I wasn't at the Cape that day, but watched it on TV. I was fortunate enough to have witnessed some Saturn IB and V launches when I was younger, and was horrified at what I saw. The Shuttle was a terrible design and I'm surprised we only lost two w/crew. SpaceX seems to get it.
It was an overpriced flight of fancy that kept us from expanding into space. Every single stupid heat absorbing tile, while a marvel of science, had to be manually replaced just so it could land on a runway with all of the grace of a flying brick.
All I heard about growing up were silly experiments being carried out in microgravity, with the repeatedly failed promises of a moon/mars program. What they could never admit was killing the shuttle program was they only way they could fulfill it.
I wasn't at the Cape that day, but watched it on TV. I was fortunate enough to have witnessed some Saturn IB and V launches when I was younger, and was horrified at what I saw. The Shuttle was a terrible design and I'm surprised we only lost two w/crew. SpaceX seems to get it.
It was an overpriced flight of fancy that kept us from expanding into space. Every single stupid heat absorbing tile, while a marvel of science, had to be manually replaced just so it could land on a runway with all of the grace of a flying brick.
All I heard about growing up were silly experiments being carried out in microgravity, with the repeatedly failed promises of a moon/mars program. What they could never admit was killing the shuttle program was they only way they could fulfill it.
Reading Feynman's analysis of what caused the failure is great. It's only a few pages but it explains everything so well.
Shuttle design is a government program gone wrong. All flash, not sustainable.