The nation came together yesterday in a moment of disaster and loss. Wherever Americans heard the news -- at work, at school or at home -- they shared their grief over the death of the seven astronauts, among them one who had captured their imaginations, Christa McAuliffe, the teacher from Concord, N.H., who was to be the first ordinary citizen to go into space.Shortly before noon, when the first word of the explosion came, daily events seemed to stop as people asked the same questions: "What happened? Are there any survivors?"
New York Times, Page 1, January 29, 1986
The space shuttle is gone. The news is clear. It exploded on Camera.SHUTTLE FORUM, Append 1, January 28, 1986, 12:04 PM
The space shuttle Challenger exploded during lift off at 11:39 AM on January 28, 1987. This explosion was immediately apparent to many television viewers who watched the lift off, the first shuttle flight carrying a civilian passenger. The news was not immediately known, however, to millions of working people, including hundreds of thousands of IBM employees both in the United States and overseas, many of whom were working at the time of the tragedy. News filtered in to IBM employees in many ways. Among those who were not working, some watched it happen, either on television or in person. Others heard the news as they were awakened by clock radios. Among those who were working, some heard about it from friends or relatives via telephone, others heard about it from co-workers who walked the halls spreading their own disbelief, and many others via P.A. announcements made at various IBM locations.
The earliest news of the tragedy for some, and the only ongoing source of information for many IBM employees who tried to keep working, came via computer conferencing. The first news appeared on the IBMPC conferencing facility in SHUTTLE FLASH, a short note that reported the disaster less than twenty minutes after it happened. It was followed, within minutes, with an eyewitness report on SCIFI FORUM and the almost simultaneous appearance of SHUTTLE FORUMs on both the IBMPC and IBMVM conferencing facilities. These forums were almost immediately cross linked by the administrators of IBMPC and IBMVM, effectively making them a single conference. As a result, appends directed to either were appended to both.
The merged SHUTTLE FORUM would eventually grow to encompass 136 appends written by 107 people. 86 of those appends were written in the first four hours the forum was open. The remaining 50 were posted after the forum reopened two days later. As a result, the forum clearly divides into two distinct portions. In the first four hours, a new append arrived, on average, about every three minutes. Over the other six days the forum was open, there were only eight appends a day. In the early forum, the appends are very reactive. In the later forum, they tend to be more reflective. This difference is reflected in length of the appends. There is a consistent increase in the length of appends throughout the forum, but appends from the last six days are much longer than those made over the first four hours.
No clear purpose was ever declared for SHUTTLE FORUM. It grew, in large part, simply as an IBMPC community response to the incomprehensible. The decision to keep the forum open was initially based in part on the exceptional nature of the event, which precipitated a number of highly unusual actions throughout IBM including, at many sites, loadspeaker announcements of the tragedy. The forum provided a means for news of the event to reach IBM employees on an ongoing basis without requiring them to leave their desks. It was felt, in the subsequent recollection of John Alvord, then management owner of IBMPC under Waldbaum, that discussion of the event was inevitable, and that providing a single outlet for that discussion made it easier to review and manage.
The initial plan was to keep the forum open for only a short time. It became clear in subsequent discussion, however, that many IBM employees felt a special interest and involvement in the space and shuttle program. This involvement was, in many cases, literal. IBM has had equipment and software on every U. S. manned space mission, and many IBMPC participants have worked with the space program at one time or another. This involvement was key to the decisions that kept the forum open longer than had been originally envisioned. Although the forum content was reviewed as it came in, there was no attempt to give it direction until the IBMPC administrators advised participants not to engage in "speculation or rumors as to the cause of the disaster".
SHUTTLE FORUM was and is regarded as an exceptional event on IBMPC. It is paralleled only in such exceptional events as QUAKE FORUM, in which IBM sought to understand the effects of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (the one that rocked the 1989 World Series in San Fransisco) on its business, employees, and products.
The tone of SHUTTLE FORUM is established in its first appends, of which the following (the first append to the IBMPC version of the forum), is fairly typical:
Re: Reactions to disasterI don't know about you, but I'm so sad. This forum is to talk about it.
The space shuttle is gone. The news is clear. It exploded on camera.
IBMVM started even more simply:
NEWS FLASHWe're getting reports that the U.S. Space shuttle has blown up on take-off. No further details known at this time.
Neither append establishes a real purpose for the forum. The most directed words tell the reader that "This forum is to talk about it." But talk about what; the news; the emotions? The first appends encompass both, and the forum follows suit, expanding on both themes and adding others, often in unexpected ways. The simultaneous appearance of two SHUTTLE FORUMs clearly showed that the forum was an idea whose time had come. IBM Employees, not only in the U.S., but around the world, needed to, as the New York Times eloquently put it the next day, come together "in a moment of disaster", "share their grief", and "ask the ... questions: What happened? Are their any survivors?"
SHUTTLE FORUM turned into a place where a wide range of people in a wide range of places could come together and ask the questions that needed to be asked, find the answers that could be given, and express themselves. The forum would ultimately encompass contributors from Europe, Asia, and across the U.S. and Canada. It would include people with the technical expertise to explain what probably happened; people who were currently, or had previously been, directly involved in the space program; people who had followed the space program with fervor since childhood; people who simply cared deeply about what had happened; and people who wondered if too much was being made of a disaster that, on a scale of everyday disasters, involved a fairly small number of fatalities.
A great deal is documented in the record of SHUTTLE FORUM, far more than can be reviewed in a chapter that will be barely a third the length of the transcript on which it is based. The most important themes of forum organize themselves, however, into a sequence of reactions, as news and emotion evolve from disbelief to certainty to hope to hopelessness to grief, all the while building a new sense of community with people across the company and around the world.
The first stage in this evolution was clearly disbelief. Nobody wanted to believe the news. As an employee from Cary, North Carolina put it in append 100, written the day of the disaster, but posted to SHUTTLE FORUM three days later:
It's been about 4 hours since I first heard the news. I still can't believe it. I read the file SHUTTLE FLASH and thought it was a joke. Then I called a friend in Boca and the news was confirmed.Two appends later, a posting from Raleigh, N.C. echoes these sentiments:
... a friend came into my office and asked if I'd heard that the shuttle blew up. I, too, at first thought it was a joke.
This sense of disbelief is a widely shared initial reaction. It was shared by the creator of SHUTTLE FORUM on IBMPC, who called home and listened to the television report and reaction of his wife after not wanting to believe the report from his manager, who had received a phone call from a friend. It was only after he had eyewitness confirmation from the television replay that he broadcast the news in SHUTTLE FLASH and started SHUTTLE FORUM.
Based on the first few appends of the forum, other people must have done the same thing upon reading SHUTTLE FLASH and SHUTTLE FORUM, because nearly twenty minutes passed between the time the IBMPC version of SHUTTLE FORUM was created and the time the second append appeared, by far the longest time lag that would be recorded on the forum that day. In the four hours the forum was open that day, an append would be made roughly once every three minutes. The initial twenty minute lag is nearly twice as long as the next longest gap in the forum, the 12 minute lag between the second and third appends.
The wording of the second and third appends reflect this initial disbelief, even as their content confirm the news broadcast in the forums initial entries. In the second append, some 44 minutes after the disaster, we learn that:
Kingston got the announcement over the loudspeakers that the shuttle had indeed exploded shortly after lift-off. A parachute and capsule was spotted, but confirmed as NOT being from the shuttle.
This message is explicitly worded to act as a confirmation. "The
shuttle
Twelve minutes later, a third append, also posted from Kingston,
N.Y., provides additional confirmation:
We have been told that we'll be kept informed, but it is likely
that the most information will be in tomorrow's New York Times.
The shuttle exploded at the point of maximum dynamic pressure (ie
when it breaks the sound barrier). It took 15 minutes for the
major sections to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. At that height,
it is expected that no one survived.
I, for one, am shocked and saddened.
Simply expressed, this message tells us that there isn't much
news ("We've been told we'll be kept informed"), but it really
happened (You'll be able to read about it "in tomorrow's"
newspaper). The author goes on to tell us what he knows,
including a confirmation of the worst: "it is expected that no
one survived." Finally, the author expresses his own acceptance
of the news. He is "shocked and saddened."
If even more definitive confirmation was required, it was not
long in coming. The eighth append to SHUTTLE FORUM, posted from
Boca Raton, Florida at 12:53 PM EST, barely 50 minutes after the
forum opened, provides the ultimate confirmation:
Re: Shuttle
I just watched the shuttle explode from my office window. I don't
think I have ever seen anything like it in my life. There's no
explaining the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you see
something like that. They're checking the ocean for survivors,
but there's virtually no chance. I'm afraid the shuttle
program will be grounded for quite some time now. What a
tragedy.
The second and third hand reports of the first threes appends to
SHUTTLE FORUM provide a certain level of news and confirmation,
but the eyewitness account of the eighth append has a nearly
irrefutable credibility. There is an undeniable finality to what
we read. "I just watched the shuttle explode...". "They're
checking the ocean for survivors, but there's virtually no
chance." And the append continues:
Some lazy cloudlike formations in the sky are all that remain now.
The soft hazy appearance now belies the fiery contrail that split
in two. The two pieces split apart and continued upward for a
few seconds before the glow went out. The radio said the debris
was like snow. Think of the schoolteacher with her children and
pupils in the stands cheering her on. I'm afraid those of you
wanting back in the space program will have a hard time now. We've
been set back years today.
In the second part of this eyewitness account, the descriptions
read like poetry: "Some lazy cloudlike formations are all that
remain...". They belie "the fiery contrail that split in two ...
and continued upward for a few minutes before the glow went out."
"The debris was like snow." If the simple statement of, and
witness to, the facts are not not enough to convince one of the
reality of the event, the emotion that inspires these
descriptions should leave no doubt of the reality of the
disaster. It's hard, even as this is written some 23 months
later, to read his description without feeling the underlying
sadness and resignation.
The eighth append is actually two appends written some time
apart. Both had been originally posted to SCIFI FORUM. The
author, having discovered SHUTTLE FORUM, moves them together to
the newly established focus of discussion for the event. People
who have read SCIFI FORUM since the explosion may have already
seen these appends, but it is new information for many, including
the originators of the forum.
Even in the depths of a certainty based in eyewitness reports,
the news remains hard to accept. Another eyewitness reports in
the 78th append to SHUTTLE FORUM, some 3 hours and forty minutes
after the forum opened, that:
Indeed, even with the passage of time, the explosion of the
Challenger remains hard to accept, and a week later, a student at
IBM's Corporate Technical Institutes at Thornwood still harbors a
measure of disbelief:
Nonetheless, the existence of SHUTTLE FORUM helped people to
accept and deal with the tragedy. In append 102, a Raleigh
employee writes that "reading the appends pouring in from all over
helped me appreciate the magnitude of the event, come to terms
with my own sadness ..."
Indeed, even in the face of confirmation of the worst, both from
news reports and eyewitness accounts, there remained hope that,
at the very least, the crew might have survived. "Last word I
heard they thought the shuttle may be intact," writes a perhaps
overly hopeful Poughkeepsie, N.Y. employee in the fifth append
to the forum. "Lets hope they're right". In the twelfth
append less hopeful Vermont contributor continues:
Considering the stresses of launch and reentry the shuttle was
designed to withstand, what are the chances of the cockpit
remaining more or less intact? The fuel and oxidizer connections
are in the back end, the fuel tank faces the belly, the strongest
part. How much fuel is spent by 1 minute into the flight?
Terminal velocity for an unstreamlined falling object is on the
order of 90-120 mph, regardless of height. If the aft section of
the shuttle were destroyed the front might qualify for
unstreamlined. At high speed water is hard, but how hard?
I would like to believe the crew is alive, but even if the cabin
had survived I fear the G forces of the explosion and splashdown
would have been too much.
Shocked
The hopes expressed, however slim, are real. Many people hoped
against hope that someone would survive the explosion, fall, and
impact. If there wasn't much basis for hope, it was more than
made up for by the amount that remained unknown when the 12th
append was made, barely an hour after the forum was started, and
the fervent desire that things not be entirely as bad as they
appeared. If there was little hope to find in the early reports,
however, there would be even less as eyewitnesses and more
technically knowledgeable people began to clarify the problems.
Consider, for instance, the magnitude of the explosion, as
reported from an eyewitness from Tampa in the 30th append (1:41
PM) of the forum. He "saw the explosion via binoculars from
the front door" of his home, and remained home watching the
replays:
The sense of hopelessness implicit to this append is only
compounded in the forum's 40th append (2:12 PM), where a
Kingston, N.Y. appender notes that he's:
What we learn in these two appends, put plainly, is that the
explosion probably destroyed the shuttle, and even if it didn't,
there was really no mode of escape. Indeed, even if there had
been a mode of escape, there probably wasn't time to to make use
of it. A Manassas, VA employee later states
this even more bluntly when he notes that "I don't believe the
crew was ever aware of a problem." "The entire sequence takes
only a few frames (of video tape) to go from 'normal' to the
total disintegration of the shuttle."
If the news isn't good, these appends at least leave readers with
the consolation of feeling that it was quick; that the astronauts
in Challenger died quickly, perhaps never knowing that anything
happened. There is no such consolation in the more technical
analysis offered by a scientist at IBM's Thomas J. Watson
Research Center (Hawthorn, N.Y.) in append 41 (2:14 PM):
...the massive drag caused by the disintegrating main tank would
have tossed the shuttle into a destructive tumble. this was a
major cause of destruction of the early X-planes exploring the
supersonic region for the first time. ... the main tank would
have burst into flames as soon as it broke, hiding whatever else
may have happened with a large fireball.
The big problem with this append is that the author seems to know
what he's talking about. Early in the append he describes why
the explosion probably wouldn't have destroyed the shuttle. The
explosion of the main fuel tank probably wasn't all that
powerful. Late in the append he provides a rationale describing
exactly what people saw in person and on camera, a massive
fireball that hid nearly everything else from view. In the
middle he describes a depressing scene. The shuttle, which will
probably remain intact after the explosion, wouldn't merely fall
into the ocean. "Drag" would toss "the shuttle into a
destructive tumble" like those that destroyed so many
experimental airplanes in the 1950's. In other words, the crew
may well have lived long enough to know they were about to die,
and been unable to do anything about it.
All of this is described clinically, as a diagnosis of what
naturally follows when certain events take place. In retrospect,
moreover, the analysis holds up well. It appears that the
occupants of the shuttle did live long enough to realize what was
happening, and to begin to take action. At the time SHUTTLE
FORUM was active, however, it was simply credible, and most
depressingly so. The message, when taken in the context of other
appends, is simple. Whether the cause of death was the
explosion, the fall, or a destructive tumble, there really wasn't
any hope for survivors.
The inevitable resignation to hopelessness is summed up in the
following append. by a member of IBM's NASA
support team located in Houston:
Over the past years, many of my co-workers and I have speculated
on what would happen if the unthinkable occurred - if we lost one
of the birds. Deep down, we all knew that the law of averages
would catch up with us someday, even as we were praying that it
never would.
The shock is fading away, and the realization is setting in....
The country has lost seven of its finest men & women today. I knew
one of the crew - not well, but enough to feel his loss at a
personal level. We will mourn them all...
Forget any technical reasons why there isn't any hope for
survivors. There simply isn't any. The people who work with the
space program know, and are willing to admit, that seven people,
including people they knew personally, have died, and the
disaster isn't merely an accident. It's simply "the law of
averages" catching up. The disaster may well have been
"unthinkable", but it was always possible. In the words of an
Atlanta employee who had been involved with the space program
"all the way from Mercury to the first five shuttle
missions".
"Realization" of the hopelessness of a search for survivors "was
setting in, not only in Houston, but across the country and
around the world. This resignation to the worst was perhaps best
summed up in the 85th append to the forum, posted at 3:58 PM from
IBM's Research Center in Yorktown, N.Y.:
Many appends in SHUTTLE FORUM report news of the shuttle tragedy
and surrounding events, especially during the first four hours.
Many more appends are primarily expressive, however, and as shock
disbelief, and hope gave way to confirmation and resignation,
people began to express their grief. This grief was frequently
expressed simply. The writer of append 7 writes from Austin,
Texas at 12:52 PM that "within only a few minutes, millions share
a common grief". A Kingston appender writes "
Often, however, appenders express their grief in terms of the
personal experiences that has made the destruction of the
Challenger so painful to them. In append 6, posted at 12:44 PM,
a Boulder, CO employee writes that:
Today's news comes as a tremendous shock. Even though I do not
have any close ties to any aspect of the space program, I feel
today's disaster as a deep personal loss. I have not felt this
shaken since I was in Biology class in 9th grade and news came
that John Kennedy had been shot. I'm not sure that I am going to
be able to do any more productive work today.
This memory of childhood is similar to many appended to SHUTTLE
FORUM. He has followed the space program from its inception,
just like:
"I remember being at summer camp when I was 9 years old and we
all gathered around the only TV to watch Neil Armstrong land on
the Moon."
The appender also recalls being "in the press area of the maiden
launch of the shuttle Columbia ... a highlight of my life. It
was magnificent. We were profoundly touched; people were in
tears."
Perhaps the most moving expression of grief cast against a remembrance
of childhood involvement in the space program comes from a scientist
located at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center:
Now this. I feel as if someone very close to me has died. The
world just isn't supposed to work like this.
The grief people are expressing is personal, and it is felt
deeply. The Boulder, CO writer of append 6 likens it to the way
he felt when "I was in Biology class in 9th grade and news came
that John Kennedy had been shot." There are other Kennedy
references in the forum as well. In append 43 we learn from a
Tucson, AZ contributor that:
I didn't understand what had happened then, or the historical
implications it would later produce. But no one in the classroom
moved, or blinked. We just sat, stunned, and wondered when an
adult would explain to us what was happening.
Right now, I wish I was that innocent age again. Sometimes not
being able to comprehend a tragedy is the only thing that stops
the pain...and the grief.
And now, a week after this terrible tragedy, here in the office,
I just read this forum. I couldn't believe the news when I got
home last week, and saw the video pictures. I cried then, I'm
crying now. Words cannot express such sorrow.
But simply comparing one event to another doesn't capture the
depth of what people are feeling. For one Yorktown, NY appender,
there are "no words to express the shock and grief."
Ultimately, the contributors to the SHUTTLE FORUM may have been too
successful in communicating their feelings. Late in the forum (append
117 on February 2nd), a contributor from Kingston, N.Y. compares the
shuttle accident with other disasters, and asserts that people have
blown the event out of proportion. Did it, he wondered, deserve more
attention than a "recent air disaster which claimed the lives of 248
American soldiers", a disaster which, for a period of time, he feared
had claimed the life of his oldest son? He thought not.
A contributor from Toronto, Canada, writing in append 125 on February
3rd, responds by noting that:
When a hero dies - it is news. When a hero dies suddenly - it is
shocking news. When several heroes die suddenly - it is a national
disaster and NEWS.
The personal terms in which people describe the origins of their grief
shows clearly why the astronauts of the shuttle Challenger fell in the
extra-ordinary category for so many people. These astronauts were
living the dreams of people who cared about the future of the space
program and who would have jumped, if they had the chance, at the
opportunity to be aboard this flight. In the words of a Boca Raton,
Florida appender, "I still want to be an astronaut when I grow up."
Kennedy and childhood memories of the space program are not
the only personal base which people used as they attempted to
share the depth of their grief. Other sources include:
The sorrow comes from the realization that absolute perfection in
our efforts will ever elude us at the cost of human life. We may
lay the blame for this tragedy only on ourselves...
I worked 4 years for IBM on the navigation software for shuttle
in Houston ... my 'sons and daughters' DID die. My hurt is
profound.
Last week on its return trip to Florida from California, Columbia
had landed at Tucson's Davis Monthan Air Force Base to refuel.
The Tucson plant is in the flight path of the air force runway,
so it was quite a sight and sound when the piggy-backed Columbia
took off. The sight was quite inspirational and beautiful and
some of us had talked about taking a day off for pictures the
next time a shuttle stopped to refuel.
Well, when I get home tonight it will be a different set of
pictures that I will watch. Even though this is a great tragedy,
the beauty of last week serves to reassure me of the need to
continue with the program.
People are "shocked", "saddened", and even "devastated" by the
events of the day. They feel the event "in what is for many, a
personal way." The sources that of this personal involvement are
varied, ranging from a "sympathy" for the children who watched
the event to a feeling of direct responsibility "to safely
oversee" the astronauts "journey." Everyone may not feel things
as keenly as the Boca Raton contributor for whom "my 'sons and
daughters' DID die", but many people felt the event not just as a
tragedy, but as a personal tragedy, rooted in distinctly
individual, yet strikingly common, experiences.
In the midst of this common experience, a new kind of community
developed between contributors to, and readers of, the forum. As
people disclosed their experiences, dreams, beliefs, and grief,
they discovered other people who had similar experiences, similar
dreams and beliefs, the same grief. As they discovered this
bond, they began to express it, starting at append 47, almost two
and a half hours after SHUTTLE FORUM starts:
How can something so distant feel so personal. I agree with the
previous append likening this to the Kennedy assassination. I
have not worked with the space program since 1974, yet I feel
as if I were still in the midst of it all.
And somehow, having the teacher on board was like taking a
part of me up. And I just lost that part of me. God, how
it hurts.
My thanks to whoever started this forum. Seeing the reactions of
others and having a place to express what I am feeling sure
helps. I don't feel alone in my grief.
In this append a contributor in Santa Teresa, CA,
shares his feelings about the accident, and then his reaction to
the SHUTTLE FORUM. The tragedy "hurts", but the "reactions of
others" as expressed in the forum "helps." Similar sentiments are
expressed again and again as the forum continues:
"Thanks to the conference administrators for their support of
this forum."
Clearly, SHUTTLE FORUM was more than just a place to share news
and express grief. It was a place to "get in touch with my
grief"; "to keep what little of myself was still together,
together"; "to see the vast number of people who have felt the
same things I have felt since the tragedy"; to complete one's
"catharsis" in the presence of others that felt the same thing.
A Yorktown contributor, writing in append 119, may have said it
best:
Regular participants in the IBMPC conferencing facility already
considered themselves a community long before there was a SHUTTLE
FORUM. Even when participants had never met each other except
through the words of various appends, they felt they knew each
other. The experience of meeting someone for the first time that
one had known for a long time was a constant source of
curiosity, and the experience of meeting one or more of the
"royal family" of conference administrators appeared to leave
some IBMPC participants in awe.
Yet SHUTTLE FORUM reformed that community, made people aware that
their coparticipants in this computer conference shared more than
just an interest in computers. People discovered that other
people felt things they didn't expect them to. People who seemed
to care only about technical issues "romanticized", put things
"in the larger context of human destiny", caught "the poetry of"
things. Importantly, those people weren't simply spread out
across the country and around the world. They were also "down
the hall or in the next corridor -- on the same project even."
Recounting the events of SHUTTLE FORUM as a progression from news
to disbelief to confirmation to hope to hopelessness to grief to
community oversimplifies a great deal that happened. First,
there was no simple progression. Grief, hope, disbelief,
hopelessness, and hard news were all mixed together. The focus
of the content changed from append to append. Indeed, the focus
often changed several times within the span of a single append.
Second, there were other themes that found expression as the
forum progressed. In addition to the news, there was
speculation. Rumors were started. Fortunately, there was also
hard information to control the rumors, and stern injunctions
(many of them from participants) that people not speculate wildly.
There was a certain amount of media bashing, especially for the
broadcast of Christa McAuliffe parents' moment of realization. There
were even events to find consolation in, including the childbirth
class that a Lexington, KY man would be attending the evening of the
disaster (append 15).
In the late stages of SHUTTLE FORUM, the attention of many
participants would turn to identifying possible tributes to the
Challenger and its crew. There were proposals of new space
shuttles, names for the newly discovered moons of Uranus, and
other tributes. There was even a poem was published in the forum
in tribute to "these seven strangers' sudden end" (append 93 by a
contributor in Santa Teresa. In the midst of these suggestions, an
Atlanta contributor suggests, in append 92, that the memorial has
already been built:
I printed a copy of the Forum and brought it home...and placed it
with my other Space mementoes--hopefully the only memento I will
ever place there with such regret.
Without doubt, Tuesday and Wednesday's Appenders could have laid
down no greater tribute to Challenger's crew. You all did a
marvelous job for the rest of us.
Having spent 24 years in the Federal Systems Division--all the
way from Mercury to the first five Shuttle Missions--I was deeply
moved by this event and the words and thoughts Appenders set
down.
For this appender, SHUTTLE FORUM is already a memorial, one to be
cherished along with the other momentos of his years of
participation in the space program. In his words, the early
appenders to SHUTTLE FORUM "could have laid down no greater
tribute to Challenger's crew" than the words and thoughts that
had already been contributed. This idea is picked up and
extended by a Kingston, NY contributor in append 101:
This idea captures the imagination of a number of subsequent
appenders, including a contributor from Hawthorne, NY who
proclaims it "An excellent idea!" in append 119. This sentiment
is made reality by an IBMPC conference administrator in the
append that closes SHUTTLE FORUM:
In respect for those who died, the forum will be renamed
SHUTTLE MEMORIAL.
We all hope that such an exceptional forum will not be needed
again for a long time to come.
From the early news...
Eyewitness Account
***Copied from SCIFI FORUM***
Re: Shuttle
I watched the shuttle blow up with my eyes. I didn't want to
believe it. I thought, the SRBs separated too early, they'll
just have to abort. Now four hours later, it's still only slowly
starting to sink in.
When the blast happened last week I was able to see it on a TV
moments later. It effected me rather deeply, and today I'm only
just getting out of it. I still can't believe it.
Hope ...
Re: Survival
... and Hopelessness
After seeing the size of the explosion compared to the size of
the shuttle, I'm afraid that there's no hope for survival
(recovery crews who are now entering the area report nothing but
small fragments).
not sure what good a warning would have done them. I do not
believe there are any escape pods on the Shuttle, or any escape
mechanism whatsoever, except to disengage from the rocket engines
and attempt a 'normal' landing. I doubt there was enough time
for a computer to react, let alone a human.
to have a powerful explosion, you have to have a strong enough
container for pressures to build up. ...the external fuel tank
was not all that strong. ...the main external tank explosion
would not have been sufficient to disintegrate the orbiter so
quickly.
Observations from Houston...
No one has ever been able to nor wanted to let the general public
know the risks astronauts were taking each time. Those who
worked the Space Programs always knew.
I just heard a replay of a tape made by a correspondent in the
VIP bleachers. A cheer when the rocket should have separated --
then a child said "Where is it?" -- then the crowd got very
quiet. That says it all.
Grief
I have followed the space program from the Mercury program, even
when it was not so popular in the late days of the Apollo
program. I have followed the shuttle program with much of the
same enthusiasm and have found the idea of a reusable space craft
to be very interesting. I've been disappointed lately with the
schedule set backs and technical problems that the shuttle
program has had but my interest has not waned.
When I was a small boy, my father took me out onto the front lawn
at night. We sat there in sleeping bags, waiting, watching,
until at last, a new star peeked over the horizon and lazily
crossed the sky. It was Echo, one of the first satellites. He
filled me with a love and respect for the space program, and for
science, and technology. In large part, that's why I do what I
do today. I watched every manned launch since then, until these
last couple of shuttle flights; it was actually becoming mundane
for me.
Personal Grief ...
... the announcement about the shuttle came over the P.A.
system. It reminded me of another day back in 1963 when I sat in
my third-grade class and watched my teacher burst into tears when
they announced that President Kennedy had been shot.
And in append 135, the last real append to SHUTTLE FORUM, a
British contributor writes:
As a European, may I share your grief, and add my own to it. I
was studying for my finals the night Jack Kennedy was shot. (It
was night in London when the news came through.) Everybody in my
college library cried.
... or Overreaction?
There are two kinds of people: Ordinary and extra-ordinary. Everyone
is BOTH. When the plane crashed and 248 American military lives were
lost, a great many people grieved. They grieved because, to them, the
dead had been extra-ordinary people (father/mother, daughter/son,
husband/wife, friend/peer) to the rest of us they were ordinary people
- we felt saddened by their deaths but got on with our lives. If we
took each death to heart with deep grief we would not be able to
endure the pain. When a John Kennedy, a John Lennon, a Rock Hudson,
or an astronaut dies many more people grieve because that person was
*known* to us; was, for us, *extra-ordinary*. They may have been
extra-ordinary because they were part of media-hype or had special
talents or were involved in projects that caught the masses
imagination, but they were the thing that ordinary people always
need...they were HEROES (not deities).
Other Sources of Personal Involvement
...consider the thousands of NASA/Contractor employees all over
the country who work daily on the most intricate flying machine
ever engineered, knowing that the people who fly it may never
even see their faces yet explicitly depend upon them to safely
oversee their journey. It hurts when you let them down. ...
When astronauts risk their lives, all of us may "ride" with them
in what is for many, a personal way.
astronaut Judy Resnik ... last May. She was the second woman
... on this mission. Judy spoke at a forum on how NASA is
trying to improve training documentation for the astronauts.
From what she showed us, the manuals are really being improved.
Judy also showed us wonderful slides of some of the shuttle
missions, and her love for the space program was evident. She
was kind enough to talk to a few of us after the forum ended, and
she collected business cards. She took the trouble to send out
pictures; and on mine she wrote, "To Heather, Thanks for your
support!-- Judy". Such simple words but they mean so much.
Re: what a difference a week makes
A Sense of Community
Subject: Sadness
I would also like to say "thanks" to everyone who shared their
feelings that day. Maybe I'm a little more used to communicating
electronically than most people, but (except for the 'phone call
to my wife) the messages from so many fellow IBMers, sharing the
shock and other not-to-be-described feelings, did more than
anything else to help me to keep what little of myself was still
together, together.
The other uplifting image was the outpouring of feeling in this
forum. ... I hadn't supposed that many other IBMers shared my
perceptions of the space frontier. They might enthuse over the
technical problems, but catch the poetry of it? Romanticize?
Put it in the larger context of human destiny? It didn't seem in
character. Well, now we know. There are even people down the
hall from me or in the next corridor -- on the same project, even
-- contributing to this forum, and I never would have guessed.
A Fitting Memorial
No words can adequately express the feelings this tragic event
has brought upon us all--most every conceivable thought has been
set down in this forum. Our thanks to the Shuttle Forum
initiator.
I understand that the intention is to delete this forum after a
short time. I'd like to ask the owners to reconsider this
decision. I'd like to see the forum renamed SHUTTLE MEMORIAL and
kept permanently as a valuable historical record of both the
computer conferencing and IBM community at times of great
national tragedy.
SHUTTLE PCFORUM is closed for new appends from noon Tuesday,
February 5, 1986. If new official information is available from
Houston management, we will append it here. At some time in the
future, we will place it in the IBMPC ARCHIVE.