From Mercury Seven to the Challenger…

Johnny-on-the-Spot … by John Foster …

I watched the 4-part series on the Challenger disaster which happened 38 years ago this month.

It was well done and at times fairly emotional for me.

I’ll always remember covering the event while working at a radio station in Ohio.

I recall working well into the early evening with wall-to-wall coverage and then a few of us retired to the “jock lounge” to grab something to drink and unwind.

I blurted out, “Oh my God, I just remembered that a lot of the family members and friends were there and saw that happen!”

I couldn’t help but think about that as I watched the episode leading up to that tragic moment 73 seconds after launch.

When I heard the “Throttle up” command, I got a chill, knowing what was going to happen.

I learned things about the tragedy I hadn’t known before and the clean-cut, scrubbed image of the original Mercury Seven astronauts seemed a bit tarnished by that.

As a kid, I was a “space geek”.

I was fascinated by the prospects of space travel.

In our attic is a big plastic storage tub filled with Life magazines and newspapers of most of the original Mercury launches.

The Mercury Seven was announced in April of 1959 and I can recall those names from memory.

Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra and Donald “Deke” Slayton.

I sorta like Slayton the best because his nickname was “Deke” and my Dad used to call me by that moniker.

Slayton never went into space with Mercury after it was discovered he had an atrial fibrillation but did go into space on the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Program.

One of my favorite movies is “The Right Stuff” from 1983 which detailed the first years of the nation’s space program.

Sam Sheppard, Ed Harris and Scott Glenn were my personal favorites of this film which was “based on historic events and real people, although some substantial dramatic liberties were taken”.

The 4-part 2020 Netflix series, “Challenger: The Final Flight” which I just watched, had a segment on the investigation into the disaster seemed to indicate some folks also took some liberties.

What tarnished my childhood Mercury Seven image was the realization that the Challenger disaster ultimately happened because the almighty dollar was at risk.

On May 25th, 1961, President Kennedy proposed to Congress that the U.S. “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”.

But a Gallup Poll indicated 58% of us were opposed to the idea.

It would be costly.

Very costly.

But we were driven by the fact the Russians had grabbed an early lead in the “space race”.

The risks were very real.

In reality, it was no less-risky for NASA to propose a reusable spacecraft (The Shuttle) in an effort to continue space travel while attempting to make it less-costly.

But that’s where it got sticky.

The Netflix series pointed out problems with The Challenger that some officials cast a blind eye towards because there was a launch schedule that had to be kept.

On January 28th, 1988, President Ronald Reagan scrapped the State of the Union speech to address the spirit of the nation after the Challenger disaster.

He closed his speech with these words.

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them nor the last last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’”.

Those thoughts always restore the shine to my space memories.