explosion.
16:12Velocity, 2,900 feet per second.
16:14Altitude, 9 nautical miles.
16:15Downrange distance, 7 nautical miles.
16:16Standard.
16:17This is not something that is planned, of course.
16:20I can see a solid rocket booster has broken away from Shuttle Challenger.
16:24That's what you're looking at in the middle of your screen.
16:26I cannot see the shuttle itself.
16:28For a few seconds, we were all just staring in that kind of shock and bewilderment.
16:55Fly controllers here looking very carefully at the situation.
16:58Obviously a major malfunction.
17:01I hope they were able to survive.
17:02I hope the astronauts...
17:03We have no doubt.
17:04When I saw the pieces start to come out of the cloud of smoke, I knew that the crew was...
17:12They were lost.
17:13What appears to be a major catastrophe in America's space program.
17:18No word yet on if there are any survivors.
17:21It was just the most shocking, numbing thing.
17:24And I remember Steve McAuliffe's eyes looking at me, and there are no words.
17:31The f***ing thing exploded.
17:41My cameraman was still shooting, and I'm like, Steve, what happened?
17:45And he looks away from the eyepiece, and he looks at me, and he goes, it blew up.
17:52At that point, everything just sinks.
17:56NASA was giving the availability of a live feed into classrooms around the country,
18:02so a lot of kids, tragically, saw it.
18:07You stiffen up and become numb with fear.
18:14We're sheer, raw fear.
18:17What is happening?
18:20We didn't know if they had been able to rescue their orbiter and fly to a safe landing.
18:28And you're just hoping and praying.
18:30Hoping and praying, that's what's happened.
18:33This is unheralded in the history of the space program.
18:45Ladies and gentlemen, I have covered the space shuttle launches since the very first launch,
18:51since before the first launch itself, going way back, and nothing like this has ever happened.
18:58Flight photo, go ahead.
19:00RSO reports, vehicle exploded.
19:02When it was clear that the vehicle itself wasn't flying, that it had come apart,
19:11and it was a catastrophic failure we just had, we just lost the crew.
19:16That was the most difficult thing for me.
19:19I had known them for quite some time, some over ten years.
19:22Mike Smith, for example, who was the pilot at the PLT.
19:25Alan Azuka, was Air Force.
19:27Judy Resnick, Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis, payload specialist, and Kristen McAuliffe.
19:32So I spent weeks helping them get ready for the flight and Dick Scobie.
19:37Personally, I felt terrible because I just lost a good friend of mine, yet I had to go into my family escort mode.
19:46And I knew what I was supposed to do, which was to move the families down the stairs to get in the van to go to crew quarters.
19:53Some of the children were crying and didn't understand what was happening, and we were trying to comfort them.
20:02As we were heading down the stairs, I was walking with Rich Scobie, Dick's son.
20:07He was a senior at the Air Force Academy, and he was asking me, do you think my dad's okay?
20:12And I said, no, Rich, I don't think there's any way they can survive.
20:16I said, you're going to have to be the man of the house now and take care of your mother and sister.
20:23And I really regretted saying that because that's a terrible responsibility to put on a young person.
20:30First thing I did was run right up to the press dome where the NASA public affairs people were.
20:45So as soon as I opened the door and walked in, I can see members of the media screaming,
20:50you've got to take us out to the landing site.
20:53And the NASA folks yelling back saying, we're not going anywhere.
20:57We don't know what's happened.
20:59NASA had never expected this.
21:03They never trained for this.
21:05And the public affairs officers were not prepared to deal with what ended up to be the loss of seven astronauts and a national tragedy.
21:25After the explosion, I could hear people sobbing in the background.
21:28Everybody was looking for data and looking at each other.
21:32Okay, everybody, stay off the telephones.
21:34Make sure you maintain all your data.
21:36Start pulling it together.
21:38The lunch director said that all the data at this point in time would be treated as secret.
21:45And announced that they were going to put together a team at the Huntsville Operations Support Center to investigate the accident.
21:53And they were all to report there the next morning.
22:03They were all to report there.
22:04Within minutes, John Casper and others had arranged for bus shuttles to take the families over to crew quarters.
22:15On the way over, no one was driving on the streets.
22:19The cars were parked in the middle of the streets.
22:22The cars were parked on curbs.
22:24People were all out embracing each other, crying.
22:27People had their head on the steering wheel, just sobbing into their steering wheel.
22:32When we stepped through the doors of the crew quarters, I heard a NASA select station saying,
22:39Major malfunction.
22:41No one could have survived.
22:44I finally went to the pay phone outside the press dome and got on the phone and called into Atlanta.
22:54And they put me into the control room right away with Tom and Tear.
22:58We have CNN's John Zarella, who is at the Kennedy Space Center, on the live line now.
23:03John, you could, I'm sure, see it from your vantage point, even nine miles down.
23:08Describe the scene there.
23:10Tom, it was just a situation where everything looked fine, and then all of a sudden it looked like a giant fireworks display overhead.
23:19I don't even recall whether Tom asked me much more than that because I didn't have a lot to offer.
23:25There wasn't anybody who'd come out and said, okay, this is what happened.
23:29This is what's happened to the crew. This is why it's happened.
23:32Nobody had any of these answers.
23:34Everybody's just stunned. They're in shock.
23:37It's a situation where people are just sort of standing around in, you know, just bewilderment at this point.
23:42And, of course, we're not getting any information from here any more than what you are.
23:49I was hurting so much I really wasn't very good at helping my children.
23:55But I didn't want them to see me fall apart.
23:58So I went into Dick's private room and shut the door and cried, cried, and cried.
24:08And in the closet were his clothes, still hanging.
24:13And I grabbed them and held onto them until I fell to the floor holding them.
24:21As I turned to go, I took Dick's briefcase out with me.
24:25There was a note in case of an accident.
24:30It was all about why space flight is so important and how it will benefit not only our nation but the entire planet.
24:38After reading the note, I felt some resolve that, yes, this is what it's all about.
24:44The bigger picture is what they're representing.
24:48And they're representing their country as space pioneers.
24:53Sometimes bad things happen, but we accept and we move on.
25:13We were informed there was a helicopter that was going to go out to the area where the debris was falling.
25:19And I was offered the opportunity to go, which I accepted.
25:22Are there any forces headed out that way?
25:24Yes, sir. They are on their way.
25:26When we arrived over the debris scene, we saw all forms of debris from tubes with insulation that were floating to bubbling rocket propellant.
25:35Nitrogen tetroxide looks like rusty kind of smoke, fuming nitric acid bubbling up through the water in different places.
25:40The nose cap to the external tank was floating and pieces of tile and other things floating on the water.
25:45It was not a great scene as you can imagine.
25:51It went through my mind, there but for the grace of God go I, and that while we were kidding about the fact that they took our vehicle,
25:58that had it not happened, it would have been my crew that was on board and not them.
26:09Vice President George Bush arrived here late in the day, heading a delegation bearing the nation's condolences to the families.
26:15You must try to understand that spirit, bravery and commitment are what make not only the space program, but all of life worthwhile.
26:30The flight back to Houston in the NASA airplane with the families is one of the hardest I've ever been on.
26:36Everybody was pretty much exhausted because we'd all been up early that morning and people had just lost their spouses.
26:46It was a sad time. There was some sobbing on the airplane going back as people recalled what had happened.
26:53I went to talk with June and her two children several times during the flight back just to try to be comforting and consoling,
27:00but there's nothing you can say that will make things better. You just got to be there with them and share their grief.
27:08There was a time where I just had to sit by myself and let the tears come out.
27:12I lost a close friend of mine and it was tough on all of us.
27:16We train awful hard for these flights and we train under every scenario that we could possibly imagine.
27:35There was nothing anybody could have done for this one. It just stopped.
27:38The space shuttle requires two of these solid rocket boosters attached to the external tank.
27:46Each one of these has three joints, each with these two 12-foot in diameter rubber O-rings to seal it in case any gas gets there to prevent it from escaping from the chamber.
27:57On the flight one year earlier in January of 1985 that we first observed a problem.
28:05The first O-ring called the primary O-ring had lost its seal for a very short time, allowing hot gas to get past it.
28:13It got stopped by the secondary O-ring and so it did its function.
28:17But if the gas passed the secondary O-ring, it could quickly burn a hole in the tank and the whole thing will explode.
28:24I remember the next morning at the Huntsville Operations Support Center, Larry Malloy, who was the manager of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster Project.
28:35He said, Al, he said, our director of engineering has been looking at some films, the Cape, and he says that he can see fire coming out of the side of one of your solid rocket boosters.
28:45I says, well, go find the camera looking at that same location at ignition of those boosters because I would believe if the O-rings leaked it would be in the first six tenths of a second from ignition.
29:00And he called back and says, we can see a puff, a big puff of dark black smoke that's at .678 seconds coming right out of the exact location we see this fire coming out later in flight.
29:18And my heart about sank when he said that.
29:22I quickly realized that this failure occurred for exactly the reason that we were concerned the night before the launch.
29:31I went back to my motel room to call my wife and my youngest daughter, Megan, answered the telephone.
29:43And she said, Daddy, when are you coming home?
29:46I didn't know what to say because she knew her daddy always came home after the space shuttle went out.
29:54So I said, I need to talk to mommy.
29:57So I talked to my wife.
29:58She suggested that I call my oldest daughter that was going to school at Boston College because she's very worried about me.
30:05So I immediately called her and I couldn't talk to her without, frankly, developing tears in my eyes and crying, telling her that this whole accident may well have been my fault.
30:19And I said, I can't help thinking about how we came so close to stopping it.
30:26And we didn't.
30:28It was one of the saddest times in my life.
30:30The best we can do is remember our seven astronauts, our Challenger Seven.
30:42Remember them as they lived, bringing life and love and joy to those who knew them and pride to a nation.
30:52It was a wonderful memorial service at Johnson Space Center.
30:55President Reagan spoke about the crew and gave a wonderful message about their sacrifice.
31:05We bid you goodbye.
31:07We will never forget you.
31:10It's tough when you're grieving for yourself and for your loved ones and for the loss of your love.
31:16But you're grieving for a nation.
31:17May God bless you all and give you comfort in this difficult time.
31:25A missing man formation flew over our really big group of people.
31:30One of the planes will fly up and out of the formation, representing the lost crew.
31:41And I thought, Kristen McAuliffe's lessons that were prepared for children everywhere were lost.
31:49And from that moment, I was determined the mission would continue and I would continue that teacher in space mission.
32:05After the accident, I couldn't get that image out of my mind.
32:08It's just burned into my memory, that picture of the shuttle coming apart.
32:13It'll be with me forever.
32:15Even occasionally waking me up in the early hours of the morning.
32:19Thinking about the crew and what were they thinking, what were they feeling, that's a hard thing to deal with.
32:25I had all these questions going through my mind about, okay, is this really what I want to do?
32:30Fly in the space shuttle and take the risk that I may not make it?
32:34And what about my family?
32:36If something happens to me, I can see what these families are going through, what the Challenger families are going through.
32:42And do I really want to put my family through that?
32:45This could be my family that's grieving.
32:49I am today announcing the formation of a presidential commission on the space shuttle Challenger's accident.
32:56The commission will review the circumstances surrounding the accident, determine the probable cause or causes,
33:01and develop recommendations for corrective action.
33:04And this commission will report back to me within 120 days.
33:14I had already knew exactly what had happened in the Challenger accident before this emergency meeting with the Rogers Commission.
33:21And Dr. Sally Wright asked Mr. Malloy, the manager of the Space Booster Project for NASA,
33:28that they'd heard some rumor that maybe one of the contractors had recommended not launching the Challenger because of the cold weather.
33:36Is that true?
33:37And I remember Mr. Malloy says, well, you know, we had a lot of concerns with cold weather,
33:40but Thakol told us to proceed on with the launch as planned.
33:46And after a couple of minutes, I couldn't restrain myself anymore, so I raised my hand and I said,
33:51I think this commission should know that Morton Thakol recommended not launching the shuttle below 53 degrees Fahrenheit.
34:01I knew I had to step forward and provide that information to the presidential commission because I recognized that we had two issues on the Challenger.
34:13One was the technical problem with the O-rings.
34:16We also had a problem with the decision-making process for launches.
34:20And if we did not correct that, there would be a high chance that we'll suffer another failure in the future, and I could not live with that.
34:28After explaining that, Dr. Sally Ride come running over to me and put her arms around me and said, that took a lot of guts.
34:37The general manager of Morton Thakol called me in and said, Hal, he said, you're no longer the director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project.
34:45It was March 7th. I got a call that one of the recovery vessels, who was a Navy ship Preserver, thought they had found the crew module.
35:01As soon as I arrived on Preserver, I went to the ward room and met with the commander, his executive, and then some of the divers that had dived that day.
35:08I asked then the captain if I could dive the next morning when dive operations commenced again.
35:16We got suited up, and we went in the water.
35:19We initially dove down. The visibility wasn't great.
35:21We were on the bottom for about probably not quite ten minutes, and we came across the translational hand controller from the shuttle.
35:28Next thing we do, we came to a boot with a foot still in it, and it was broken off right at the boot top.
35:32So we grabbed that, and we continued in the same direction, and it didn't go another minute or so.
35:37And then you could see coming out of the glooms basically the wreckage of the crew module.
35:43And you could see as we swam around it and looked in and were poking around, you could see remains of various crew members, some still in their seats.
35:52I just felt sad. It's just this wave of sadness, which I've never felt that about anything in my life.
35:58Eventually, we managed to recover enough of the material and remains of all the crew members.
36:10Recovering everything the investigators want to see, according to Captain Charles Bartholomew, could take months.
36:16Even though the debris is spread out over some 250 nautical miles, all the pieces apparently are there, and eventually they'll be inspected.
36:23Not only was this beautiful shuttle broken into pieces, but they were recovering their remains and trying to identify them.
36:32Uh, that was, that was so difficult.
36:42I had this vision that, that Dick came to me.
36:47I said, I want to go where you are.
36:49This life is not worth it. It's so hard.
36:52I can't solve these problems.
36:54I can't manage this grief.
36:56But, he said, it's not your turn.
36:59It's not your time.
37:01You have things left to do.
37:02All right. Then I'll have to, I'll have to manage.
37:10I stepped outside, and I remember thinking, after three months, I can real, I can feel a breeze over my skin.
37:18I was no longer numb and frozen.
37:22I felt tremendous joy.
37:25And, about that time, my daughter drove up with her baby.
37:30A little bouncing child came to me, and I thought, why did I want to leave this life,
37:40when there's so much life left in these children, in this grandbaby?
37:53By the time we got done looking at the, uh, physical evidence from the material that was found,
37:57we were able to tell a number of things.
37:59One, four air packs had been turned on, which means that they took actual action after the breakup occurred.
38:05So, they certainly were not dead.
38:08And, two, my personal belief is they were not conscious throughout the entire time as they plummeted to the water.
38:14Air is not enough to keep you conscious at that altitude.
38:16You would need oxygen.
38:18They did not have oxygen.
38:20They hit the water going approximately 180 knots, which is around 200 miles an hour or so,
38:24and they probably saw upwards of 125 Gs, so they were basically killed on impact.
38:30Had they had even a more rudimentary escape system, the crew, uh, you know, certainly had a high potential to survive.
38:38This caused, uh, a number of us, uh, a lot of concern.
38:41When the, uh, Rogers Commission found out I had been removed from my job because of the testimony that I gave before them,
38:55they had contacted our senior management, and I ended up getting reinstated to my position several months later to head up the redesign.
39:05As a result of the accident, NASA took nearly three years to redesign a number of systems.
39:11During that time, not only were the proximate causes of the Challenger accident dealt with and the escape system had been employed in the shuttle,
39:19but many other things that you could say were accidents looking for a place to happen were dealt with.
39:24As a result of the performance of those redesigned boosters, the astronauts felt it was the safest part of the vehicle.
39:31So the shuttle was made far, far safer, way beyond the O-rings.
39:38We used those things we learned to make things safer for crews in the future.
39:42And if you look at designs of vehicles today, they all benefit from what was learned back in, uh, Challenger back in 1986.
39:48So finally on March 13th, 1989, at long last, I finally got to fly, uh, my first time on, uh, on Discovery.
39:55The thing I remember most is when I landed and my not-quite-two-year-old daughter came running out to me across the tarmac,
40:03and I got out of line with all the crew and ran over to pick her up.
40:07And there's a great picture I still have is that she's running across the ramp as I scoop her up.
40:11After Challenger, I stayed with NASA and flew four flights on the space shuttle, which were wonderful.
40:18My first mission to space was in February of 1990.
40:22I'm glad I didn't give in to my fear of flying in space.
40:27I prayed a lot about it, and with the Lord's help I was able to overcome my fears of flying.
40:32And, uh, so I stayed there for 31 years. I worked in the shuttle program office.
40:38I was the director of safety for a while for the Johnson Space Center in Houston before I retired.
40:44Thinking about Dick now, I hope he would be proud of how I helped out his family.
40:50My prayer is that he'll be proud of me and-and what I've done.
40:53Two years after the accident, we built the first Challenger Learning Center to continue Kristen McAuliffe's mission.
41:06A Challenger Center is all about science, technology, engineering, math.
41:12It's an exciting opportunity for teachers to bring their students on somewhat of a field trip.
41:17They've continued to grow until there are 45 Challenger Centers and 10 more in different levels of being built, and they're located on three continents.
41:29It's tremendously rewarding.
41:42Oh, my gosh. Here we are.
41:4432 years since we went up here.
41:47It's been a long time.
41:51To step across the roof of the Launch Control Center, to look at the distance out there and recall, it helps to close the gaping wound that's still there.
42:06He meant the world to me.
42:09And there's the big mirror.
42:10Without risk, there's no new knowledge.
42:16There's no discovery.
42:18There's no exploration.
42:20No bold adventure.
42:22Spaceflight provides hope and new opportunities for not only our nation, but for the people of our planet.
42:29not only our industry and the preferences of not only our planet.
42:30We have teraz anything to listen as doable.
42:31We have nowerenarararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararishurgical às2e2e3,8s.
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