Divers find Challenger space shuttle wreckage off Florida coast

[Elderberry]

Reuters by  Dan Whitcomb 11/10/2022

 Divers from a documentary crew looking for the wreckage of a World War Two aircraft off the coast of Florida found a 20-foot section of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded and broke apart shortly after its launch in 1986, NASA said on Thursday.

The divers contacted NASA after spotting a large, clearly modern object mostly covered in sand at the bottom of the ocean and bearing the shuttle's distinctive tiles, the space agency said in a written statement.

"This discovery gives us an opportunity to pause once again, to uplift the legacies of the seven pioneers we lost, and to reflect on how this tragedy changed us," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in the statement.

More: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/divers-find-challenger-space-shuttle-wreckage-off-florida-coast-2022-11-10/?rpc=401&

[Wingnut]

OH MY.   This is something big.  Lots of unanswered questions on the crews remains.

[Free Vulcan]

Word on the street says they were alive and rode it all the way to the ground. That day is burned into the minds of my generation like Kennedy shot was the previous, 9/11 the Millennials, and Pearl Harbor for the Greatest Generation.

[Wingnut]

Word on the street says they were alive and rode it all the way to the ground. That day is burned into the minds of my generation like Kennedy shot was the previous, 9/11 the Millennials, and Pearl Harbor for the Greatest Generation.

Amen.

[Elderberry]

I wheeled a grocery cart of secret recon tapes into JSC Mission Control to build the TPC system for an upcoming Red flight. When I wheeled by the NIP Control Console, it was deathly quiet. I had to walk around them to see what was on their monitors. That I will never forget.

[Smokin Joe]

In the grand scheme of things, sitting on top of explosives and riding into space has definite risks. I remember when the very early rockets did not get far off the pad (before the Mercury series). Yes, I remember the Baikonnur explosion (slow coming out, but in 1960), Kennedy being shot (both of them, Jack and Bobby), Soyuz 1, Apollo 1 (fire on the pad), Soyuz 11, Challenger, 9/11, Columbia, and COVID/2020, all disasters in their own way.

That we (or any country) would lose astronauts on the pad, on the way up, or on the way down, is an almost predictable result of space exploration, the sort of thing spoken about in science fiction stories as past history in a fictional context. That doesn't make any of these events less of a tragedy, a learning opportunity, or mean that they may have not been preventable. Sadly, it seems we need to be reminded of our frailties (and our Hubris) from time to time, just to get our priorities straight.

Those who launch today still take risks, and it will ever be so.

A list of Space related accidents can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents

[Gefn]

I still get nightmares about the Challenger, and Gus Grissom

[Smokin Joe]

I still get nightmares about the Challenger, and Gus Grissom

May your dreams be blessed with peace.

[GtHawk]

I still get nightmares about the Challenger, and Gus Grissom

My wife found out recently that she was related, albeit distantly to Gus through her branch of the Grissom's. A truly horrible tragedy, but as long as man pushes the envelope there will always be more. Submariners, pilots, astronauts are some of the most daring, but we have thousands even millions of everyday heroes and this is a day we set aside for those in our military.

@Elderberry