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In reply to the discussion: Roger Boisjoly dies at 73; engineer tried to halt Challenger launch [View all]dairydog91
(951 posts)It's getting pretty silly to blame Reagan for blowing up the shuttle. Was Reagan somehow deeply committed to putting a teacher in space? Was it going to be a major part of his speech? Challenger disintegrated in 1986, so why would Reagan even particularly care if he got 100% of the applause lines he wanted, seeing as how he wasn't worrying about reelection at this point? Just because he would have liked to mention it doesn't mean that he was maniacally committed to the idea. Also, Challenger was carrying a communications satellite, and whichever government agency wanted that up had a far more personal interest in getting Challenger up ASAP.
Second, a Challenger-style failure was pretty much guaranteed by NASA's decision to go with the grossly-flawed shuttle design. I don't see how one can blame Reagan for decisions made in the 1970s over the shuttle design. The shuttle as launched did not have a way for astronauts to realistically survive a breakup of the launch stack (More a "bundle" in the case of the shuttle). Apollo had a system in which an emergency rocket motor could pull the entire capsule up and off the stack during launch. Shuttle had no such system; the shuttle could not jettison the crew section, and there was no realistic way to modify the shuttle to allow it that capability. Considering that launch stacks occasionally fail, using the shuttle meant that the loss of a crew was basically inevitable. Reagan had nothing to do with shuttle design; NASA sold the idea of the shuttle to Nixon and built it during the Carter administration. Reagan was simply handed this shit sandwich and told that it was a "reliable space truck". If anyone "killed" the crew of Challenger, it was NASA.
Edit: One thing to remember. Challenger's launch was delayed several times. The original launch time was on the morning of January 22nd, the disaster was on the 28th. Since it was supposed to be a six-day mission, had the original plan been followed the shuttle would have been on the ground and parked by the time Reagan would be delivering the SOTU.