THE PRESS THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1986. Challenger disaster

Press, 30 January 1986, Page 20

THE PRESS THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1986. Challenger disaster

Space exploration has developed a language all its own. “Obviously a major malfunction,” said the Mission Control commentator yesterday when the space shuttle Challenger exploded over Florida. In almost 30 years of manned space flight, fatal accidents have been remarkably rare. Space has yet to develop its language of disaster. The explosion of the space shuttle was an event seen by millions of people. Millions more have joined in mourning the seven crew. The spectacle of space flight has been brought back to earthly dimensions and emotions. “A tragedy that brings us back to the sense of our own fragility,” said Senator John Glenn, himself once an astronaut. Yet in that fragility lies the challenge of manned space flight. Men and women have been challenging the immense hazards of space, depending upon the intelligent management of enormously complicated machines. This challenge is not going to be set aside with the loss of Challenger. Much will depend in the next few weeks on how quickly and accurately that “major malfunction” can be identified. Until that is done, shuttle flights will be curtailed. Even greater care is going to be taken checking and rechecking the vastly complicated mechanisms of the space shuttles. After that,

the flights will surely continue with ever increasing frequency.

Questions of prestige and security are tied up in the American space programme, just as they are in the Soviet programme. Even if that were not so, space flight offers the kind of challenge that the earth’s wild places once posed for explorers and the challenge that manned flight posed at the beginning of this century. There will be no lack of enthusiasts to carry on the programme, even if this spectacular tragedy has shown that manned space flight is not yet as routine as it had come to seem.

Challenger’s loss has been given special poignancy by the death of the woman who might well have been known as the first civilian in space. Mrs Christa McAuliffe had been chosen for the flight as a teacher who was in touch with tomorrow’s space travellers. Her object, she said, was to convey to children everywhere that “one day, space flight will be as routine as flying in a 747.” That is not the end of Mrs McAuliffe’s dream. One day space flight will be routine. This is the first serious accident in more than 20 flights by space shuttles. Almost certainly there will be others. Like the deaths of early aviators, they will be remembered as sad and heroic aberrations in progress towards the stars.