A Somber Anniversary

By Irwin Horowitz, 1-28-08

	Caption: STS-51L Official Portrait

Memories are tricky things.  I often can’t recall what I did last week, but can remember vividly what I was doing over two decades ago.  Of course, major historical events have a way of burning such memories into us.  No doubt, those who were alive at the time recall where they were and what they were doing on December 7, 1941 as if it were yesterday.  On November 22, 1963, everyone who was old enough can recount the horrors of what occurred on the streets of Dallas.  9/11 is a date that everyone reading this will forever remember.

January 28, 1986 was such a date.  At the time, I was just about to return to MIT for my final semester before graduation.  I had just taken part in a three week program during our Independent Activities Period in Arizona which included a stay at Lowell Observatory and a hike in and out of the Grand Canyon.  As my parents were celebrating their 33rd wedding anniversary in late January, I decided to go visit them at their south Florida condo for a week before heading back to Massachusetts.

NASA had spent the past several days trying to get the Space Shuttle Challenger off the ground, but a variety of weather related and mechanical delays had postponed the launch to that morning.  They were eager to get the shuttle into orbit as it was the first space mission with a school teacher on board, Christa McAuliffe. 

Overnight temperatures at the Kennedy Space Center dipped below the freezing point and icicles had formed on the launch gantry.  I turned on CNN early that morning, which was where I always turned to for space shuttle launches, and was watching the coverage.  They were discussing the unusually cold conditions at the launch site.  By 10 a.m. I had become convinced that another delay was likely, so I decided to watch a movie on my dad’s betamax.  I popped in a tape of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and was watching Richard Dreyfuss make first contact with Hollywood’s version of extra-terrestrial life forms.  The movie ended about 12:30 that afternoon, and when I stopped playing the tape, I watched in horror as I read the television screen, which was still tuned into CNN: “Space Shuttle Disaster.”

In the months that followed, we learned from the Rogers Commission (especially from Richard Feynman’s famous “experiment”) how the rubber O-rings in the solid rocket boosters were susceptible to the extreme cold temperatures that morning such that they did not provide a solid seal to prevent the hot gases from burning through the thin skin of the boosters.  We learned that the breakup of the vehicle was likely not sufficient to have killed the crew, who may or may not have lost consciousness due to the lack of oxygen at altitude.  We learned that they most likely were killed as a result of the sudden deceleration of the crew cabin upon impact in the Atlantic Ocean.  But mostly, we learned that exploration of the frontier of space and pushing the boundaries of science and technology still came with a heavy price, particularly when human judgments were factored into the decisions.

In some sort of macabre twist of fate, this particular week on the calendar has never been good for the folks at NASA.  Forty one years ago yesterday, the Apollo 1 fire claimed the lives of three astronauts.  This Friday we commemorate the 5th anniversary of the Columbia reentry disaster.  But today, I hope we each take a moment to think about Richard Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Reznik, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe and of their dream to open up the frontier of space.

My last semester at MIT passed in a fog.  I barely recall much of what happened over those four months.  The highlights, if you will, were when I received acceptances to five of the six graduate programs I had applied to, accepting the offer from Caltech, along with graduation day itself.  On that day, in the midst of a torrential downpour, the president of MIT, Paul Gray, announced that the building housing the Center for Space Research would be renamed in honor of Ronald McNair, who had received his doctorate there back in 1977.

It’s been 22 years now since I last watched “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”