Shuttle blast: only charred slabs left But space plans will continue, says Mr Reagan

Press, 30 January 1986, Page 1

Shuttle blast: only charred slabs left But space plans will continue, says Mr Reagan

NZPA-Reuter Cape Canaveral, Florida American space exploration would continue, President Reagan pledged after the space shuttle Challenger exploded above Cape Canaveral yesterday, killing all seven crew members.

“The future does not belong to the fainthearted. It belongs to the brave,” President Reagan said in a brief television address. Planes found charred slabs of the Challenger in the Atlantic after the shuttle exploded seconds after blast-off, but there was no hope that the five men and two women astronauts had survived. It was the worst disaster in the 25-year history of manned space flight by the United States and of published Soviet flights, and raised questions about the fate of the shuttle, designed to usher in an era of space colonisation. Seven hours after the tragedy, Colonel John Shults, head of recovery work, said search craft spotted two to three-metre pieces of wreckage at sea, but there was no sign of life.

The shuttle was not equipped with an escape capsule or parachutes.

Colonel Shults said the search for wreckage would continue in a wide area, 200 km north-east of

Cape Canaveral. Officials temporarily grounded the shuttle programme and launched an immediate investigation. Jesse Moore, an official of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, denied at a press conference five hours after the disaster that the agency had been under pressure to launch yesterday.

The flight had been scheduled for Monday (N.Z. time) but was postponed for two days because of weather conditions and technical problems termed minor by officials.

Lift-off was delayed two hours yesterday because of a rare freeze in Florida.

Terry White, a spokesman at Johnson Space Centre, Houston, said Challenger — which had experienced engine failure during a flight last July — carried on board recorders similar to those used on commercial planes. N.A.S.A. was not certain if the data recorder could

be recovered from the ocean or if the device was still intact.

Another spokesman, John Lawrence, said N.A.S.A. technicians had ground data for analysis. A number of sensors attached to the shuttle’s engines had provided a steady stream of information about the fuel mix, propellent flow and various valves. The data from the engine was automatically recorded by computers at mission control.

The deaths — the first to occur during a United States flight — stunned the American people, from President Reagan to ordinary citizens.

Networks devoted their entire 30-minute evening newscasts to the shuttle story.

The mission was the twenty-fifth in the shuttle series — the tenth by Challenger — and although the programme recently had been hit by a rash of technical problems, many Americans had come to view the flights nearly as routinely as they did airline takeoffs and landings. But there was special interest yesterday because the crew included Christa McAuliffe, a teacher and mother of two, who was chosen for the flight after a national search.

Millions of children, including those in Mrs McAuliffe’s hometown of Concord, New Hampshire, were also tuned to the broadcast — their shouts of glee suddenly turned to shrieks of horror. The families of the as-

tronauts, including Mrs McAuliffe’s husband, one of their children and her parents, watched the tragedy unfold from a special viewing area at the Kennedy Space Centre.

The shuttle crew was headed by a former Air Force officer, Francis (Dick) Scobee.

Other members in addition to Mrs McAuliffe were Commander Michael Smith, pilot; Dr Judith Resnik, LieutenantColonel Ellison Onizuka, and Dr Ron McNair, mission specialists; and Greg Jarvis, a payload specialist.

The tragedy struck about 90 seconds after the 11.38 a.m. (5.38 a.m. N.Z. time) blast-off.

The spacecraft was at the maximum point of aerodynamic stress and travelling at three times the speed of sound loaded,.-

In a flash there was a silent mushroom of orange fire and then an eerie scorpion-shaped cloud with two pincers of white smoke dotted with flame filled the Florida sky. , ;

Until the explosion, the mission appeared to be unfolding flawlessly and there was no indication of danger in communications between mission control and Challenger. While spokesmen declined to speculate on the cause, a slow replay of television tapes showed that the tail of the huge external fuel tank apparently ruptured first and hurled the twin solid-fuel booster rockets in opposite directions.

Other shuttle reports, pages 3, 4 and 8.