COLUMN: Blast from the past

From Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96 From Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96The Challenger disaster resulted in aFrom Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96The Challenger disaster resulted in arethinking of our national priorities. From Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96The Challenger disaster resulted in arethinking of our national priorities.Yesterday marked a decade since the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart in a cloud of dense white smoke in the bright blue skies above Florida's Cape Canaveral. In the intervening years, parachute pants have gone out of style and Madonna has reinvented herself so many times that I've lost count of her multiple personalities. But I still remember exactly where I was -- and what I was doing -- when I first heard about the Challenger disaster. I looked quizzically at Heather, and she returned my confused stare. "What could have happened?" we wondered. Nothing could have prepared me for Dan Rather's next words, which were something like "the space shuttle has exploded, just 90 seconds after lift-off." My jaw dropped. My heart stopped. Things like this weren't supposed to happen -- not to Americans, not on the space shuttle, and definitely not to the woman about to become the first teacher in space. After all, Heather and I were members of the generation that had held its breath as Columbia, the world's first reusable space vehicle, took to the stars in 1981. Crowded around a small black-and-white television set in my first-grade classroom, we sat pressed into pint-size chairs with our fingers crossed -- and knew we were witnessing history. What would we tell our children about Americans in space -- that Americans had walked on the moon, and then forgotten how to fly? Would I ever see a science lesson beamed down from miles above the Earth's surface? And most importantly, would we ever go back? Mankind had just taken a giant leap backward, and the tailspin was dizzying indeed. After his initial curt statement, Rather confessed to the camera that the pictures he was about to show would be graphic. The shocking footage of the shuttle's explosion that would be replayed an infinite number of times that day and in the following months then flashed onto the screen. I saw the astronauts striding out to the launch pad, dressed in their pale blue NASA jumpsuits for a routine voyage to the final frontier. They smiled and waved as if they were simply off to a resort on the Gulf Coast for a week of rest and relaxation. I saw the shuttle's four engines fizzing and spitting orange sparks into the abyss below the tower, shuddering and generating enough steam to obscure the first few stories of its red metal framework. I saw the spacecraft push effortlessly upward as the voice of Mission Control crackled in the background, telling the astronauts they were "go for throttle up" and ticking off the minutes until the shuttle would enter the dark part of Earth's atmosphere. I kept wishing I could stop time at 76 seconds, so Christa McAuliffe and her crewmates wouldn't go hurtling off course and slamming into the choppy surface of the ocean below. But the damage had been done, and it was irreversible. Then-President Ronald Reagan tried to put the tragedy into human terms for the nation that night. The eerily beautiful images of the puffy white column splitting into two distinct arcs are still indelibly etched in my mind, though, and I think they always will be. Annenberg School for Communication Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson calls the Challenger explosion a "synechdochic statement" for our generation, because of the permanence of its images -- and the fact that briefly seeing those trails of smoke and twisted metal resurrect the entire saga from the deepest recesses of our memory banks. The accident served to remind us that though we have tamed our environment and even conquered it outright in some respects, we are still at the mercy of wind and water and other forces of nature. After all, if the o-rings on the shuttle's solid rocket boosters had not stiffened on that unseasonably cold morning, there might not have been a disaster. But the Challenger explosion was also significant because it resulted in a rethinking of our national priorities. Suddenly, spending money to put satellites in space to study cloud formations, transmit television broadcasts across continents or spy on the Soviet Union suddenly was not as crucial to the the "national interest" if it meant putting American lives at risk. It's dismaying that it took seven deaths to shake up the scientific community enough to suspend shuttle launches to correct safety flaws. Risk estimates of 1 in 10,000 fatal accidents at launch, which had clearly been generated by statisticians with their heads in the clouds, were finally revised to be more realistic. The new ratio was a sobering 1 in 248, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Progress doesn't come without risks, and the systemic paradigm shift that made space flight possible probably would not have occurred at all if not for some free-thinking astrophysicists who saw sheer possibility when they gazed out of their telescopes at night. Indeed, progress in the face of overwhelming odds is one of the most basic threads of the American "national character." Still, is progress for the sake of outer appearances or national reputation really movement for the better? The Challenger disaster forced us to reflect on this most painful of questions for three long years, as shuttle parts once considered fail-safe were retested, lengthy hearings were held and committees issued reports containing their often-saddening conclusions. We as a nation finally reached closure in September 1989, with the first post-disaster launch. Work started on the construction of replacement shuttle Endeavour. But I can't remember where I was -- or what I was doing -- when either of these momentous feats were announced. They represented only the normal and natural progression of history, reminding all of us how things are supposed to work here in America, where technology is king and not even mortal risk always stands in the way of progress.