Space Shuttle
The first space shuttle orbiter Enterprise flew in 1977, and
in 1981 the reusable craft Columbia started to fly missions.
The shuttle made space flight look as easy as an airplane flight.
Tragedy struck on 28 January 1986, when the space shuttle
Challenger exploded on take-off, killing all seven crew members.
CNN was on hand to film the launch, and broadcast the tragedy live on
their international cable network.
About one minute after lift-off, the ground controllers informed
the crew that they were "go" for "throttle up". The last words from the
Challenger crew that were heard by Mission Control were
Commander Dick Scobee's, "Roger, go with throttle up," and then about
two-tenths of a second before the explosion, Commander Michael Smith's
"Uh-oh".
 Before the Challenger tragedy, the space program almost
seemed invincible. The shuttles went up, the shuttles landed - It
wasn't even exciting any more, just another shuttle trip. The events
of January 28 1986 were a harsh wake-up call that this stuff is
actually dangerous . . . we believed it was so safe, we were shooting
civilians into space.
We had forgotten the inherent dangers and not enough people
remembered these words spoken by a man who died in an Apollo
capsule; "If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky
business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay
the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." Within
days we knew all about O-rings and the explosive decompression of
liquid hydrogen.
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