Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which killed seven astronauts and shattered the idea that space travel would be as routine as air travel is today. The whole thing is made even more poignant by the loss of the Columbia crew three years ago.So, what happened? Basically, bad management in the name of good PR. The shuttle shouldn’t have launched that morning, and flight techs and ground crews told NASA this. Still, the launch was greenlighted, and 73 seconds later, the first teacher in space and six other astronauts were dead.
The specific cause was quite simple and avoidable. A rubber O-ring that held one of the SRBs in place had cracked from the cold, and it began to leak. When it gave, the main fuel tank blew up and fell away, while the boosters kept going. This can be seen on the archival footage as two separate plumes of fire–one climbing and the other hurtling groundward.
The shuttle itself fell to the ground, largely intact, with the crew inside. It’s unknown how long they survived, but it’s unlikely their deaths were instantaneous.
I was twelve that day. I remember being home, although it was a school-day. I remember a collective hush falling over everything for a few minutes, then the news channels started interviewing everyone they could, and the finger-pointing started.
Even at that age, I could smell bullshit a mile away. The order should not have been given; the launch should have been delayed. Back then, TV was three network channels and a few UHF oddities, and CNN was still years off. Every station was tied up with round-the-clock reports and commentary. Everyone was taking this very seriously. This was my generation’s Hindenberg, and somebody was getting blamed. It was dimly ironic that Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan, two of the scientific community’s biggest dreamers, were among the first and most accurate in explaining why this happened, but they were drowned out in the incessant background noise of media commentary and beurocratic backpedaling.
These days, we’re used to the constant babble and background noise of round-the-clock 24-hour commentary. Back then, it was different, and it was all somehow overwhelming and numbing.
This was the Reagan years. The United States were the Good Guys, the Russians were the Evil Empire. Everything was simple and optimistic. We dreamed of Big Things. Space travel was going to be easy and routine, and soon we’d have cities on the moon–and we’d do it before those nasty Communists, that’s for sure.
Despite the hype, though, nobody ever mentioned one simple thing–people weren’t meant to live in space. The void of nothing is an inimicable and unforgiving place. There’s no air, no pressure, and the temperature hovers at just above 3deg Kelvin. All the time and money we’ve thrown away on the ISS, Skylab, Mir…all it’s proven is that, yes, we can live in space, but that it’s incredibly dangerous and expensive, and half the danger lies in just getting there.
And now, we’re talking about sending humans to Mars? That’s a minimun of 40 million miles, assuming best possible launch window. We take a risk just getting people into orbit, and we want to do this? Stop for a second and consider how long that’s going to take, and then consider the sheer number of things that can go wrong in that time. As Challenger and Columbia have proven, even the smallest hitch can be fatal. Imagine having something like that happen 20 million miles away, when there’s no way to help whatsoever.
The Challenger launch was pushed forth because PR depended on it, and it turned into a disaster for NASA. Imagine the fallout from a Mars launch gone wrong. I can only imagine the crippling financial burden, but even worse, imagine the public disappointment when an interplanetary spacecraft crashes on arrival. Or a rogue meteor pierces the hull in transit, causing depressurization. Or a simple software failure kills life-support. Or somebody just plain goes crazy during the trip from isolation. In case nobody’s noticed, we can barely keep robotic probes operating on the Martian surface.
Despite all this, I’m not against space exploration. What I’m against is human space exploration. It’s far too expensive, slow and dangerous. The shuttle costs an average of $500 million/launch (our tax dollars at work, folks). You can send fully operational robotic probes to the outer planets for 20% of that, and if they die, it’s disappointing but it’s not fatal. The Voyagers (which are still operational, BTW), Cassini, Galileo and the Mars Surveyor have done far more than humans ever could, and at a much more acceptable risk, both financially and morally.
It’s nice to dream big, and there’s something undeniably romantic about human spaceflight. But we’re just not ready yet, and there are better alternatives in the meantime.