I had been out of grad school almost 10 years and had for the then previous 5 years been working as a Sr. Systems Engineer for Ford Aerospace at NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center. I had arrived to work on the Shuttle Mission Control Center about 4 months after the first Shuttle Flight. After about 4 years working on the Mission Control Center, I had been given an extended Temporary Duty (TDY) assignment to work on the Boost Phase Tracking System (BSTS), Regan's Star Wars replacement for our aging Defense Satellite Program (DSP) system. I was sent to Sunnyvale, CA, to work that program and was there when the Challenger disaster occured.

On a previous post on a very different topic I noted my memories of how much NASA had been trying and driving all of their systems and contractors to warm up to the view of the Shuttle as "just another transportation system" and that we had to get over the worries about "loosing one." After the Challenger, everything changed and it became clear that the Shuttle was *not* just "another transportation system" and it changed the Shuttle program forever; NASA has never really recovered.

But as you so well pointed out, my memory of that day was two things: (1) the images of the reusable fuel tanks flying away from the main body as the main body exploded into that horrible fireball and (2) Regan's speach in which he concluded the saying rememered and reflected here.

Thanks for your really wonderful reply...and for all the replies that I've seen.

ack Albuquerque, NM

In reply to Re^2: The Surly Bonds of Earth by ack
in thread The Surly Bonds of Earth by ack

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