1/Today is 36th anniversary of destruction of Space Shuttle Challenger & deaths of 7 heroes (6 astronauts & 1 teacher turned astronaut). Prior to 9/11, for my generation this tragedy was our Dealey Plaza. We all remember where we were when we heard the news. pic.twitter.com/Pk9dOt9KBk
— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) January 28, 2022
It’s a dangerous place to visit… not least when the lowest-bid parts of your spaceship intersect with ‘but the President wants to give his speech *today*’ politics…
The author's grandfather was a contractor with Apollo 1 and is now sharing his experiences: the pressure to meet deadlines, the shortcuts, and the dismissal of safety concerns before the Apollo 1 disaster https://t.co/rzZpKAUmKk via @sciam
— Laura Helmuth (@laurahelmuth) January 27, 2022
The Pentagon is looking for garbage collectors in space https://t.co/2FniAbPym7
— Will Way (@WillWayInNYC) January 28, 2022
Incidentally, the politics of space travel, through the lens of collecting space garbage, was the basis of an acclaimed hard-sf anime series almost twenty years ago…
Poe Larity
There is already a space garbage collector gap
I blame Baud.
BC in Illinois
This is a job for Adam Quark and the United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol Cruiser.
debbie
Probably too late for a garbage collector here.
Suzanne
I am trying to engage in consideration of world affairs, but this day and week have been difficult and I am zoning TF out. There’s been a lot of snow, and most of the school days were on a two-hour delay. Then because of the bridge collapse, school was all remote today. So the kids have been stuck inside most of the week and they were climbing the walls a bit. So after work, I took them to the mall and bought them Starbucks. And I was That Asshole Who Lets Their Kids Run Indoors In Public, because Fuck You That’s Why. They’ve been so cooped up and they needed a change of scenery, and a treat.
Redshift
@Suzanne: Sometimes you gotta take a break and take care of yourself. No shame in that.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Does not compute.
;)
justawriter
Too bad no one besides me and two or three others watched the 1977 series Quark with Richard Benjamin as an outer space garbage man. Elon Musk would have launched a garbage truck instead of a sports car.
NotMax
With supply chain burps it is now Per Aspera ad Pasta.
;)
mali muso
@Suzanne: I feel this! Was exchanging texts with some of my mom-friends (our kids are in the same preschool) about yet another classroom closure and we are all just completely tapped out. The universe owes us moms a really big break. No offense to dads but let’s be honest. This pandemic is crushing moms. Ugh
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: Here and there exist malls that understand this and have play areas. The mall closest to me used to have one, a three-sided pit area but maybe their lawyer scared them about liability because they filled it in. Good timing for me, I didn’t need it anymore at that point.
Anyway, I try to be the old lady who chuckles at the kids running amok, “Aren’t they adorable.” Unless a gentle, “Oh honey, that’s dangerous, don’t do that” is called for.
NotMax
@justawriter
(raises hand)
The lean years when we were so hungry for something, anything SF on the televisor machine.
BTW, there’s a Starlost channel on the ol’ Roku.
Mike in NC
Ronald Reagan was completely absolved by right-wing media of any connection to the Challenger disaster.
Citizen Alan
@BC in Illinois:
I wish we could get something as professional as Quark. I imagine we’ll end up with Salvage-1.
Ohio Mom
@NotMax: Lots of cookies and other small baked treats (cake lolliops in birthday cake flavor!) at Starbucks for little ones.
And if you look around at the teens, they are all drinking overly sweet whipped cream-topped I don’t know whats. In someways, Starbucks is the contemporary malt shop for the high school set.
Adam L Silverman
I watched it blow up in real time with several classmates. Standing outside our high school cafeteria. We immediately sprinted for the library because the librarians always had a TV cart with the live feed of the launch. Within an hour we were all in the chapel for a special mass and then sent home early.
dexwood
The Challenger launch coincided with my break between classes so off I headed to the teacher’s lounge at my high school, eager to watch. Stunned silence from me, horrified gasps from others, disbelief and tears following. Yeah, I remember the moment and having to head to my next class to carry on.
Benw
@Suzanne: you’re a good mom :)
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Did someone say malt shoppe?
;)
dmsilev
I remember Challenger and where I was when I heard the news. I was in elementary school; thankfully we weren’t one of the schools watching a live feed. Instead, we were all out at recess and someone heard the news somehow and then it was “have you heard? The Shuttle exploded!”.
Pork-barrel politics killed that crew. The company that won the contract to make the boosters did so despite not being the highest-rated bid. But they were well-connected in Congress. And, since their factory was inland and well away from any navigable rivers, their design included “booster must be built in segments and then assembled” as a fundamental principle. Hence the infamous O-rings.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom: That’s exactly right. Younger likes the vanilla bean frappa-crappa things, and I bought Youngest a cake pop. SUGAR!!!
I’m so existentially exhausted.
cain
@Adam L Silverman:
I remember watching it live as well and watching it explode in real time. There were gasps and some folks were crying. It was terrible.
It was a little more personal for some of us. See, my sixth grade teacher was the runner up to Christa McAuliffe to get on the shuttle. If there were other circumstances he would have been on that shuttle when it blew up.
He used to tell us that he’s going to go up in space in class and all of us were pretty skeptical. He nearly pulled it off.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: same. I was in 4th grade and we were all watching it on the push cart TV. We watched all of them. I honestly don’t remember what we did afterwards, but I remember all of us standing slack jawed at the TV.
Almost 20 years later, when I was an instructor, I taught Ron McNair’s nephew. We’re all from SC. His family still lives in the same town. I read up on McNair a while later and found out he was a badass from an early age.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Obligatory?
sixthdoctor
I was heading into French class (I was a sophomore in high school) and a kid blurted out to me the shuttle blew up. My first reaction was, well, they escaped, right? On TV every spaceship had an escape pod, didn’t they?
And then in the next class we didn’t have a lesson. The teacher just let us talk and process.
And when I got home we just watched it over and over. I remember going outside just to stare at the night sky and look at the stars.
Jay
@Suzanne:
there was a “farfenugen” VDub ad years ago.
Uncle picks up the kids, feeds them candy and caffinated soft drinks,
takes them to an amusement park, gets them to run up and down hills in the bush,
brings them back completely exhausted with the little girl asleep in the Uncle’s arms, clutching a huge stuffed toy,
and the Wife just gives her Husband a “ you are dead to me” look.
phdesmond
@NotMax:
remarkable video!
PJ
@Citizen Alan: I watched both of those shows (though now that I think about it, I think I just saw the pilot for Salvage-1.) I guess the baby boomers missed them.
Yarrow
I didn’t know this part:
Redshift
@justawriter:
I did! I remembered it fondly enough that I re-watched a couple of episodes years later when we visited the Museum of Radio and Television in New York (now the
The Paley Center for Media, apparently.) They have a huge archive of TV shows and you can request and watch whatever you want. Heck, for all I know, it may be available online these days.
delk
I was dating a guy that worked for Montgomery Wards while I was a student at UIC. There was a short lived gay bar / restaurant almost directly between UIC and Montgomery Wards’ corporate HQ. We would meet there a couple times a week for a late lunch. Place was always dead when we got there. We’d order burgers and while we waited we’d either play pool or play the pinball machine.
it was a ‘Space Shuttle’ pinball machine. That day the bartender unplugged the machine while we watched the replays on TV.
dmsilev
@Yarrow: Apparently there were enough people calling up Spotify to cancel their subscriptions that their customer service lines/chats/etc. were completely locked up. For once, “we are experiencing unusual call volume” actually seems to have come true.
The Oracle of Solace
Planetes was a pretty good show, and made a good-faith effort to be hard SF. The silent vacuum of space raised the tension more than any whooshing around would do, especially when our protagonists were aware of debris heading toward them at several kilometers a second. Although I did find the interpersonal relationships to be more like soap-opera melodrama, thumbs-up overall.
Leto
@dmsilev: on Imgur people have been posting their screen shots of them canceling their service, along with the specific reason behind it: Joe Rogan. I know the shitheel has a contract deal with them, but hopefully this causes Spotify some major heartburn. Ultimately I hope Spotify pulls his shit altogether and stops them from hosting anything else like it.
Yarrow
@dmsilev: I saw their stock price dropped significantly yesterday but was back up today.
Yarrow
On the misinformation beat:
dmsilev
@Leto: When Apple of all companies decides to troll you on Twitter, something has gone very wrong:
cain
@Mike in NC: what was the connection ?
SiubhanDuinne
Watching Colbert. The wonderful Marlee Matlin is his guest. Jesus, she is one funny broad! She was signing “fuck you” at Stephen and he copied her and signed it back, and the guys in the booth were scrambling to blur their hands so there shouldn’t be any ASL swearing on network TV. Too funny.
dmsilev
SiubhanDuinne
@dmsilev:
LOL!! ??
I did see that Joni Mitchell removed all her music from Spotify in solidarity with Neil Young. Good on our Canadians.
ETA: Of course Yarrow got there almost an hour ago.
Anne Laurie
I was old enough that I didn’t see it happen in real time, because I was working in an office that didn’t have a tv.
Some months later, I was watching an IMAX film on the space shuttle. Judith Resnick was there with a huge smile on her face… and that’s when I started sobbing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
The one really nice thing Peggy Noonan did for us was to introduce John Magee’s poem “High Flight” into the American consciousness. As Reagan’s speechwriter, she had him quote the lines “slipped the surly bonds of earth … and touched the face of God.” It’s lovely imagery.
Anne Laurie
As was widely reported at the time, the pocket-protector nerds said it was ‘too cold’ to launch, because of those o-rings. But President Reagan needed a big upbeat photo op, and the launch had already been put off more than once, which was ‘bad optics’…
Of course, the wise pundits explained it wasn’t really the President’s fault, he just placed too much faith in the people around him. Within a few years, there would be official confirmation that, yes, Reagan was well in the throes of Alzheimer’s by that time — he did get (more) stubborn about sticking to schedules. Which doesn’t excuse the people around him!
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
The first draft of “slipped the highly polished brown cordovan from the surly bonds of the hassock” was thankfully, revised.
trollhattan
Recall both Apollo 1 and Challenger as searing memories and unwelcome lessons that hubris is our unwanted co-traveler in this life. By Columbia I was far more cynical, but mourned those unfortunate lives equally, because they were there for us all.
laura
I miss Amir Khalid so much, what a lovely gentle man with an n+1 for guitars, a heart so tender for a cat, a diligence so keen for his country’s path through this pandemic, who downplayed his anticipated absence for a brief period of time.
I miss his presence so much and I know it’s not just me.
eclare
@laura:
No, it’s not just you. Every morning I hope to see him in the covid thread with an update from Malaysia.
West of the Rockies
@laura:
Did he declare he was taking a break? Is there reason to fear for his health or safety? He’s one of our beloved commenters, for sure.
eclare
@West of the Rockies: A little over three weeks ago he said that he would be gone for a few days as he was going to the hospital. He didn’t say why. And no word since.
West of the Rockies
@eclare:
Oh, damn. I’d be surprised if nobody here had a real name/contact method with him, as admired and liked as he is. But now I’m worried, too. I had been feeling that way about Adam as well.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie:
No boom visible from Earth. :(
mrmoshpotato
@justawriter:
Ugh. Even larger garbage in space then.
Steeplejack
@West of the Rockies:
WaterGirl said she sent two or three e-mails to the account listed with Amir’s nym and got no response.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: LMAO!
opiejeanne
@PJ: Baby Boomer here, and we loved Quark.
mrmoshpotato
“Thank you for calling Spotify. How may I cancel your account today?”
mrmoshpotato
Oh no! ?
Captain C
@mrmoshpotato: His offer is acceptable.
Mary G
@laura: Thanks for saying what I have been feeling. Amir is someone I treasure.
mrmoshpotato
MomSense
COVID plus blizzard meant the store was out of a lot of items. I’ve never seen it like that before. Long lines to check out. Long lines at the gas stations and I had to drive to the next town to find regular unleaded.
By the time I got home I was exhausted. I had cereal for dinner and fell asleep.
Oh and another co worker left the office today. She gad a COVID test at her doctor’s office because she was there for pre-op testing. It came back positive. I’ll be spending the weekend in my room and we will all wear masks.
I’m getting very tired of this.
No name
@laura: You said what I couldn’t put into words. Hoping for good news soon.
mrmoshpotato
@MomSense: Hope you get through Snowmageddon without losing power.
Also, weekend chili cook-off.
Cermet
Because of the huge velocity differentials (i.e. massive kinetic energy [KE = m* V^2]) collecting “garbage” in space simply cannot be done by simple capture – the fuel required to both achieve similar velocities and correct inclination of the orbit would be staggering (doable only for large pieces like the Hubble … and even then, that’ll cost many tens of millions using the cheapest rocket.)
The best way (both cost and logistics) would be collision using a large area, low cost but highly effective composite armor plate (unfolds in space but is super light but easily absorbs hyper-velocity debris – yes, this exists and is extremely low cost.) After these collision impacts the large, super dangerous pieces would be converted into micro pieces that could then be rather easily vaporized via a powerful (but feasible) space based laser (likely chemical like the one designed for the 747 anti-missile system.)
This is about the only way the vast array – in sizes, velocity profiles, and orbit inclinations) could ever be handled in a cost effective manner.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Brr.
:)
MomSense
@mrmoshpotato:
Since kid is on his own for cooking I think the air fryer is going to be on non stop. I found the last bag of fries in the grocery store. Someone shoved the bag in the wrong place and that’s the only reason I for them.
satby
@No name: Me too! Hoping for the best, but beginning to fear the worst. Sending love to Amir!
bjacques
Late to the thread, but before today’s Rona Roundup goes up:
I was at NASA -JSC interviewing for a job when Challenger happened. Beautiful, cold Tuesday morning. An engineer gave me the ten cent tour of Building 4N (Mission Operations) and hallway TVs were showing the Shuttle on the pad. Around 9:30 he excused himself. I was invited back to finish my interview a week later. In the meantime Reagan came and gave a eulogy. I got the job and stayed 10-1/2 years before chasing the siren call of the Intertubes.
NASA upper management went ahead with the launch not so much for Reagan’s benefit as mission scheduling was already a mess, with flights juggled to accommodate planetary mission launch windows and other opportunities, and of course they didn’t appreciate the danger of launching on a cold day. The ensuing pullback (2-1/2 years), besides giving me plenty of work helping to properly vet contingency operations procedures and Shuttle technical drawings, may have prevented another catastrophe.
The Ulysses Jupiter probe that was supposed to be flown on Challenger’s next flight with an Atlas Centaur liquid booster. There was no way to safely empty its fuel tanks in case of an abort, and word was the crew weren’t happy to be assigned to that mission. The probe was also fitted with an RTG (Radioisotopic Thermoelectric Generator) for power because solar panels wouldn’t likely survive gravity assists from Jupiter. If it had to be jettisoned and deorbited, there was a small worry of the RTG breaking up and its Plutonium poisoning the atmosphere or leaking into the ocean. Then again, Apollo 13 had one on the LEM, and it was still intact, last I heard. Hard to say. This was the basis for Jello Biafra’s spoken word piece “Why I’m Glad The Space Shuttle Blew Up”. Anyway, Ulysses was launched 4 years later from another Shuttle, but with a solid-fueled booster instead of the liquid one, so it needed more gravity assists to reach its proper orbit.
And fingers crossed for Amir. He’ll appreciate Neil Young’s action I reckon.
lowtechcyclist
@dmsilev:
LOL!!!!
MomSense
@laura:
I miss him, too and I’m so worried.
No name
@satby: It’s the not knowing that’s so difficult.
No name
@MomSense: Ha! Grabbed the last orange juice yesterday. Weird things cleaned out…only a half dozen bags of frozen broccoli left. That’s going in the air fryer today if the power stays on ?
WaterGirl
@laura: I get tears in my eyes now when I think of Amir. I hope my fears are greatly exaggerated.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: It never stops, and at this point it’s mostly because of selfish, arrogant people. I’m sorry.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato:
I just wanted to see that again. In fact, I would like to see that everywhere.
Miss Bianca
@Ohio Mom:
I never stopped to think about it that way before, but it makes such perfect sense that that’s how I’ll always be thinking about them in the future!
The Pale Scot
Jeez! The MIG-25 pilot who defected, Viktor Belenko described this very thing going on in his squadron. The ethanol was used in hydraulics and kept the whole base “adjusted”. So much for American sobriety
The Pale Scot
@Suzanne:
Buy them snow shoes and take them to a park.
A couple of hours trying to walk in those things they won’t be running anywhere. :)
The Pale Scot
@laura:
Possible ID?
https://www.mandevilleconservatory.com/main/faculty-member/amir-khalid/
Madeleine
@laura: Thank you for your daily message for Amir, but especially for today’s mention of all we miss.
WaterGirl
@The Pale Scot: I wonder. That says: “Faculty since March 2018” and I believe our Amir has been retired. But the guitar thing certainly fits.