STS-51L Challenger
(for Judy)
22 Years, and counting......Mission Elapsed Time...
Challenger-1986-2008
by
Robert A M Stephens
"I don't want to miss a thing" - Armageddon ---- Aerosmith
We met in 1983 at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. She was Ph.d. Judith Resnik, astronaut. 'Judy' to those close to her. She was brunette, feisty, fun, and most beautiful. Her long dark locks were enchanting and her Armenian eyes glowed with life, with zest, with the yearning to do fun things and to see the final void for its mysteries; space. at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
I was a contractor working on shuttle documentation. For this I was and am among many. But I also am an artist and this has opened many doors.
At the time we met, the art, the artist, opened a woman's heart to mine.
We grew together with the mutual interest of the world's first space ship; the Space Shuttle, or in NASA jargon, STS-Space Transporation System.
NASA was our life and the joy of many things that few get to participate in; space, shuttles, telescopes, astronauts, Presidents, laurels of praise, paintings in the National Gallery, the Smithsonian, shows, gatherings, parading and zesting on life on high, in the summer and summers of our seasons.
The Voyage of Youth.
Days and weeks rolled onward. Judy's second space flight was scheduled for December 1985. She was that 'other' woman while the press concentrated on the school teacher. Time got closer. Time got even closer until the first static test of the orbiter 'stack' as it is called when it is ready for launching.
The first test went fine. The crew went well and so did the hardware.
But there had been anomalies (problems) with the SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) since STS-2. They leaked at the field joints. Sometimes they burned a little at the rubber O rings that were at each joint.
Few knew this.
Judy and I did not. Few astronauts at the time knew a lot about the shuttle hardware per se'.
Time got closer.
Finally, Mission STS-61-A, Columbia, got off in the first of January, 1986, and 51-L was slopped over to follow in mid January. Unusual scheduling for two flights but the second launch pad, 39-B, was to be used and so it was easy to work two orbiter stacks for flight.
The first launch attempt occurred on the 19th of January. It scrubbed. It scrubbed again, and again. And again, and again. And then, it scrubbed one last time, forever.
Launch morning dawned clear and very cold.
It was January 28, 1986.
The cold front was so severe it left ice on the launch pad.
Pad crews checked the ice on the pad, orbiter stack, and the FSS (Fixed Service Structure). They checked it again, and again. Finally, they signed off on the launch criteria and the last hurdle before launch was passed.
I was on top of the LCC (Launch Control Center) preparing to watch my friend, and sweetheart, and three of the other seven crew that I knew personally, go for launch of the 25th shuttle flight.
The countdown passed on through 9 minutes and went into the built in hold time.
The cold was worse after a time than any one realized. Inside the orbiter's flight deck and lower deck the temperature was a chilly 62 degrees.
The final countdown passed on through T-2 minutes and counting.
The world's first true space ship, number 2 of the 4 in the fleet, Challenger, was ready now, like a bird to arc forth. The rumblings and sound of near life were threading out from the stack as it sat, coming closer to ignition.
It was T-6 seconds and the signal came for "we have go for main engine start", and for those 6 seconds the 3 main liquid engines came to life, building up thrust to 104%. Then, at T-0, the solids lit and...........
On a thunderous, out of this world arc of yellow hot fire 900 feet long it rose majestically and went into the programmed roll program to set it over on its back as it rose aloft. The thunder and the concussion can be felt within the body up to 12 miles away. We were 3.8 miles from the pad.
Challenger rose.
At 72.58 seconds it began to quickly come apart.
The last words she said was the night before on the Astronaut telephone links to families where she was sequestered, "see ya in a week green eyes", a moniker for me in that she always loved my green eyes so she said.
I saw her last as she came out of the astro lodge and into the astrovan on her way to the pad and her ship. I shouted to her. She shouted back for which I did not hear, and blew me a kiss.
The fireball erupted at 73 seconds. A thing both fascinating and frightening, a cancer colored nightmare unfolding in the dark cobalt skies above the world's first true space port.
It was failing before my eyes; before the nation's; before the people of the world. The sum total of our achievement, now spiraling in a tendril of uncommon fiery arcs, surging back toward the ocean surface, now 7 miles below the disintegrating craft.
My mouth began to open as did everyone else's.
All forward motion had ceased.
The vehicle was gone now.
The sound of thunderous ascent still came down the cone of deflection to us all, as if it was still going on up into the void with systems nominal. I had heard that enough times it caused a confusion in my mind, fighting my ears registration to the brain, verses what the eyes were seeing. Why was it not going forward still, when I could still hear its 70 million horsepower of thrust driving it upwards.
And then the sound of ascent stopped too.
I slowly turned to my right off to the press area where CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN, and the complex 39 geodesic press dome sits, and for all the distance I could see over the 3/4 mile was humans, 52,000 of them within a 20 miles radius of KSC, silent, mouths open, looking up, stunned.
Silence.
Silence from above, silence from below.
Just the albatrosses now, churning their lonesome wail as they winged overhead in the quiet of the instant of searing terror.
We do not see death like this among loved ones. Generally it is a knock on the door in the night. We are informed that uncle Jack or whomever has plowed into a light pole, or a heart attack stopped him. We are not used to seeing a loved one right on the cusp of the grandest adventure of all time, soaring in complete personal, professional, national triumph, on the world's first true space ship, right at the height of utter triumph. Then vanish.
One second; triumph
The next second, literally disappear in a orange fog of searing terror.
A fireball.
Seared into the brain forever.
The great ship was dead and gone and was falling delicately in pieces back down to Earth's second largest ocean.
And NASA knew.
They knew it then and they knew before and they knew 92 minutes afterwards exactly what happened. But, NASA and me and everyone is human. And where there are humans there are errors. Mistakes, lies, and disceit. And at times, dignity.
For months and even in to the 2nd year therafter, I cried for Judy, for NASA, for everyone, our wonderful country, and for me. I wanted Judy back. I wanted Challenger to not fall down.
It is now 21 years, and some odd days since I wrote this. 21 years since that moment when everything changed.
The gulf of years quickly fall behind me now as I entrain forward in life between me and this thing. But every January 28th, at 11:37 AM, I pause for just a moment. The pain and terror, oddly, are the same, for just a moment, but her face is cloudy now as I remember it. I remember the fireball, but I can't remember exactly the lines of her face or her soft watery dark eyes. Perhaps tears make the view blurry in memory as I stare back across such dark gulfs in time.
Every year, I pause for just a moment.
In those moments the crushing sadness is very great.
And I never wanted to miss a thing.
It was a grand time. It was 'old NASA'. It was a time of being invincible.
For 73 seconds, whether she knew it or not, wanted to or not, she was on the edge of a still very raw technology, hanging her hide along with 6 others right out over the Yawning Red Maw.
For 73 seconds, she was a pioneer, an explorer, an astronaut. A very fine woman. She was there in that thing, that beautiful space ship, surging ahead in that Ahura Mazda Surge that few of us ever will know or feel in this lifetime, moving vertically at 4900 feet per second.
Surging at 3600 miles per hour, going up, ship screaming with all motors running nominal. Triumph at full bore acceleration. Rising up with all engines running at 104%.
Right at, "Challenger, Go For Throttle Up......"
.........and then she went away.
_____________________________
Robert A.M. Stephens,
NASA Contractor
NASA-Smithsonian Fine Art Documentation Program
Hail, NASA
