Challenger: The Final Flight (2020): Season 1, Episode 1 - Space For Everyone - full transcript

[male anchor] Meanwhile,
the crew is going through the routine

of having breakfast
just before they take them out to the pad.

This will be the second countdown

for what's going to be known
as "The Teacher Flight"

because it will feature lessons
to be taught a little bit later

by Christa McAuliffe,
the schoolteacher from New Hampshire.

And this is a departure for NASA

because this will be the first time
that a real person, if you'll pardon me,

will be allowed to participate
in one of these flights,

and it portends more of availability
of flights for common ordinary citizens,

and it kind of demystifies
and takes some of the mystique away



from the old astronaut tradition.

[man 1] This is Mission Control Houston
at the T-minus nine-minute mark.

[man 2] Nine and counting.

[man 1] All orbiter systems continue
to function normally,

and Mission Control is ready
for the launch this morning.

This is Mission Control Houston.

[man 2] Roger Wilco.

[male anchor 1] Christa McAuliffe and
her six crewmates are preparing for a go.

[male anchor 2] Many people
around the country

will think of it as the first flight
of a private citizen.

[male anchor 3] And because she is
a civilian, a private citizen,

she's drawn a lot more attention
around here

than the astronaut members of the crew.

Good morning. I'll introduce
the commander of the flight, Dick Scobee,



and Dick will introduce
the rest of the crew.

It's a pleasure being here
with y'all this morning.

This good-looking group off to my right,
I'd like to introduce them one at a time.

Ellison Onizuka is our expert
on the tracking data relay satellite.

[Onizuka] I've been looking forward
to this for a long time,

and I hope to stay with the space program,
fly more missions.

[Scobee] Ron McNair is our expert
on the Spartan Halley,

the comet research satellite.

[Ron McNair] My sense of anticipation
is greater this time than the first.

I know how much fun it is and how
fascinating the entire experience is.

- [man] T-minus three minutes and counting.
- [man 2] 3:30 and counting.

[Scobee] Judy Resnik,
who's our flight engineer.

Probably one of the most knowledgeable
people in the Astronaut Office.

[Resnik] I've pursued my career
on my own merits,

and this is my second flight,

and I'd like to stay
with the space program

as long as they want me,
because I think it's very important.

[cheering]

[female anchor] And we see the 51-L crew.
Big smiles today.

[Scobee] Greg Jarvis,
one of our payload specialists.

[Jarvis] I've been charged up
since last March,

and so this is kind of a culmination
of a dream come true.

[Scobee] Mike Smith, our pilot.

[Smith] What I'm really looking forward to
is the experience of seeing all the things

that everyone comes back and talks
about while they're on orbit.

[man] Just a couple of minutes,

the closeout crew will be closing
the cabin door

and preparing the white room for launch.

[Scobee] And, of course,
Christa McAuliffe, our teacher in space,

who will be doing teacher
activities the whole flight.

[McAuliffe] As the first
Space Participant,

I am very delighted
to be part of the program.

I think it's gonna be very exciting
for kids to be able to turn on the TV

and see that space is for everybody.

[man 1] The ground launch sequencer

has started retracting
the orbiter crew access arm.

[man 2] The commander of the flight,
Dick Scobee.

[Scobee] If somebody's gonna light
a six-and-a-half-million-pound candle

under you and send you off into space,
it's gotta be exciting.

But there's some apprehension involved.

[male anchor] A crowd
of some 500 spectators,

including Christa McAuliffe's parents

and 18 visiting schoolchildren

from McAuliffe's hometown of Concord,
New Hampshire, wait anxiously.

[man 1] T-minus 15 seconds.

T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six…

We have main engine start.

…four, three, two, one…

And liftoff.

Liftoff of the 25th space shuttle mission,
and it has cleared the tower.

[cheering]

- Roll initiator.
- [man 2] Roger roll, Challenger.

[man 3] Good roll. Program confirmed.

[woman] Bye, Christa! Bye, Chris!

[man 3] Challenger now heading downrange.

Three engines are running normally.
Three good fuel cells. Three good APUs.

[man 4] Three at 65.

65 FIDO.

- [man 3] 2257 feet per second.
- Thank you.

[man 3] Altitude 4.3 nautical miles,
downrange distance three nautical miles.

Engines throttling up.
Three engines now at 104%.

Challenger, go with throttle up.

[Scobee] Roger, go with throttle up.

[static crackling]

[man 3] Obviously a major malfunction.

[theme music playing]

[static skipping]

[beep]

[static skipping]

This is unheralded
in the history of the space program.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have covered
the space shuttle launches

since the very first launch,
since before the first launch itself,

uh, going way back,
and nothing like this has ever happened.

[screaming and crying]

[male anchor] These are
the spectators watching.

Families of the astronauts.

Christa McAuliffe's parents.

[man 1] I thought
the flight was going fine.

And then I heard them say
"major malfunction,"

and then the person beside
me said, "It's exploded." And it was…

I couldn't speak. It was…

[sighs]

[man 2] Seven really brilliant
and beautiful people got killed.

[man 3] I was shocked. Reminded me a lot
of President Kennedy's death in '63.

I don't know where the analogy comes,
but it was a national tragedy.

[Tom Brokaw] The silence is deafening.
There is no word from NASA,

no word from the rescue vehicles.

No... No word whatsoever, uh,
on what may have happened.

If I had to speculate,

I'd say it's probably 90% probability
something with the main engines.

It was what engineers call
a catastrophic failure,

several things had to go wrong at once.

[man] The shuttle had
an information stream

that was really unbelievable.

I mean, they had enormous amounts of data

all the way up to the moment
they lost the orbiter.

So we're all thinking,

"They must know what happened,
or have a pretty darn good idea."

[Jay Greene] GC, all operators,
contingency procedures in effect.

Stay off the telephones.
Make sure you maintain all your data.

Start pulling it together.

The space program experienced
a national tragedy

with the explosion
of the space shuttle Challenger

approximately a minute and a half

after launch from here
at the Kennedy Space Center.

The real question that remains
to be answered of course is

was there some kind of incompetence

on the part of those people who are
charged with the space shuttle program?

I'm only raising it as a question.
We do not know the answer to that yet.

That will take a long
and meticulous investigation

before we can determine that.

[man] As I watched
the different newscasts,

I began to feel
that there was a cover-up in motion.

There were people in NASA who said
a catastrophe would take place,

and all of the important players
at NASA headquarters knew.

How could they live with themselves

for making a decision like that?

[triumphant music playing]

[Crippen] There was this pretty
pink-colored glow out the windows.

I always likened it
to riding down a neon tube.

As soon as we hit daylight,
that pink color faded away.

I got a sense of speed coming in on entry.

The ocean and the clouds
were really whizzing by.

Coming across the mountains
and seeing the dry lake beds there,

it was very obvious where we were.

- [static crackling]
- [man] What a way to come to California.

[Crippen] We took a big left bank.

I looked out the windows,

and there were thousands of people
out there on the lake bed.

And I thought, "Hope they're
not on the runway." [chuckles]

[triumphant music continues]

[man 1] Columbia, you're
really looking good. Right on the money.

[cheering]

Beautiful, beautiful.

- ["America" by Neil Diamond plays]
- [man 2] Thirty.

[male anchor] Down it came from space,
98 tons of deadweight glider.

Beginning of a new era in space.

[man 3] Three, two, one… touchdown.

[cheering]

♪ Far ♪

♪ We've been traveling far ♪

♪ Without a home ♪

[man] A triumphant return
for the space shuttle.

A perfect landing here
in the California desert.

- United States of America!
- ♪ Free ♪

♪ Only want to be free ♪

[man] On the other side of the country,
there was jubilation

at the Kennedy Space Center
at Cape Canaveral.

♪ Hang on to a dream ♪

[man] John Young, Robert Crippen,
and their magical spacecraft did it today.

The first flight of a reusable spacecraft
in history.

♪ Coming to America ♪

[Crippen] I'd never seen John that excited
after we landed,

and I was pretty excited myself.
It was actually the highlight of my life.

There were tens of thousands of people
around at that time.

Even Roy Rogers was there.

Stephen Spielberg was there as well.

[Young] I think we've got a fantastic
and remarkable capability here.

We're really not too far, the human race
isn't, from going to the stars.

[Crippen] Myself and all my compatriots

are gonna get many more
opportunities to fly.

We are really in the space business
to stay. Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

[man] I think this epic flight of Columbia
proves once again

that the United States is number one.

[cheering]

[Crippen] The country was very proud
because we were a success.

And it was a truly unique vehicle.

Nobody'd ever seen spacecraft come down
and land on a runway.

[Neil Armstrong]
That's one small step for man.

One giant leap for mankind.

[man] Near the end of the '60s,

it dawned on NASA that we'd been
so intense in our effort to go to the Moon

that we hadn't given adequate
consideration…

to what would be done next.

I was the director of the Propulsion and
Vehicle Engineering Laboratory at NASA…

so I was asked to organize this group.

We devoted ourselves exclusively

in laying out lower-cost means
of getting to and from space.

[propellers clunking]

[Lucas] When we developed
an expensive vehicle like the Apollo

and used it one time, obviously
that's not economically attractive.

So the idea was to do something reusable.

[male anchor] The president today
authorized the development

of a five-and-a-half
billion-dollar space shuttle.

According to the president,
the shuttle will

transform the space frontier of the '70s
into familiar territory.

[male narrator 1] Launched like a rocket,

orbiting like a satellite,

and landing on a runway
like a plane to fly again.

[male anchor 2] In its 60-foot-long,
15-foot-diameter payload bay,

it will eventually carry cargo
weighing up to 65,000 pounds.

The shuttle was gonna carry
military payloads,

science payloads
like the Hubble Telescope,

and commercial communications satellites.

You can think about the shuttle
as being a space truck.

We're really setting up to take anything
or anybody that wants to go to space.

[Harwood] The shuttle is what opened
everybody's mind to the thought,

"We're gonna open space up
to more average people."

[male narrator 2] Space missions
will become routine,

with everyday scientists,
not highly trained astronauts,

and be comparatively inexpensive.

[male anchor 3] Development
of the space shuttle will take six years,

and the first should be in operation
by the end of this decade.

[male narrator 3] We are on the threshold
of a new era in manned spaceflight.

The era of the space shuttle.

[man] In 1977, everything was
shifting focus to this new spacecraft,

so NASA came out and said,

"We're looking for our first group
of astronauts

to specifically fly the space shuttle."

[June Scobee Rogers]
When Dick Scobee was three years old,

he wanted to fly airplanes.

That was his dream.

Dick was in the Air Force,
and I was a senior in high school.

And we married just before I was 17
and he was 19. [chuckles]

Eventually, he became a test pilot.
He could've done that job forever.

But when he saw that ad
in the Los Angeles Times…

"Shuttle Astronauts Needed,"
it sparked a new interest for him.

I said, "I think you can do it."

And he said, "Oh, those guys,
there are so many brilliant people

that would be accepted."

He said, "We'll see.
Don't pack your bags yet."

[laughs]

So off he went for different interviews.

Early one morning, the phone rang.

He hopped out of the bed,
and he took it in his hand,

and he said, uh, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir."

And he started standing at attention.
"Yes, I'll be there."

And he hung up, and he said,
"We're going to Houston!"

[triumphant music playing]

[male narrator 1] NASA's Manned
Spacecraft Center,

22 miles southeast of Houston, Texas.

Dedicated entirely
to manned space missions.

Where flight crews
are selected and trained.

From astronauts Shepard and Grissom
to Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra, and Cooper.

[man] In the early days,
one of the obvious facts

was that every one of the astronauts was
white Anglo-Saxon male.

I think NASA decided that they were not
gonna maintain that tradition.

[all] Hey! Hey! ERA!

Hey! Hey! ERA!

[Crippen] The '70s were such that

we realized we needed
to broaden our perspective.

They had a very positive
and strong campaign

to encourage women and minorities.

Hi. I'm Nichelle Nichols,
but I still feel a little bit like

Lieutenant Uhura
on the Starship Enterprise.

[Gregory] And I saw her on the TV one day,

and she pointed directly at me
and she said,

"I want you in the astronaut program."
And she was talking to me.

This would require the services of people

with a variety of skills
and qualifications.

This is your NASA.

The traditions and the legacies
no longer counted.

The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration today chose the 35 persons

who will ride the space shuttle
into orbit and back in the 1980s.

Among them are three Blacks, one Oriental,
and six women.

To say that we're pleased
with the selection is an understatement.

And it's my pleasure to introduce
these people to you this morning,

and I'll do so one at a time.

Major in the United States Air Force,
Guy Bluford.

Major Frederick Gregory
from United States Air Force, a pilot.

[Gregory] We were the most diverse group
of any government hiring.

No one had done this before.

[moderator] Richard Covey, a pilot.

There clearly were those of us who came
from the military test pilot background,

and then there were those who really
had very limited aviation backgrounds

and were engineers, scientists,
and medical doctors.

[moderator] Margaret Rhea Seddon,
resident physician,

Department of Surgery,
City of Memphis Hospital in Memphis.

I was one of the first women astronauts,
so that was an exciting time for me.

And that's the first time that all of us
got to meet each other.

We were about to start
an interesting journey together.

- [moderator] That's the 35 new astronauts.
- [applause]

[Covey] TFNG. That was the Class of 1978.

Stands for "Thirty-Five New Guys."

It was a direct takeoff
on a military term, FNG,

which stands for "Fucking New Guy."

[male anchor 1] This is the largest class
in the history

of the American space program.

Twenty-nine men and,
for the first time, six women.

[male anchor 2] The 35 candidates begin
two years of unisex interracial training

at the Johnson Space Center, July 1st.

Those who pass will become astronauts,
ready for advanced instruction as members

of the seven-person crews who will fly
the space shuttle in the 1980s.

We're gonna show a bunch of slides
to get you all organizationally oriented.

Four members of our 1978 class
ended up on the Challenger crew.

There was Ellison Onizuka, Dick Scobee,
Ron McNair, and Judy.

[Brokaw] Judy Resnik, a native of Akron.
The holder of a Doctorate

in Electrical Engineering
from the University of Maryland.

She is single, she plays the piano,
and she's a runner.

When you were a little girl growing up
in Akron, Ohio,

did you say, "Gee, I'd like to be an
astronaut some day"?

No, I really didn't think about it until

NASA announced that
they were looking for astronauts

who would be engineers
and scientists on the space shuttle.

It was accidental that I heard about it,
and I just took a chance and applied.

[Covey] Here she was with this group
of astronauts

and just fit in perfectly.

[Seddon] When we went down on a trip
to the Kennedy Space Center,

we were given a tour of the launch pads
and the assembly buildings and everything.

And then they took us over
to the crew quarters.

When Judy went through,
her name was on one of the doors.

And she was showed into the room,
and they had pink satin sheets.

Well, Judy was not amused, shall we say.

[Brokaw] What happens when you meet a man
who's not in the space program

and doesn't know who you are,
and you say, "I'm an astronaut."

Does he say, "Yeah,
you're too cute to be an astronaut.

Come on, little lady!
You can't be an astronaut." [chuckles]

- I just tell them I'm an engineer.
- You don't tell them you're an astronaut?

Not unless he asks.

[Brokaw] You expect to be
up there at some future time,

and you'll be operating
something called an RMS.

[Resnik] That's
a Remote Manipulator System.

It's a fancy word for a very long arm,
which is as long as the cargo bay,

it's 50 feet long, and it works just like
a human arm, it has a shoulder…

[Seddon] She was very serious
about what she was gonna do,

and she didn't want to be singled out
because she was a female.

[RMS motor whirring]

[Brokaw] When do you expect
to go up in the shuttle?

It's gonna be a few years,
for us who are relatively new.

But it's worth the wait.

- You'll be patient enough.
- I'll try.

["Fly Like An Eagle"
by Steve Miller Band playing]

[Seddon] I think they tried to predict

anything that might happen
and train you for it.

"Here's how you get out of the shuttle
if you need to.

Here's how you run across the gantry way.
You jump into these baskets

that are gonna take you down
to the ground."

♪ Time keeps on slippin'
Slippin', slippin' ♪

[Seddon] If something happened on orbit,
if there's a fire on the pad…

We trained for all those things.

♪ I want to fly like an eagle ♪

♪ To the sea ♪

♪ Fly like an eagle… ♪

[male anchor] NASA hopes
the six women and 29 men

will make it through
the two years of training.

The space shuttle is scheduled
to begin in two years,

and all 35 astronauts will be needed.

What we learned is that it was not
an individual sport. It was a team sport.

[man] I think you'll find the operations
that you're gonna get involved in

in the future to be very interesting
and very challenging.

♪ I want to fly like an eagle ♪

♪ To the sea ♪

♪ Fly like an eagle ♪

♪ Let my spirit carry me ♪

♪ I want to fly like an eagle ♪

[Gregory] We had to handle a lot
of challenges that, up to that point,

we had never been exposed to.

["Fly Like An Eagle" continues]

♪ Time keeps on slippin'
Slippin', slippin' ♪

- [indistinct chattering]
- ♪ Into the future ♪

People talk about a "trial by fire."
I think we had a trial by water.

Because one of the first things
that we had to do

was water survival down in Florida.

[man] Get your heels in the water!

[Seddon] We would be flying
in the backseat of the NASA jets,

and if we ejected and came down in
the water, we had to know how to survive.

[helicopter whirring]

[man] Good job!

[Seddon] I was kind of afraid of the water

and was struggling.

I noticed that Ron was too.

He said, "I'm not much of a swimmer.

They didn't have very many swimming pools

for us folks back in South Carolina,
growing up."

[McNair] Way back in high school,

I had the thoughts of science
and space, astronauts, etc.

But, you know, where I came from,
you know, that wasn't the kind of thing

a Black kid thought about.

You know, how do you get to do
something like that? What do you?

[woman] Ron was from a rural part
of South Carolina.

When he was in school, he went
to the city library to check out a book.

At that time, African Americans
were not allowed to check out books,

but he didn't wanna leave.

There was quite a disturbance,
and even the police came,

and his parents were called,

and he said,
"I just wanna check a book out."

Well, he did finally get the book.

He said, "Armed with preparation
and armed with determination,"

he passed these obstacles.

[Covey] Ron McNair was relatively quiet,

but he was extraordinarily skilled
at karate.

Hyah!

He was an accomplished saxophonist.

Those were the ways that Ron spoke out.

[Cheryl McNair] Ron worked
in Hughes Research Laboratories.

He came home one day and said,

"This was in my mailbox, and it's
an application to become an astronaut.

What do you think?"

I said, "Well, what do you think?

That sounds exciting to me.
I think you can do it."

And he said, "Hmm… Yeah. I think I can."

[cage whirring]

[Covey] By 1980, the class of '78
was done with our training,

and we were all waiting to fly.
The space shuttle was on the horizon.

[male anchor] The shuttle is the result
of nine years of compromise, negotiation,

and cost overruns.

Soon, we'll begin to find out
if it was all worth it.

It is the most complex space vehicle
man has ever built.

[Harwood] I was always
both utterly impressed

and scared to death of the space shuttle.

It's just a simple respect

for machines that are operating
at the very limit of human engineering.

[engine revving]

I don't think there's ever been a machine

that comes anywhere near the shuttle
in terms of sheer complexity.

There were uncounted miles of wiring.

Every sensor had a backup, and most
of those sensors had a backup.

The heavier a spacecraft is, the more
energy's required to get to orbit…

and the shuttle weighed
around 250,000 pounds.

You've gotta get that going
more than 85 football fields a second.

And it just turns out
that's really hard to do.

One of those engines

could drain a full-size swimming pool
in something like 20 seconds,

so you had to have a huge tank.

Now, the boosters that are
on the side, they provided

the lion's share of the thrust
to get the thing off the pad.

Russia never used solid propellant
boosters for any of their spacecraft

'cause they thought they were too
dangerous, and the reason why is simple.

Once you light a solid propellant booster,
you cannot turn it off.

You're going, one way or the other.

And for two minutes,
they're gonna be firing.

Any malfunction
is potentially catastrophic.

[indistinct radio chattering]

[male narrator] Sunday, April 12th, 1981.

At the Kennedy Launch Site, thousands
gather to witness this historic event.

It'll be the first American spaceflight
in six years,

the first manned flight
using solid rocket boosters,

and the first time a U.S. space vehicle
had been manned on its maiden flight.

Across the country and around the world,
all eyes were on pad 39.

[tense music playing]

[Ronald Reagan] We're on the cutting edge
of technology and discovery.

We are the people who have thrown
the windows of our souls

wide open to the sun.

We will follow as we can where
our hearts have long since gone,

and progress will be ours
for all mankind to share.

Americans have shown the world…

we not only dream great dreams…

we dare to live those great dreams.

[man 1] T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven,

six, five, four…
We've gone for main engine start.

[triumphant music playing]

[Crippen] When the solid rockets lit,

it's kind of like getting shot off
an aircraft carrier.

There's no other ride like it.

[man 2] We have liftoff. Liftoff
of America's first space shuttle.

[cheering]

And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Gregory] If you watch the audience,
some were laughing.

Some were quiet. Some were screaming.

Some were praying,
but they were experiencing this thing,

all of them realizing that

this was not like any experience
they had ever had before.

[man 1] Roger, roll.

[Seddon] For all of us in the '78 class,
it was our future.

[cheering and applause]

[man 3] Columbia, Houston. You guys did
so good, we're gonna let you stay up there

for a couple days. You're go for on orbit.

["Hold On Tight"
by Electric Light Orchestra playing]

♪ Hold on tight to your dream ♪

[Crippen] If you lived through the '70s,
we had the Vietnam War going on.

Inflation was pretty darn high.

We had all kinds of race rioting.

So the country needed something
to feel good about.

The space shuttle gave 'em that.

♪ Hold on tight ♪

Half a million people turned out
to say "thank you"

to the space shuttle astronauts
with a ticker-tape parade.

[cheering]

♪ It's a long time to be gone ♪

[man 1] We have ignition. We have ignition
of the solid rocket boosters, and liftoff.

[cheering and applause]

[man 2] The shuttle was really iconic.

[male narrator] Taster's Choice,
enjoy it 157 miles above Earth.

It brought national pride.

NASA made it about as sexy
as humanly possible.

That captivated people
as much as anything.

John Zarella, CNN,
at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For a young reporter like myself,
it was a parallel to Apollo.

[male anchor]
For the first time in nine years,

American astronauts
are taking a walk in space.

[Covey] The shuttle program showed
that the United States

was continuing to lead
technologically in space.

[female anchor] We're looking at
a great picture of the arm and the Earth.

[Seddon] The satellites that we launched
ended up providing communications,

providing, eventually, the GPS
that we can now tap into to go places.

[man 1] Okay, Dick,
good picture of you there.

Being assigned to a space flight
was a big deal.

Everybody in the class of '78
all wanted to fly.

♪ Hold on tight to your dream ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

♪ Hold on tight ♪

♪ To your dream ♪

[man 2] It's just indescribable to see
the world go by this way.

[Zarella] NASA had the fleet of shuttles.

You had Columbia,
which was the very first one,

and then you had Discovery.

Atlantis came on, and you had Challenger.

[male narrator] The newest orbiter
in NASA's fleet, Challenger,

would fly on shuttle flight six.

Many weight saving improvements
had been made.

The orbiter itself
was almost 2,500 pounds lighter

because of structural changes.

This stack could carry over 17,000 pounds
more into orbit than Columbia.

Challenger, you are free to take off now.

[man] Liftoff of the orbiter Challenger,
and the sixth flight of the space shuttle.

Sally Ride is scheduled to join
four other astronauts

in the cockpit of the Challenger

for the seventh flight
of the space shuttle,

and as they say, Ride's ride
will be one for the books,

the first American woman to fly in space.

[man] Ignition, and liftoff.

Liftoff of STS-7
and America's first woman astronaut…

[woman] We finally have an inclusion
of half the human race,

and that's maybe almost as
tough as conquering space.

[man] NASA made a big deal
out of what the firsts were,

and Challenger was involved
in a lot of the firsts.

You know, the first woman,
the first African American…

[Bryant Gumbel] History-making flight
of the space shuttle Challenger.

History-making because on board
will be America's first Black astronaut,

Air Force Lieutenant
Colonel Guion "Guy" Bluford.

[man] We have liftoff. Liftoff,
32 minutes after the hour…

[Ronald Reagan] Every one
of these launches of the shuttle

is a noteworthy event,

but Guy, congratulations.

You are paving the way for many others,
and you're making it plain

that we are in an era
of brotherhood here in our land.

[Onizuka] There are a lot of outcomes
from these projects which will affect

both our society
and the rest of the world.

[Gregory] El Onizuka was
the first Asian American to fly,

but that was not important for him.

He was just an American flying
on an American program,

and that someone said,
"You're the first Asian American to fly,"

and he would probably have said,
"Oh, really?"

[laughs]

[male anchor] This is
32-year-old astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka.

Onizuka was a staff flight test engineer
at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

[Covey] Ellison was
a Japanese American from Hawaii.

He prided himself on Hawaiian food,
and, specifically, uh, roasting a pig.

[Covey] That was his big deal, digging
the pit, getting all the banana leaves.

[Crippen] We'd get it up on the table,
and we just pulled it apart.

It was pretty hot,
you would burn your hands,

but there was always a cold beer there
to cool 'em off.

Ellis was a fun kind of a guy.

[Covey] He found humor in everything.

My wife and I, Cathy,
had just put in a swimming pool,

and we were having a party.

El and I actually flew to Florida
in a NASA T-38

and put two bushels of Florida
oysters in the travel pod,

brought 'em back to Houston.

And so, he was shucking oysters,

and we included people
other than the Astronaut Office.

And one of them went over to El.
And El shucks him some oysters,

and he says,
"So, did Mrs. Covey hire you to do this?"

El, just straight-faced, looked at him
and said, "I'm Mrs. Covey's houseboy.

I just stay over to shuck oysters."
And he goes, "Oh, okay."

Somebody says,
"You dummy, that's an astronaut!" [laughs]

[male anchor] Local residents and friends
and neighbors of Ellison

salute Hawaii's very first astronaut.

[June Scobee Rodgers]
NASA's public affairs office…

was on top of making stories.

They were very smart about what
they wanted the public to know.

Managers were trying to convey

that the shuttle is a safe vehicle
that flies like a commercial aircraft.

Even though they knew
that there were tremendous risks.

[male anchor] We have joined
the flight crew for the 41-D mission,

now having breakfast.

Judy Resnik will become
America's second woman in space.

She'll also operate
the Canadian-built robot arm.

[Harwood] Before every launch, I used to
write profiles of the astronauts.

These were detailed,
1,500-word stories about their lives.

I didn't write 'em because I thought
people would print them in the newspaper.

I wrote 'em because if something happened,

if you make it past tense,
it's an obituary.

[man 1] This is Mission Control Houston.
All positions have given a go for launch.

[man 2] Seven, six, five…
We have main engine start.

- [woman] Cut off.
- [man 2] We have a cut-off.

[male anchor] Engines have been shut off.

[Harwood] In 1984,
on Discovery's maiden flight,

you could see paint on the body flap
of the orbiter. It was on fire.

[male anchor] A major problem,
this has never happened before.

You're realizing that that external tank,
just a few feet away has got

a half-million gallons of, you know,
hydrogen and oxygen on board.

It is a bomb.

So the fire extinguisher system
on the pad came on,

and you know, bathing the aft
of the orbiter in water,

and there were no problems.
Crew got out just fine,

but it was a very, very scary moment.

"Close calls," NASA calls those.

Well, NASA had quite a few close calls
before the Challenger accident.

[male anchor] So the STS-8 flight crew
will be making its way to launch pad 39-A.

We are having a thunderstorm in the area
of the launch pad at this time.

What would be the effect
of a lightning strike

on the vehicle in flight?

We don't intend to launch if there's
any possibility of that happening.

That's just out of the question.

[thunder rumbling]

In fact, lightning actually hit the pad,
but they went ahead and launched that day.

[man] We have liftoff, liftoff.

Thirty-two minutes after the hour,
and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Seddon] My husband had a flight
that had a lot of tile damage.

Hoot knew it was there. He thought
he was gonna die, coming home,

but NASA did not want
to admit that it was there.

My view is we had a few

close calls along the way,
not that we had a lot of them.

I was in charge of most
of the space shuttle flights.

Every flight, one after the other,
was fine, and it built our confidence.

We're standing by.

- [man] Touchdown.
- [tires squealing]

[cheering and applause]

Congratulations to everyone in the room,

and anyone that had anything
to do with the program.

[Zarella] I don't think anybody would ever
deny that NASA had a streak of arrogance.

"We can do anything.

We've proved we can do anything.
We put humans on the moon."

[male anchor] Neil Armstrong,
standing on the surface of the moon.

NASA's success breeded arrogance,
and they'd been extremely successful.

[man 1] Apollo 13 is go.

[man 2] Back in the early '70s, they had
a spacecraft halfway to the moon

blow up and lose part of the spacecraft.

[man 3] Houston, we've had a problem.
We've had a main B bus undervolt.

[man 4] That's number five engine down.

[man 5] Roger.

[man 2]But they got 'em home safely.

[man 6] Splashdown, at this time.

[man 2] NASA had been launching people
into space for a quarter of a century.

There hadn't been a single person killed
on their way to space in that time.

[Aldrich] Bringing the astronauts back
was the number one purpose,

and we felt well-qualified to do that.

I didn't feel we were doing something
that's so threatening

we shouldn't have been doing it.

We generally had things that
had to be corrected between each flight,

but they were things that
just needed to be worked.

[indistinct chattering]

We have a space craft up there
that we are coming within two miles of.

How big is it?

- [man 1] If it hits you, it's big enough.
- [man 2] If it hits you, it's big enough.

It's hard to look at any one
of the close calls NASA had

and say, "That shows that they should have
slowed down and stopped."

The problems that we had
running up to Challenger were one-offs,

but there was an ongoing problem
that had been happening for years.

[explosion]

Morton Thiokol was based in Utah,

and they were responsible
for the solid rocket boosters.

The shock wave from those boosters,
it was like a mini-earthquake.

[explosion]

At the time, I certainly didn't realize
they had a history of problems with them.

[woman] My dad was an engineer,
working on the boosters.

He knew that there was a major problem.

I just know my dad and that,
you know, he was visibly distraught.

One day, he started shouting profanities,

and he kept saying
that nobody would listen.

And he said, "I don't care who you tell.
The shuttle is going to explode."

[closing theme music playing]