From Newsgroup: rec.sport.tennis
Here's a better response...
On 2/7/26 9:19 AM, *skriptis wrote:
What's the biggest, or more tragic?
Challenger or Columbia?
I would tend to think Challenger was a bigger shock when it happened,
Recalling as best I can, Challenger was a notably bigger shock, and the
main reason was that so few fatalities had occurred in the US space
program to that date that a sort of tacit faith had developed: that we
were past the danger stage. There was, ferchrissake, a classroom
elementary teacher on board as one of the crew.
the crew potentially didn't die instantly (very unsettling)
Few people saw that as much of a component of the shock/dismay.
and also one person, notably Reagan was to be blamed? An Alzheimer geezer wanted to gain some political points and talk to astronauts during state of the union, so basically everyone bow to his authority and went with the launch which in normal circumstances would have been postponed, no?
And I'd say that less than 20% thought anything like that, and the
reasons are that a) people *liked* Reagan; and b) in that era, people
were much less likely to finger-point so avidly. This is not to say that ascribing blame did not exist, but it was not, as it is now, perhaps the
main motivation following any misdeed. Not "where was the error? How can
we avoid it in the future?"...and finally: was there someone directly responsible, and if so, who were they and why did they fail?". It's more
like "AHAH! Now we can screw them to the wall!!!"
As for Colombia, it wasn't the first time, they all died instantly,
You know, though...
It was much easier to envision that the crew's demise was
near-instantaneous, but there were some disquieting considerations. I'm
kinda lazy so I'm going to work from memory.
Online there's a simulation of the accumulating damage along with
localized temp readings in the areas of disintegration. The crew could
see all this unfolding, and most, if not all, knew that they could not
do a damned thing once they were into re-entry. This simulation is split-screen with the NASA control room. You could see the reaction of
the ground control team as it played out.
They--the crew and ground control--could see indications of it getting
worse and worse, hinting at the ultimate fiery dissolution of the
shuttle, and this went on for a fair mount of time...minutes rather than seconds.
Too, the recovered remains were far from comforting. I *think* they
were dead pretty quickly, but boy, oh boy...
there's some comfort in that, and it was a system or organisational failure, NASA as a whole, right?
In tennis terms, Challenger is when you deliberately hit in frustration and miss, Colombia was standard unforced error due to fatigue or lack of focus?
I oversimplified my points to start the topic.
No, it's fine.
There's a level of slow-mo hubris in both of the shuttle disasters that doesn't seem to be present in a pro-level final.
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