I was sitting in a conference room having a meeting with some of my tech's - in the same building I'm sitting in right now.

Someone stuck their head in the room and told us so we found a TV and spent the rest of the day watching the news. Very sad day.

Barbara Morgan?

I was in high school in between classes. The launch was on in the science room so I stopped by to watch. The words "obviously a major malfunction" still irritate me. Just seemed like such a stupid thing to say at that point.

I like your threads, Donger. You should post more about things that fly.

That's just NASA-speak. Nominal.

Are you being nasty?

How about this? The shuttleski:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Buran.jpg

...fueld by vodka.

The sad part.....the whole accident should have been avoided. Stupid politics and government bureaucracy. O-rings were too cold.

A case could made the this accident is the perfect reason why government should get out of the space transportation business. A business entity would have had to obtain liability insurance....and they would insisted on safety procedures to get insurance coverage.

The 2nd shuttle accident was all about government bureaucracy. Again, lower level engineers pointed out something wrong, and senior management, over rode their concerns.

I never understood why criminal charges were not filed. The Senior Manager who overrode the engineers in the 2nd accident....what ever happened to her??

I was in middle school. I remember I was home sick with the flu with my sister and my mom. They just kept showing that shuttle exploding over and over. Was not a good day.

No, I honestly enjoy reading your aerospace stuff. I read the whole wikipedia article on the Challenger disaster after you posted this.

She was demoted, but is still with NASA, apparently. There really wasn't much that could have been done to save Columbia, though. They didn't have a method to repair damage and I don't think that another shuttle was ready to launch a rescue.

Ever read up on the N1 rocket? Fascinating stuff.

Yeah. Nice, big firecracker. I remember a video of one of the "launches." I'll try to find it. I'm pretty sure it killed a bunch of people, though.

My point.

You think Boeing would not have a Plan B or a repair kit if they knew they would be sued for mega $$$$ for every accident???

I'm all for privately-funded space flights, but let's not pretend that any of them are even close to being able to orbit.