{"id":7028372,"date":"2026-08-05T10:13:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T10:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-january-28-2026-the-challenger-disaster-the-explosion\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T10:13:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T10:13:31","slug":"americanstudies-january-28-2026-the-challenger-disaster-the-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028372","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: January 28, 2026: The Challenger Disaster: The Explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-body-1742600555803022830\" itemprop=\"description articleBody\">\n<p>[Forty years ago this week, the Space Shuttle <i>Challenger<\/i><br \/>\nbroke apart upon takeoff, instantly becoming one of the most visible and tragic<br \/>\nAmerican stories of the last half-century. So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that<br \/>\nmoment and a handful of contexts.]<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">On why we were so unprepared for disaster, and what the horrifying<br \/>\nmoment meant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">As I wrote in Monday\u2019s post, there\u2019s a significant difference<br \/>\nbetween early space program disasters like the <i>Apollo 1<\/i> fire or <i>Apollo<br \/>\n13<\/i>\u2019s manifold issues and what happened on the morning of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hgA4HUfpyF4\">January 28<sup>th<\/sup>, 1986<\/a>.<br \/>\n<i>Apollo 1<\/i> was to be the first manned mission of its type for the U.S.<br \/>\nspace program, and <i>Apollo 13<\/i> was only three years later, very much still<br \/>\nin the program\u2019s infancy. By comparison, the <i>Challenger<\/i>\u2019s 1986 mission,<br \/>\ndubbed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission\/sts-51l\/\">STS-51-L<\/a>, was to have<br \/>\nbeen the 25<sup>th<\/sup> <a href=\"https:\/\/spider.seds.org\/shuttle\/past.html\">Space<br \/>\nShuttle flight<\/a> since the program\u2019s launch in 1981, and the 10<sup>th<\/sup><br \/>\nfor <i>Challenger<\/i> alone. Both the space program overall and the Space<br \/>\nShuttle missions specifically had become well-oiled and predictable machines\u2014indeed,<br \/>\nso confident were the NASA engineers in the Space Shuttle program that, after initially<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/forum.nasaspaceflight.com\/index.php?topic=52252.0\">featuring<br \/>\nejection seats<\/a> and pressure suits for the astronauts on the two-person test<br \/>\nflights, they <a href=\"https:\/\/sma.nasa.gov\/SignificantIncidents\/assets\/rogers_commission_report.pdf\">decided<br \/>\nnot to include<\/a> any such escape mechanisms on the operational flights.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">While of course the presence on the shuttle of Teacher in Space Project<br \/>\nselectee Christa McAuliffe, about whose inspiring story and voice I wrote in<br \/>\nyesterday\u2019s post, had a lot to do with it, I have to think that this level of earned<br \/>\nconfidence in the Space Shuttle program was likewise a factor in NASA\u2019s<br \/>\ndecision to not only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=j4JOjcDFtBE\">broadcast<br \/>\nthe <i>Challenger<\/i>\u2019s launch live<\/a>, but also and especially to show it to<br \/>\nmillions of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edweek.org\/leadership\/tv-brought-the-trauma-to-classroom-millions\/1986\/02\">children<br \/>\nin classrooms<\/a> around the country (or at least in the more eastern time<br \/>\nzones, as the 11:30 am launch time was a bit too early for it to be shown on<br \/>\nthe West Coast). (Another factor, and one I should have mentioned in yesterday\u2019s<br \/>\npost so I wanted to make sure to do so here, was the presence of another groundbreaking<br \/>\nand inspiring astronaut, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/former-astronaut-ronald-e-mcnair\/\">Ronald E. McNair<\/a>,<br \/>\none of the first three Black astronauts and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blackhistory.mit.edu\/archive\/ronald-e-mcnair-fellow-challenger-crew-members-1986\">second<br \/>\nto go to space<\/a> when he did so for the first time on 1984\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/history\/40-years-ago-sts-41b-the-first-flight-of-the-manned-maneuvering-unit\/\">STS-41B<br \/>\nshuttle mission<\/a>.) (Too many parentheses, I know, but another potential<br \/>\nfactor, especially for conspiracy-minded folks, was President Reagan\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/articles\/reagan-challenger-disaster-state-of-the-union-1986\">scheduled<br \/>\nState of the Union address<\/a> on the evening of January 28<sup>th<\/sup>,<br \/>\nduring which he planned to talk about the shuttle launch.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Reagan ended up using that evening time slot to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reaganlibrary.gov\/archives\/speech\/address-nation-explosion-space-shuttle-challenger\">address<br \/>\nthe tragedy<\/a> instead, perhaps hoping to provide some context for those millions<br \/>\nof children who had watched the explosion live. But according to a long-term<br \/>\npsychiatric study of a number of those kids, one eventually <a href=\"https:\/\/psychiatryonline.org\/doi\/10.1176\/ajp.156.10.1536\">published in <i>The<br \/>\nAmerican Journal of Psychiatry<\/i><\/a> in October 1999, those who watched the<br \/>\nlaunch did display at least some symptoms of what came to be known (thanks in<br \/>\npart to this groundbreaking study) as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychiatry.org\/news-room\/apa-blogs\/the-impact-of-trauma-%E2%80%93-even-from-a-distance\">distant-traumatic<br \/>\neffects<\/a>, a subcategory of PTSD. And as one of those kids, and one who distinctly<br \/>\nremembers not only watching the launch and explosion on the small TV in the<br \/>\noffice of the <a href=\"https:\/\/activisthistory.com\/2017\/10\/27\/segregated-cville\/\">large man who<br \/>\ntaught me to swim<\/a> in the Charlottesville public schools, but also and especially<br \/>\nthe unexpected, unusual, and lingering feelings the experience created in me, I<br \/>\nwould have to agree. Whatever the factors involved in broadcasting this launch<br \/>\nlive, the choice to do so, coupled with a tragedy that no one could have<br \/>\npredicted (although, as I\u2019ll discuss tomorrow, some did worry about), was even<br \/>\nmore momentous than the explosion itself. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Next ChallengerStudying tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Ben<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">PS. What do you think? <i>Challenger <\/i>memories or reflections<br \/>\nyou\u2019d share?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Forty years ago this week, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart upon takeoff, instantly becoming one of the most visible and tragic American stories of the last half-century. So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that moment and a handful of contexts.] On why we were so unprepared for disaster, and what the horrifying moment meant. As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[13299,18041,13031,13449,3805],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7028372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-americanstudies","tag-challenger","tag-disaster","tag-explosion","tag-january"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>AmericanStudies: January 28, 2026: The Challenger Disaster: The Explosion - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028372\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: January 28, 2026: The Challenger Disaster: The Explosion - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[Forty years ago this week, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart upon takeoff, instantly becoming one of the most visible and tragic American stories of the last half-century. 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