This Day in History

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

January 15

2009 - Miracle On The Hudson

Heavens! Is that really ten years ago?

It was one of those 'I remember where I was when...' moments for me.
I was looking after horses at the time and had just done a final check for the evening.
On getting into the car the 2100 news was on the radio and carried the first report of the accident.
My first thought was that it was going to be a repeat of the Air Florida Flight 90 accident in the Potomac on January 13th 1982.
Thankfully it wasn't to be.

[Gravdigr]

January 16, 2003



Space Shuttle Columbia, the first shuttle in space, lifts off on it's 28th, and final, mission. Columbia disintegrates upon re-entry 16 days later.

[sexobon]

Birthdays: DeForest Kelley, 1920 / Buzz Aldrin, 1930 / Tom Baker, 1934

A space-time threefer.

[Gravdigr]

Happy Birthday, Starchild.

That makes a fourfer, kinda.

[Gravdigr]

Challenger

During the ascent phase, 73 seconds after liftoff, the vehicle experienced a catastrophic structural failure resulting in the loss of crew and vehicle. The Rogers Commission later determined the cause of the accident to have been the failure of the primary and secondary (backup) O-ring seals on Challenger's right Solid Rocket Booster. The failure of these seals allowed a flamethrower-like flare to impinge upon one of two aft SRB attach struts, which eventually failed, freeing the booster to pivot about its remaining attachment points. The forward part of the booster cylinder struck the external tank inter-tank area, leading to a structural failure of the ET—the core structural component of the entire stack. A rapid burning of liberated propellants ensued. With the structural "backbone" of the stack compromised and breaking up, the SRBs flew off on their own, as did the orbiter, which rapidly disintegrated due to overwhelming aerodynamic forces. The launch had been approved despite a predicted ambient temperature of −3 °C (27 °F), well below the qualification limit of major components such as the SRBs, which had been certified for use only at temperatures above 4 °C (39 °F). Evidence found in the remnants of the crew cabin showed that several of the emergency air supplies (PEAPs) carried by the astronauts had been manually activated, suggesting that forces experienced inside the cabin during breakup of the orbiter were not inherently fatal, and that at least three crew members were alive and capable of conscious action for a period following vehicle breakup. "Tracking reported that the vehicle had exploded and impacted the water in an area approximately located at 28.64 degrees north, 80.28 degrees west.

[Happy Monkey]

My generation's first "where were you when"?

I was in elementary school, and some kids came back from the advanced students class (my genius was not yet recognized), saying they saw the shuttle blow up and you could see little bodies falling. I'm glad the latter bit was imagination/embellishing, but little elementary school me did look for them during the endless replays on the news.

[Undertoad]

50 years ago today, O.J. Simpson is the first pick in the NFL draft and goes to the Bills.

[Carruthers]

What worries me is that I remember an event like the Challenger disaster as if it were yesterday and it's called 'history'.

We pass this way but once and it's going too fast for my liking.

[Gravdigr]

Weep not, for it can go faster.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

My generation's first "where were you when"?

Mine was when Reagan forgot to duck.

[xoxoxoBruce]

JFK.

[Gravdigr]

Bruce, I'm always interested to hear the Where I Was stories.

I was w/my best friend John's mother when the Challenger 'sploded. No, not like that, I was in science class, she was my science teacher. They went around gathering the students up and cramming as many of us into a classroom as would fit, then turned on the tv. No preamble or nuthin'. We all learned about it together, teachers and students.

Where were you when JFK was shot?

[Diaphone Jim]

On certain space shuttle flights (the "scientific" ones) the reentry orbit came right over my house.
On clear nights, they were impressive. Columbia came over in cloud cover, but we could hear the distinctive double sonic booms. If it had been clear, I think we would have seen the beginning of the break-up.
What always amazed me was that by the time I got back in bed after viewing them, they were already on the ground in Florida 3000 miles away. The ones that didn't blow up, that is.

For JFK, I was a senior in college working on my dirt bike.

[Undertoad]

For JFK, I was being brought home from the hospital, having been born a few days earlier.

~ I do not directly remember this, or anything else from that day ~

[xoxoxoBruce]

I was walking across campus from a drafting class when two guys started shouting out of a second floor window of the main building at us that JFK had been murdered in Dallas. I don't think they really knew he was dead yet, just that he'd been shot, so thinking about it over the weekend I thought there's was a strange choice of words.

It was a pretty grim weekend in Boston, I decided not to go home and the dorm was like a morgue, so I spent a lot of time at the apartment of some working girls on Beacon hill.

The shuttle I was listening to on the radio at work. It was my first week back at Boeing after I quit in '67.