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Speaker 1: It was Tuesday, June twenty sixth, nineteen eighty four, on
Speaker 1: a launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Space Shuttle Discovery
Speaker 1: was preparing to take its first voyage into orbit. There
Speaker 1: were six astronauts on board, harnessed into their seats, lying
Speaker 1: on their backs, facing up towards the Cosmos. The hatch
Speaker 1: to the crew compartment closed. The astronauts felt a pop
Speaker 1: in their ears as the cabin pressurized, and then they waited, nervous,
Speaker 1: their chit chat and jokes fading into silence. Soon the
Speaker 1: only sound was the woosh of the cabin fan. At
Speaker 1: t minus two minutes, the astronauts closed the visors on
Speaker 1: their helmets. Good luck everybody, their mission commander said, this
Speaker 1: is it. Do it like we've trained eyes on the instruments.
Speaker 1: At T minus thirty one seconds, Discoveries computers assumed control.
Speaker 2: Of the countdown, so they have a quince start.
Speaker 1: The astronaut hearts were racing. They focused their whole beings
Speaker 1: on what was about to happen, on everything they had
Speaker 1: trained for years to do.
Speaker 2: We have a main engine start.
Speaker 1: At T minus ten seconds, six high pressure turbo pumps
Speaker 1: began to work, sending thousands of pounds of propellant to
Speaker 1: the shuttle's three main engines. At T minus six seconds,
Speaker 1: the cockpit started to shake and rattle violently. The first
Speaker 1: engine headlet. This was it. Liftoff was about to begin,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly the vibrations stopped. The cockpit was as
Speaker 1: silent and eerie as a tomb. The crew knew instantly
Speaker 1: that something was very, very wrong. They were only seconds
Speaker 1: away from lighting the solid rocket boosters, two giant canisters
Speaker 1: of fuel that would propel the shuttle into orbit. If
Speaker 1: they ignited now while the shuttle was still on the
Speaker 1: launch pad, they would generate more than six million pounds
Speaker 1: of thrust. It would rip the shuttle apart. Everyone on
Speaker 1: board would be dead instantly. The astronauts weren't sure exactly
Speaker 1: what was happening, but they knew they were sitting on
Speaker 1: a bomb that might be about to go off. I'm JR. Martinez,
Speaker 1: and this is Metal of Honor Stories of Courage. In
Speaker 1: this episode, you'll meet the recipient of a different kind
Speaker 1: of metal, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. It was
Speaker 1: authorized by Congress in nineteen sixty nine and since then
Speaker 1: has only been awarded to thirty astronauts. It is given
Speaker 1: to those men and women who distinguish themselves through quote
Speaker 1: exceptionally meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the
Speaker 1: nation and mankind. And just like the Medal of Honor,
Speaker 1: it has to be approved by the President of the
Speaker 1: United States. The Space Medal of Honor doesn't award heroism
Speaker 1: in battle. It rewards the heroism you need if you're
Speaker 1: going to push to the farthest edges of our frontier.
Speaker 1: That heroism tells us every bit as much about the
Speaker 1: nature of courage and sacrifice as the classic Medal of
Speaker 1: Honor does. This story is about Judith Resnik, one of
Speaker 1: the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on that summer
Speaker 1: morning in nineteen eighty four. Judy was a brilliant engineer
Speaker 1: who joined NASA along with five other women in the
Speaker 1: late seventies and went through years of grueling training to
Speaker 1: qualify to be on that shuttle. She was the second
Speaker 1: American woman in space after Sally Ryde, and she understood
Speaker 1: deep in her bones how risky her assignment was, but
Speaker 1: she did it anyway. She persisted through that danger, not
Speaker 1: because she wanted to be a woman in space as
Speaker 1: some kind of token or ceiling breaker. She did it
Speaker 1: because she had a job to do, a job she
Speaker 1: was doing for her country, for all of us. She
Speaker 1: would do that job until the morning she died at
Speaker 1: the age of thirty six, free falling through the clear
Speaker 1: blue winter sky. By the time Judy Resnik decided to
Speaker 1: become an astronaut, she had been the only woman in
Speaker 1: the room literally dozens of times. That's what you got
Speaker 1: from being a female math, genius an engineer in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties and seventies. She was born in Akron, Ohio,
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty nine. Her parents were first generation Jewish Americans.
Speaker 1: Judy was exceptional from the start. She trained to be
Speaker 1: a concert pianist, and she was amazing at it. She
Speaker 1: spoke French. She was the only girl in the math
Speaker 1: club in high school. She graduated first in her class,
Speaker 1: and she was accepted early to the famous Juilliard School
Speaker 1: of Music. But then Judy scored an eight hundred on
Speaker 1: the math Porsche of her college SATs, the only female
Speaker 1: high school student in the country that year to achieve
Speaker 1: a perfect score. So she switched gears and enrolled at
Speaker 1: Carnegie Mellon University to study electrical engineering. There were barely
Speaker 1: any other women in the department, but she was getting
Speaker 1: used to that. Judy graduated first in her class and
Speaker 1: promptly started adding to her expertise designing radar control and
Speaker 1: rocketree circuits at RCA, working in biomedical engineering at the
Speaker 1: National Institutes of Health, getting her PhD in electrical engineering
Speaker 1: with honors. But while success came easily, finding something to
Speaker 1: spark her interest was harder. That all changed in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, when NASA finally opened its applications to women.
Speaker 1: Judy was twenty seven. NASA's decision was a long time coming.
Speaker 3: It was American men who first walked in space and
Speaker 3: then set the first human footprints on a planet other
Speaker 3: than Earth, and subsequent flights have remained a sort of
Speaker 3: free floating bachelor party.
Speaker 1: This is from a documentary made in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: I can't tell if it's meant to be funny or what.
Speaker 3: From nineteen sixty until nineteen seventy seven, for reasons that
Speaker 3: will forever remain unclear, NASA was unable to find a
Speaker 3: single qualified woman candidate.
Speaker 1: Or as one woman put it, they trained a Tim
Speaker 1: pan Z to go to space before they trained a
Speaker 1: single female astronaut. Anyways, in the late nineteen seventies, NASA
Speaker 1: had developed this space Shuttle. Unlike the old spacecraft, it
Speaker 1: would be reusable, able to take trips a year, which
Speaker 1: meant NASA would need more astronauts, and so finally women
Speaker 1: were allowed in the door. Judy wasn't really that interested
Speaker 1: in space until she happened to see the NASA recruitment
Speaker 1: noticed on some bulletin board. This is Judy.
Speaker 4: I decided to apply to be an astronaut when I
Speaker 4: was a graduate student finishing up my research work. It
Speaker 4: was not something that I had planned to do for
Speaker 4: my whole life. It was a case of being in
Speaker 4: the right place at the right time. NASA was advertising
Speaker 4: for astronauts at the time that I was looking for
Speaker 4: a job.
Speaker 1: If she made it sound easy, it wasn't. More than
Speaker 1: eight thousand people applied to become astronauts that year. Of those,
Speaker 1: a little over a thousand were women. Judy worked hard
Speaker 1: to stand out from the crowd, reaching out to astronaut
Speaker 1: John Glenn an Apollo eleven pilot Michael and to learn
Speaker 1: more about the space program. She got a pilot's license,
Speaker 1: and while she waited to hear from NASA, she moved
Speaker 1: to California and took a job with Xerox. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: she was one of two hundred finalists invited to the
Speaker 1: Johnson Space Center in Houston. Of those two hundred, only
Speaker 1: twenty one were women. Judy submitted to a week of
Speaker 1: interviews to physical test and mental ones. NASA recruiters needed
Speaker 1: to know if these potential astronauts would respond badly to stress.
Speaker 1: In January of nineteen seventy eight, Judy got the news
Speaker 1: she would be one of six women accepted into the program.
Speaker 1: At the press conference, she stepped onto the stage and
Speaker 1: smoothed her skirt. She had straightened her dark, curly hair
Speaker 1: and wore a nervous smile on her face.
Speaker 5: Mission Specialist. Her residence is Redondo Beach, California. Her present
Speaker 5: position is engineering staff product development with the Xerox Corporation.
Speaker 5: El Segunde.
Speaker 1: Judy moved to Houston with the rest of the thirty
Speaker 1: five newly minted astronauts. She would train as a mission specialist.
Speaker 6: The mission specialist does things associated with the experiments on
Speaker 6: board or deploying the satellites, while the pilots do most
Speaker 6: of the flying of the orbiter.
Speaker 1: While she might not be flying the shuttle, the training
Speaker 1: was still brutal and it would last for years. More
Speaker 1: than any other of the six women, Judy was determined
Speaker 1: to be seen as one of the boys. As she
Speaker 1: once told her father quote that I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a Jewish astronaut. I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: Jewish woman astronaut. US want to be an astronaut period.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go in space and do my job.
Speaker 1: A few years into her training, Tom Broker asked her
Speaker 1: what it was like to break into that old boys club.
Speaker 7: Once you got into the program, wasn't there a little
Speaker 7: bit of resentment or a little bit of male chauvinism
Speaker 7: that was demonstrated to that's.
Speaker 1: A very male kind of fighter pilot world as you
Speaker 1: were in Rick.
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 8: As a matter of fact, I think everybody leaned over
Speaker 8: backwards to make sure that we were treated as equal
Speaker 8: right from the beginning.
Speaker 1: This, of course, was not entirely true. Mike mullane was
Speaker 1: also a mission specialist in Judy's class of astronauts, and
Speaker 1: he remembers the men oggling her, teasing her with dirty jokes.
Speaker 1: It sounds like training with a bunch of teenagers. One
Speaker 1: time the guys put a live grass snake in her back.
Speaker 1: They waited in the other room to hear her open
Speaker 1: her purse, and which she did. I would have but
Speaker 1: they respected her brilliance and reliability. Mulane has served as
Speaker 1: an Air Force colonel before he joined NASA. He was
Speaker 1: pretty tough. He had flown one hundred and thirty four
Speaker 1: combat missions in Vietnam, and he remembers Judy this way quote.
Speaker 1: I'd watched her fly formation from the backseat of T
Speaker 1: thirty eight's and lead instrument approaches in bad weather and
Speaker 1: do it as well as me. I'd washed a repel
Speaker 1: off the side of the orbiter mock up in our
Speaker 1: emergency training, parascel into the water in our survival training,
Speaker 1: worked twenty feet underwater in a three hundred pounds spacesuit
Speaker 1: in simulation. After simulation, she had instantly and correctly reacted
Speaker 1: to countless emergencies. The other astronauts felt that they could
Speaker 1: trust Judy with their lives. Plus, she was a really
Speaker 1: good time. Here's Rhea Seddon, who is one of the
Speaker 1: first female astronauts.
Speaker 9: She was really really bright, obviously very beautiful person, flirtatious, funny.
Speaker 9: You know, if she was just a live wire, you know,
Speaker 9: we would do the Happy Hours or we'd go on
Speaker 9: these NASA trips, and Judy was just a star attraction.
Speaker 9: She was just having a great time and was obviously
Speaker 9: friends with everybody.
Speaker 1: NASA kept sending her out to do press, which Judy hated.
Speaker 1: Journalists would ask her personal questions, questions they would never
Speaker 1: ask a male astronaut like this Jim from tom Brookaw.
Speaker 5: Are there discussions on Houston about what happens.
Speaker 7: When men and women go into space for the first
Speaker 7: time together? After all, if you're up there.
Speaker 5: In some kind of a prolonged space mission.
Speaker 7: And there may be even relationships that will develop between
Speaker 7: men and women.
Speaker 8: Well, I think from our point of view, since we're
Speaker 8: so used to working together professionally, that we look at
Speaker 8: each other as profession colleagues on the ground, in orbit
Speaker 8: and whatever, and we view it that way. Period.
Speaker 7: You think the time will come when there will be
Speaker 7: a romance in the outer space, then oh gee, I
Speaker 7: really couldn't tell.
Speaker 1: You that, Tom, what are you doing? Understandably, Judy started
Speaker 1: to avoid the press. She sometimes would hide from reporters,
Speaker 1: using her fellow astronauts as human shields. And then at
Speaker 1: the start of nineteen eighty two, it became clear that
Speaker 1: NASA was going to assign a woman to a shuttle crew.
Speaker 1: Whoever it was would become the first American woman in space.
Speaker 1: The female astronauts were more than ready. Judy had a
Speaker 1: bright pink bumper sticker made that read a Woman's place
Speaker 1: is in the cockpit. It looked like it was going
Speaker 1: to come down to either her or Sally Ride. Ride
Speaker 1: was a brilliant physicist and PhD who had married a
Speaker 1: fellow astronaut. Sally was comfortable with the press, calm and
Speaker 1: well spoken on TV. And then there was Judy, equally
Speaker 1: brilliant but single, who cursed like a sailor, went out
Speaker 1: dancing in nightclubs, and rolled her eyes whenever her gender
Speaker 1: became part of the conversation. The decision, unfortunately, was probably
Speaker 1: pretty clear. In April of nineteen eighty two, NASA announced
Speaker 1: that Sally Ride would be the first American woman astronaut
Speaker 1: in space. It would be two long years before Judy
Speaker 1: would have her first brush with space. That day, when
Speaker 1: Discovery's engines shut down on the launchpad and Judy realized
Speaker 1: she might be about to die. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: Judy Resnek was finally scheduled for emission to space. It
Speaker 1: would be Discovery's maiden voyage, although, as Judy joked with
Speaker 1: the other five astronauts, who were all men, quote, there
Speaker 1: are no maidens on this voyage. Judy, as an expert engineer,
Speaker 1: specialized in the operation of the mechanical arm, which was
Speaker 1: controlled from within the cockpit but located outside the orbiter.
Speaker 1: It was used to lift solar panels and position satellites.
Speaker 1: Here's Judy describing what the team would be doing with
Speaker 1: the arm during a TV interview.
Speaker 4: The remote Manipulator Arm will be used to take large satellites,
Speaker 4: for example, out of the cargo bay and put them
Speaker 4: into orb but the orbiter will act much like a bus,
Speaker 4: and the satellite will be getting off at it's bus stop,
Speaker 4: so to speak. We get to the right place in
Speaker 4: the right time, and we'll pick it up with the arm,
Speaker 4: and we'll put it where we want to let go,
Speaker 4: and then back the orbiter away and leave it there.
Speaker 1: Operating the arm took incredible skill. Here's Tom Brokaw again
Speaker 1: talking about Judy on a news broadcast.
Speaker 7: Despite her protestations that she couldn't do things better than
Speaker 7: some of the men, all and men told me that
Speaker 7: when she operated that big arm at the back of
Speaker 7: the payload, she had a great touch, that she had
Speaker 7: real dexterity.
Speaker 1: Discovery was set to launch in June. A few days
Speaker 1: before lift off, Judy and a friend discussed who would
Speaker 1: inherit her things if the mission went wrong and she
Speaker 1: didn't return. Her friend asked if she was ready for
Speaker 1: the risk, and Judy replied, quote, oh yeah, I know
Speaker 1: what's involved, but it was about to become very real
Speaker 1: for her. The astronauts boarded the Shuttle in the early
Speaker 1: morning of June twenty fifth, but there was a problem
Speaker 1: with the backup flight system computer. The liftoff was scrubbed
Speaker 1: and rescheduled for the following day, that was June twenty sixth.
Speaker 1: Same drew an early morning wake up entry through the hatch,
Speaker 1: the astronaut's ears popping as the cabin was depressurized. Judy's father, brother,
Speaker 1: and mother were watching from the Lodge Control Center, located
Speaker 1: three miles from the launch site, at a safe distance
Speaker 1: from any potential explosion. Then came countdown fifteen. The propellant
Speaker 1: flowed to the solid rocket boosters, that pair of giant
Speaker 1: rockets connected to either side of the orbiter, which provided
Speaker 1: eighty five percent of the Space Shuttle's thrust at liftoff,
Speaker 1: and for the first two minutes of a cent we
Speaker 1: have main engines start and then the terrifying silence. Everyone
Speaker 1: on board the shuttle was worried that the solid rocket
Speaker 1: boosters would ignite when they were still on the ground,
Speaker 1: tearing the shuttle apart. And then they heard crackling over
Speaker 1: the intercom. There's a small fire on the launchpad. Here's
Speaker 1: Mike Mullane, who was on that flight with Judy.
Speaker 10: And I'll never forget thinking there's no such thing as
Speaker 10: a small fire when you're sitting on four million pounds
Speaker 10: of repellent. That was a real terror. Hear the word fire.
Speaker 10: That's the scaredest I think I've probably ever been in
Speaker 10: my life, sitting out there wondering what the heck's going
Speaker 10: on with that fire on the launch pad.
Speaker 1: In the grandstands, spectators had seen a bright flash as
Speaker 1: the engines ignited. Some were convinced that they had seen
Speaker 1: an explosion. Judy's mother bent her head and rested it
Speaker 1: in her hands. It looked like she was praying. Water
Speaker 1: began to spray against the shuttle windows. The crew unstrapped
Speaker 1: from their seats and debated opening the hatch to make
Speaker 1: an emergency escape. They didn't know that the fire outside
Speaker 1: the shuttle was hydrogen, and hydrogen fires are invisible. They
Speaker 1: might have unknowingly exited the hatch directly into the flames.
Speaker 1: Fortunately they decided to wait. It was more than forty
Speaker 1: minutes before the astronauts finally got out, but they survived.
Speaker 1: At the press conference afterwards, they did what they had
Speaker 1: been trained to do. They lied, and they said that
Speaker 1: they hadn't been afraid at all. Judy said, quote, I
Speaker 1: was disappointed, but I was relieved that the safety systems
Speaker 1: do work. It was unfortunate that we had to check
Speaker 1: them out, but it built confidence in the whole system.
Speaker 1: In truth, the astronauts hadn't just been terrified of the
Speaker 1: rockets blowing them apart or of the fire. Lift off
Speaker 1: itself was dangerous, and the Shuttle wasn't designed with any
Speaker 1: way for the crew to escape once it was airborne.
Speaker 1: Here's Mike Mulane talking about the Shuttle on a Performance
Speaker 1: Initiative podcast. He makes it so clear why the Shuttle
Speaker 1: launch was terrifying for everyone on board. We didn't have
Speaker 1: any way of bailing out of a shuttle. Of course,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to bail out.
Speaker 11: Of it in space or anything, but in the atmosphere,
Speaker 11: if you had an escape system, you know, some type
Speaker 11: of injection seats or pots or something, you might be
Speaker 11: able to survive. But Shuttle didn't have any of that.
Speaker 11: So fear is very very high on Shuttle launch.
Speaker 1: No way to escape, just let that sink in. Maybe
Speaker 1: had intellectually known the risk of what she was doing,
Speaker 1: but now I'm sure she really felt it. And yet
Speaker 1: on August thirtieth, nineteen eighty four, when NASA made its
Speaker 1: fourth attempt to launch Discovery. She was there and this
Speaker 1: time lift off went exactly as planned.
Speaker 2: Three two when wed that's our reignition, and we had
Speaker 2: lifted off, lifted off, and n D the first flight
Speaker 2: and labor in the Discovery and the tuttle had cleared
Speaker 2: the power.
Speaker 1: Judy Resnik became the second American woman in space. She
Speaker 1: released satellites into orbit and conducted experiments on a giant
Speaker 1: folding solar panel.
Speaker 4: This is the largest structure ever deployed in space. All
Speaker 4: in all, it was a good flight test for large
Speaker 4: space structures with potential future use in either space based
Speaker 4: construction or in space station operations.
Speaker 1: Zero gravity turned Judy's curly hair into a cloud. She
Speaker 1: had on gold rimmed aviator sunglasses and those short shorts
Speaker 1: everyone wore in the eighties. She looked well glamorous. Back
Speaker 1: on Earth, people weren't happy about that, but Judy was
Speaker 1: just being herself as usual. While Discovery was circling our
Speaker 1: planet at five miles per second, the crew filmed themselves,
Speaker 1: eating and sleeping, even running on a treadmill.
Speaker 4: Exercise was part of our daily routine on orbit, just
Speaker 4: like it is back here on Earth. Getting set up
Speaker 4: on the treadmill takes a little bit longer on orbit,
Speaker 4: but it feels just as good to quit.
Speaker 1: But there was one episode that did it make the
Speaker 1: highlight real. The crew had been sent up with an
Speaker 1: Imax camera. While it was filming, the camera caught a
Speaker 1: lock of Judy's hair and so into the mechanics. Judy
Speaker 1: was upset, but not because the other astronauts had to
Speaker 1: cut off a chunk of her hair to set her free.
Speaker 10: Let me tell you, the press had the women under
Speaker 10: a microscope and were looking for the slightest indication that
Speaker 10: a woman was different than a man, and as a result,
Speaker 10: the women were paranoid about displaying anything anything that would
Speaker 10: remotely be construed as, Oh, you're different than a man.
Speaker 1: Mike Mulane remembers that when Judy's hair jammed up the camera,
Speaker 1: the commander, Hank Hartsfield said he would call down to
Speaker 1: mission control and tell them they were going to have
Speaker 1: problems filming for the day.
Speaker 10: And Judy looked at him and I don't remember her
Speaker 10: exact words, but basically it was, you know, I'm going
Speaker 10: to cut your heart out if you so much as
Speaker 10: say a word over the air. About my hair getting
Speaker 10: caught in this thing. To us it was baffling, like
Speaker 10: why it's the big deal, But it quickly bec came
Speaker 10: apparent to us. What her concern was is that if
Speaker 10: that was blabbed to the whole world, it would be
Speaker 10: the thing. It wouldn't matter how well Judy did on
Speaker 10: the mission, all the things she did, she would be
Speaker 10: remembered as the woman who had her hair that jeopardized
Speaker 10: the imaxian that you know, women are different than me
Speaker 10: and their hair as long, you know that type of thing,
Speaker 10: that's what the press would pick up on.
Speaker 1: She knew it. They fixed the camera and after six
Speaker 1: days they returned home. Judy was thrilled. Surely now she
Speaker 1: would be seen as an astronaut, not a woman astronaut.
Speaker 1: But very soon the whole world would know her name
Speaker 1: for a different reason. In nineteen eighty one, Judy got
Speaker 1: the news that she had been hoping for. She was
Speaker 1: scheduled for a second mission to space. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: because she had shown again and again how brilliant and
Speaker 1: professional she was. It was also because, to boosts public excitement,
Speaker 1: NASA had decided to invite a civilian to join the mission.
Speaker 1: Her name was Krista mccauliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: and they wanted a seasoned female astronaut to be on
Speaker 1: the flight with her. They would be on the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle called Challenger. Judy, like most of the astronauts in
Speaker 1: the Shuttle program, was initially skeptical about sending a civilian
Speaker 1: into orbit, but she soon realized how alone and overwhelmed
Speaker 1: mccaulloff felt, so she set up a series of coffee
Speaker 1: dates and taught mccauliff about celestial mechanics and how the
Speaker 1: combustion of the Shuttle's engines worked. She told her quote,
Speaker 1: it's not as hard as they make it sound. Judy
Speaker 1: was the only astronaut picked for the Challenger mission who
Speaker 1: had experienced that brush with death on Discovery, and yet
Speaker 1: she had total confidence in the Shuttle and in the program.
Speaker 1: Here's a clip of her from an interview around that time.
Speaker 1: Are you a bit scared?
Speaker 9: No, I'm not scared.
Speaker 10: Why not?
Speaker 4: We trained so heavily for all the contingencies, and we're
Speaker 4: so familiar with the procedures that we can almost do
Speaker 4: them in our sleep.
Speaker 1: But there were things that NASA and the engineers at
Speaker 1: Morton Diacol, the company that made the solid rocket boosters,
Speaker 1: didn't tell the astronauts think of the rockets kind of
Speaker 1: like a giant stack of metal cans filled with highly
Speaker 1: explosive propellant. Morton Diacol had designed thirteen foot ubber gaskets
Speaker 1: called O rings to seal the joints of those cans
Speaker 1: and keep the gas inside from leaking. If the O
Speaker 1: rings did it work, hot gas would escape through the
Speaker 1: casing of the rocket, causing an explosion, burning through everything
Speaker 1: and everyone inside the shuttle. After Judy's first flight on Discovery,
Speaker 1: the engineers who inspected the rockets were alarmed to see
Speaker 1: that the O rings had traces of such between them.
Speaker 1: That meant that for a few moments at least, the
Speaker 1: O rings had failed to seal, and as Shuttle missions
Speaker 1: kept flying, it was clear that the issue with the
Speaker 1: rocket booster joints was getting worse. There was one particular
Speaker 1: cause for concern, cold weather, which could make the O
Speaker 1: rings more brittle. A brittle O ring would be too
Speaker 1: inflexible to create that all important seal that kept the
Speaker 1: gas from leaking out. But of course, the shuttle launched
Speaker 1: from southern Florida freezing temperatures weren't supposed to be part
Speaker 1: of the deal at all. The engineers and Morton thiacol
Speaker 1: knew that in order to really address the issue, they
Speaker 1: would have to take the shuttles offline, but this felt impossible.
Speaker 1: For one thing, there was pressure within NASA to prove
Speaker 1: that the Shuttle really could operate almost like an airplane
Speaker 1: flying regular missions into space. The launch scheduled was already
Speaker 1: played with delays and cost overruns. Add to that the
Speaker 1: public excitement over the Teacher in Space program, which put
Speaker 1: even more pressure on NASA to get the Shuttle aloft. Judy,
Speaker 1: like all the astronauts, knew that ASSO would do whatever
Speaker 1: it took to make Challenger launch on time. She even
Speaker 1: joked with Tom Brokaw about it.
Speaker 7: I had an enthusiastic letter from her saying that she
Speaker 7: was hoping I could come down and watch this one
Speaker 7: because she was sure was going to go off on schedule.
Speaker 7: We used to have a running dialogue about whether NASA
Speaker 7: could keep to a schedule or not.
Speaker 1: But Judy was wrong. Liftoff was initially scheduled for January
Speaker 1: twenty second, nineteen eighty six. That was postponed again, and
Speaker 1: then again Finally, on January twenty seventh, it looked like
Speaker 1: Challenger would launch. The crew made it inside the shuttle,
Speaker 1: strapped in, and then they were delayed by an issue
Speaker 1: with the handle on the hatch. By the time it
Speaker 1: was fixed, the winds had kicked up and the launch
Speaker 1: was scrubbed for the day, which brings us to Tuesday,
Speaker 1: January twenty eighth. The Challenger was scheduled to launch at
Speaker 1: nine thirty eight am, but the forecast looked bad a
Speaker 1: record breaking cold snap by the night before. It was
Speaker 1: clear to the engineers at Morton Thiocoll that the shuttles
Speaker 1: should not fly. They presented their concerns to their bosses
Speaker 1: and to NASA management. But NASA didn't want another delay,
Speaker 1: not just because of the growing embarrassment, but because it
Speaker 1: would put the rest of the year's mission schedule off track,
Speaker 1: and the executives at Morton thiocol were just about to
Speaker 1: enter into negotiations to keep their lucrative contract with NASA.
Speaker 1: The engineers insisted it wasn't safe. The two sides argued
Speaker 1: deep into the night, and then the engineers gave in.
Speaker 1: The launch would go ahead as planned. None of the
Speaker 1: astronauts or the millions of people who would be tuning
Speaker 1: in to watch the first teacher go to space knew
Speaker 1: anything about any of it. A few hours before liftoff,
Speaker 1: the temperatures bottomed out at twenty degrees fahrenheit. Technicians use
Speaker 1: brooms to remove icicles, some of them two feet long,
Speaker 1: from the shuttle and the launch pad. At the crew quarters,
Speaker 1: the astronauts woke up before dawn. They walked through press
Speaker 1: and cheering fans to the van that would take them
Speaker 1: to the launch pad. Judy was smiling in her blue jumpsuit,
Speaker 1: her hair blowing in the cold breeze, and hand out
Speaker 1: wave into someone in.
Speaker 12: The crowd in the difference to fight through now and
Speaker 12: then they're so un followed by a Specialisty rests Ron
Speaker 12: McNair pilot Mike Smith, followed by christ follow feature in
Speaker 12: face Aunt Ellison on Azuka and Palos specialists Greg Jarvist
Speaker 12: Big smiles today, considently getting into the van.
Speaker 1: Once they reached challenger, Judy took her seat at the
Speaker 1: flight engineer's position behind the commanders and pilot's seats. Before
Speaker 1: she got strapped in, she turned to mcculluff and said, quote,
Speaker 1: the next time I see you we'll be in space.
Speaker 1: At the grand stand, the crowd shivered in the icy air.
Speaker 1: Judy's father was there, so were the families of all
Speaker 1: the astronauts. Krista mcculluff's husband and kids, plus all of
Speaker 1: her son's third grade classmates were there, cameras locked in
Speaker 1: on their hopeful faces. The launch was delayed one hour,
Speaker 1: then another, and another as they waited for the ice
Speaker 1: on the shuttle to melt inside the crew cabin. The
Speaker 1: astronauts were convinced that it would be canceled. Judy said, quote,
Speaker 1: I hope we don't have to drive this down to
Speaker 1: the better end again. But then at eleven twenty nine am,
Speaker 1: the countdown began.
Speaker 3: See minus fifteen seconds.
Speaker 1: The engines were ready to fire. The instrument panel and
Speaker 1: the cockpit showed the final seconds of the countdown. The
Speaker 1: crew was.
Speaker 3: Ready eight seven six, we have main engines start.
Speaker 1: Millions of kids in classrooms across the country tuned in.
Speaker 1: So did the engineers and Morton Thiokol, sitting in a
Speaker 1: conference room sharing the same sick feeling holding hands.
Speaker 13: And lift on lift off of the twenty fifth Face
Speaker 13: Shuttle mission, and as.
Speaker 2: The tower.
Speaker 1: As the shuttle launched sheets of ice more than three
Speaker 1: feet wide fell off part of the launch pad. Even now,
Speaker 1: the O rings were failing. Hot gas at more than
Speaker 1: five thousand degrees fahrenheit leaked out of the side of
Speaker 1: a solid rocket booster. A joint ruptured. The astronauts wouldn't
Speaker 1: have known any of this, not yet. The shuttle shook
Speaker 1: and rattled as it went higher into the atmosphere. It
Speaker 1: was hard for the astronauts to read their instruments. As
Speaker 1: they approached the speed of sound, Judy shouted in excitement
Speaker 1: shit hot. At fifty eight seconds into the flight, a
Speaker 1: bright orange flame flared at the bottom of the right booster,
Speaker 1: and then it grew. It crept around the fuel tank,
Speaker 1: acting like a blow torch, cutting in to the tank
Speaker 1: and igniting it. But the instruments in the cockpit and
Speaker 1: at Michigan Control still didn't show that anything was wrong.
Speaker 2: Downder go and thrown up.
Speaker 1: At seventy two seconds, the fuel tank burst apart into
Speaker 1: a giant fireball. You can probably picture it right, the
Speaker 1: huge white cloud, and then two streamers of smoke curling
Speaker 1: away from one another, out and down a big y
Speaker 1: in the clear blue sky. To the people in the
Speaker 1: grandstand and watch it on TV. It wasn't clear what
Speaker 1: they were seeing. Was this the thing that always happened?
Speaker 1: Their cheers faltered, then faded for a moment. Michigan Control
Speaker 1: was silent, and then my controllers.
Speaker 9: Here looking very carefully at the situation.
Speaker 4: Obviously a major malfunction.
Speaker 1: But inside Michigan Control they knew how bad it was.
Speaker 1: There was no more data from the flight communication with
Speaker 1: the astronauts. The down link was gone.
Speaker 2: We have no down link, Business Mission Control, Houston. We
Speaker 2: have no additional word. At this time, the.
Speaker 1: Crew compartment had shot out of the blaze of rocket fuel,
Speaker 1: Tumbling slowly. It was in a free fall towards the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean. It took two minutes and forty five seconds
Speaker 1: for it to hit the water. It is believed that
Speaker 1: the seven members of the crew were alive the whole
Speaker 1: way down. Their oxygen would have been disconnected when the
Speaker 1: shuttle blew apart. It's likely that they were suffocating in
Speaker 1: their seats. After all, there was no escape system, no
Speaker 1: ejection seats, no pods, nothing to do but watch out
Speaker 1: the shuttles windows. As the unforgivenly hard surface of the
Speaker 1: ocean got closer and closer. When we talk about heroism,
Speaker 1: particularly on this podcast, it's often in terms of saving
Speaker 1: lives of remarkable one man stands against terrible odds. But
Speaker 1: I think we can also agree that there is this
Speaker 1: kind of heroism that has less to do with safe
Speaker 1: others and more to do with putting yourself at risk
Speaker 1: in the name of a greater good. The astronauts of
Speaker 1: the Shuttle program and the ones who came before and after,
Speaker 1: were serious scientists, determined to learn more about the cosmos.
Speaker 1: They were explorers at the outer edge of what we
Speaker 1: know about our world. They weren't going to space for fun.
Speaker 1: They were going there to work for us. Judy Resnik
Speaker 1: was as clear eyed and analytical as they come. She
Speaker 1: knew exactly what kind of risks she was taking, but
Speaker 1: she felt the rewards outweighed the peril. They all did.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan put it this way at the Challenger Memorial Service.
Speaker 13: This America was built on heroism and noble sacrifice. It
Speaker 13: was built by men and women like our seven Star Voyagers,
Speaker 13: who answered a call beyond duty, who gave more than
Speaker 13: was expected or required, and who gave it little thought
Speaker 13: of worldly reward.
Speaker 1: They named a public elementary school after Judy in her hometown,
Speaker 1: and every year the students sing a song in her honor.
Speaker 1: Call me a softie, but it really hits me in
Speaker 1: the hearts. I think that's heroism in a nutshell, knowing
Speaker 1: the risk and pushing ahead anyways because you're serving something
Speaker 1: greater than yourself. Full throttle up, all systems Go. Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins
Speaker 1: and produced by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our editor
Speaker 1: is Ben Nadafh Hoffrey. Sound design and additional music by
Speaker 1: Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is Constanza gayartro fact checking
Speaker 1: by Arthur Gomberts, original music by Eric Phillips. Production support
Speaker 1: by Suzanne gabber Special thanks to the NASA History Office
Speaker 1: Performance Initiative Podcast and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. And
Speaker 1: don't forget. We want to hear from you. Send us
Speaker 1: your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery.
Speaker 1: Just email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot fm.
Speaker 1: You might hear your stories on future episodes of Metal
Speaker 1: of Honor, or see them on our social channels at
Speaker 1: Pushkin Pods. I'm your host JR. Martinez