125: The Sky was the Limit

This week we are discussing the Challenger space shuttle disaster, looking at what caused the shuttle to explode and how the aftermath specifically affected the psyche of the United States in the late 1980s. We also share personal recollections from the disaster, both as it happened and as a feature of our lives growing up as elder millennials. 

Challenger: The Last Flight on Netflix

Major Malfunction: A Recap of the Challenger Disaster on Youtube

"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

https://www.instagram.com/theendoftheworldwms/

https://youtube.com/@TheEndoftheWorldwMS?si=xmj-2e0s58JdN8-B

https://linktr.ee/endoftheworldwithmichaelandstu

Transcript

Stu 0:21

All right, everybody, welcome back. This is the end of the world of Michael and Stu. I'm Michael. And I'm Stu, and today we are talking about another historical disaster from 1986. That's right, it's the Challenger Disaster, January 28th, 1986, just a couple months before the Chernobyl disaster, which we covered in such wonderful detail last week. And uh I thought before we got into the run-up to the disaster and sort of shared our personal, if any, memories of the disaster itself, we could talk a little bit about the history of the space shuttle program and spaceflight after the moon landing.

Michael 1:02

Yeah, please.

Speaker 1:04

What's your understanding of the moon landing? You you believe it happened, right?

Speaker 1 1:09

I mean it's a little what's that? It's a little much, right? Wasn't it the it wasn't it Kubrick? Isn't that the thing?

Speaker 1:15

Yeah. Like Kubrick uh staged it on a sound stage in London. In London, because Kubrick famously didn't leave England after he moved to the room.

Speaker 1 1:24

Now that feels slightly more plausible than actually going to the moon. What do you think?

Speaker 1:28

I'm pretty sure it happened. Well, the other thing about the moon landing people always forget is we went six times. So it's like a little weird to fake it six times.

Speaker 1 1:38

Do you remember any of them?

Speaker 1:40

The moon landings. And they're all they're before I was born. Yes, I have a spectral memory. I was a I was a ghost not yet born, and that's a new thing I'm working on is that you're a ghost before.

Speaker 1 1:52

So take us from take us from the first one.

Stu 1:54

So the funny thing about the moon landing is the Apollo of it all. The Apollo of it all, 69, you know, over the summer, Moonlanding happens. Huge deal. You know, one of the most deal at the time. One of the most watched events in human history in terms of television. Yeah, and like every Super Bowl. And uh yeah, no, no. I mean, it was a massive media event, great uh swell of patriotism. We beat the Russians, the Cold War is is ours, we're in it, we're in the lead. We were seized back space because remember, the early days of the space race was really dominated by the Russians. They got the first satellite up, they got the first person, they did the first orbits. You know, it was the they were really ahead of us.

Michael 2:40

But interestingly, just to quickly before we uh carry on with this, uh I do think at some point we will probably cover for all mankind. Have you seen any of this?

Stu 2:49

I've watched a little bit of it. I haven't gotten deep on it, but they've just started this series from the Russian perspective that's kind of its companion show, right? Oh, then we definitely should be doing this. Um, but it's kind of interesting. I watched the first episode, it's basically what what happens if the space race doesn't end, right? Well, what happens if the Russians get to the moon first?

Speaker 1 3:09

Yeah, if the Russians get to the moon and the US has to keep going. Um, it it seems kind of interesting. So I think we'll visit that sometime in the next year or so, right?

Speaker 3:17

Yeah, I'd like to. So interestingly, after the first moon landing, there's the second moon landing, which is like, great, we did it again. Then Apollo 13 happens, which is also a great galvanizing event because it's like, can we bring back the astronauts? Oh, they had to, you know, they have to use capitalist ingenuity out there in space to repurpose.

Speaker 1 3:41

There's so many different individuals right rising to the occasion as separate yet sort of collective entity.

Speaker 3:48

As individualists, not as collectives, as individuals, Michael.

Speaker 1 3:51

Ultimately, still a bunch of individuals all doing a really good job at critical.

Speaker 3:54

To quote the John Bene Ramsey and like Chernobyl. Yeah. To quote the John Bonnet Ramsey ransom letter, a group of individuals uh pulled together and and saved Apollo 13. That was also a big deal as a media, as you know, as evidenced by the Apollo 13 movie, which I'm sure you saw as a child. Yeah. Being such a huge fan of Tom Hanks and all of his evil works. Yeah.

Speaker 1 4:17

And speaking of things, I'm sure we will cover at some point.

Speaker 4:20

Yeah, that'd be another good one to cover. Interest after that wanes really quickly. It's like, oh, we're on the moon, ho hum. Even though they continue to do cool stuff on the moon. They have the like lunar rover, they're riding around, they play golf on the moon. You know, come on, people, they're playing golf on the moon.

Speaker 1 4:37

Pretty important. I'm glad we got there.

Speaker 4:39

Yeah. Young Greg Norman was inspired to the shark? Yes, the shark. Bringing it, bringing it back. Uh, I guess we should also acknowledge this is just a little out of context, but speaking of the end of the world, the Knicks did win the championship. If that isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I don't know what is.

Speaker 1 4:55

Yes, unfortunately. Although it was fun to see uh one of those classic uh really do hate the Knicks and then came to like them and then came to hate the idea of them winning, and then I was like, Oh, I guess it'll be fun. And then it they did, and I wasn't even in the city, so worked out pretty well, but I'm glad everyone had a great time. You know, I'm happy. I'm pretty happy now that it's happened. People seem to be very joyful, which is just a rarity. So I think we take that whenever we get it, type of thing.

Stu 5:21

No, and as a kid, I was a fan of the Knicks, and I did attend several games in their '94 playoff run, which was in game seven of the finals, defeat to the Rockets. So I could feel happy for my younger self, even if I've moved beyond a Knicks fandom as an adult. Never mind. Uh, but like me and the Knicks, the American public moved beyond their interest in the moon landings. And there were actually two further moon landings that were scuttled because NASA was like, what's the point? Like canceled for lack of ratings. Basically. Are you a big Skylab fan, Michael? If you spent a lot of time imagining your life aboard Skylab.

Michael 6:10

Yeah, just hoping to get higher into orbit type thing. Yeah, it's just low Earth garbage, this Skylab thing. I was I thought I was gonna go to the moon.

Speaker 6:18

Right. Imagine being like one of the astronauts who is there's good news. We're gonna keep the program open. We're going into space, however. Yeah.

Speaker 1 6:25

The whole reason you joined, that's not happening anymore. But directly below that, there is a building.

Stu 6:32

So Skylab was not even the not even the first space station, of course, because the Russians had launched a successful space station. Them, they having they're having redirected their space program towards this goal. Once America beat them to the moon, they decided what's the point of us going? Americans have already done it. Uh, so in April of 71, the Solyuz station was uh was launched. Uh or no, the Russian for Skylab, right? Well, the Sal Solyud station. Sorry, I I have the wrong word written there. And it uh the first crew of Russians that went up there were able to dock, but they couldn't get into the there was like a docking issue. They like land, they made it the wrong key just so they couldn't actually get in and do any experiments, so they just came out. Sure gave the keys. Yeah. So they came home immediately. The second crew did dock and spent 23 days at the space station doing all their experiments, but unfortunately, they did die uh burning up on re-entry because of well, they didn't burn up, but they asphyxiated because of a leak in their capsule. So they were actually the only people in history to have died in space so far. The the two or three astronauts that were on that mission, yeah.

Speaker 1 7:57

So Skylab, however, what's that were they sending images back to the Earth the way that the US was with the moon?

Speaker 8:06

I I would assume so, yeah, of course. Yeah, but that that probably wasn't shown the way that the Challenger one was, right? No, I mean they were they were in the capsule, like going into going.

Speaker 1 8:18

So it wasn't until they like how did we all like do you know how this ended? What do you mean?

Speaker 8:24

It just sort of the the the capsule came down and they opened it up and everyone inside was dead. Oh, yeah, pretty crazy.

Speaker 1 8:32

Sort of a reverse balloon boy situation.

Speaker 8:34

Yeah, absolutely. It's as if balloon boy had been real. I think they had an inkling that that had happened though, because they didn't re-establish communication after entering the, you know. Yeah, I I think it was pretty awkward. The Russians were obviously, as we learned last week, not crazy about admitting to failure. I'm surprised we even know that this happened. Well, Soviet Union collapsed, so a lot of information came out. Sure. I think we had an idea at the time, though. I think they they they couldn't really, I mean, the astronauts were dead. They would have paraded them around if they'd been successful, etc. So Skylab was cool. Uh, three crews visited Skylab between 73 and 74, uh, May of 73 and February of 74, did a bunch of experiments, you know, learn more about people living in space, which was obviously crucial for any longer missions that might come in the future. And nobody cared. It was not the ratings bonanza we had hoped. So the late 70s is really dominated by the Voyager probes, which we should talk about in some future episode as well. And this one joint Soviet uh the the Apollo Soyuz mission where the Soviets and the Americans met in space and their two capsules like docked together. But no one cared until the space shuttle. So what was the space shuttle? The space shuttle, the idea of the space shuttle was basically a reusable space travel vehicle. All the Apollo stuff was just a giant rocket. Once it's bent, it falls into the ocean, it's useless. The capsule is burnt up on it's not burnt up, but it's damaged enough that you can't really use it again after it's so the idea was the space shuttle. We'd have a a shuttle, like you know, a shuttle's something that runs frequently. The idea of you know, like, I'm gonna take the shuttle down to DC. Space. Yeah, but now it's to space, exactly. Remember the Trump shuttle? That was like Trump's airline in the early 90s. Love the Trump shuttle. Anyway, uh that said, this space shuttle still relied on these non-reusable booster rockets and that enormous booster tank.

Speaker 1 10:42

Like, this isn't exactly I started watching some of this stuff, like various launches getting ready. Like, it is insane. There's the stuff they were doing in the early 80s, like the way that they're being launched, and like, and just even just watching it's like, of course, it was you know a tragedy, and and there was enough science behind this not happening, as evidenced by the fact that they were doing this. This wasn't like the first time or anything. No, just seems just feels so chaotic. The amount of like fire coming out of this thing while the shuttle's just like taped to it. Like, I I don't know how people can convince people to go in there, but you know.

Speaker 11:17

Yeah, I mean, they're doing it all the time now with these blue origin rockets and the SpaceX rockets, right? And the space tourism. Jeff Bezos has been to space, for goodness sake, right? It's uh it's crazy. I agree. Katy Perry has been to space.

Speaker 1 11:35

Well, the blue like Blue Origin recently, there was a huge explosion. No one was on board, luckily.

Stu 11:40

But yes, yeah. But it does show you that it's not a it's a roll of the dice, my friend, right? And that's an issue that we'll talk about a lot as we get into what happened with the Challenger. But um exactly. So the cool thing about the space shuttle was the vehicle itself was reusable. So even if you still had to build these massive, extremely wasteful rockets, uh, you didn't have to re-redo the whole life support systems, you didn't have to, you know, there were advantages to this, even if it wasn't exactly environmentally friendly. Now, the space shuttle was designed primarily for low Earth orbit. It's not it wasn't a vehicle that was going to go back to the moon or go to Mars or anything like that, but that had uh triple use possibilities because it could be used to send out commercial satellites, uh military satellites, and scientific governmental satellites. Uh and and in addition to and last and certainly least. Yeah, yeah, primarily commercial and military uh satellites. Obviously, the priority. But also you could continue to research the effects of being in space on human life and different things like that, that is valuable scientifically. So initially there were five shuttles built. There's the Enterprise, uh obviously a little nod to Star Trek, uh, which was only used as the prototype. It wasn't ever flown into space, it was just used to practice flying down and because the the space shuttle is a glider in essence on its return. So this was a way for the pilots to practice re-entry essentially without actually going to space. The Columbia, which was the first to fly, Challenger, which was the second, Atlantis, which was the third, and then Discovery. After the disaster, a new shuttle was built, the endeavor to replace Challenger, essentially. And prior to the disaster, there was actually 24 successful orbital flights made by the space shuttles. And very interestingly, the first shuttle launch was three days after I was born on April, April 12th, 1981. Yeah, right around our welcoming you, you know. We've yeah, all systems go. Stu Watson's here. That's right. Just before I was born, I think Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, and then just after this happened. So these are kind of two historic events that bracket my existence.

Michael 14:00

The idea of the Republicans being there. We have to turn the page on the shooting. Can we uh can we throw a space shuttle up there?

Stu 14:08

I think he got out of the hospital the day that I was born. I I think I read that somewhere. But you know, he was fine and a great leader and certainly a wonderful person. The first few flights were uh we'll have some Reagan quotes later on. Uh the first two flights were just with two people, the pilot and one other probably co-pilot. And they were primarily testing the you know, make sure the systems work. Make sure it actually works. Yeah, exactly. And then eventually they they started bringing the number of people on board up to seven, which was the sort of designated crew amount, though I think it could safely carry eight people in if they ever need to rescue someone from a a space, you know, space station or something like that. Just one. Yeah, just one. Wow.

Speaker 1 15:01

It's a space shuttle dilemma.

Speaker 15:02

Well, they've got a couple they've got a couple space shuttles, so maybe they could send multiple or they could send one up if they have to rescue six people, they could send it up with just the two people and then fit.

Speaker 1 15:11

That's I guess that's right.

Speaker 15:12

Yeah, there's but yeah. I don't think it's a situation where you're like you happen to be in space, and it's like, oh, we only have one seat for you.

Speaker 1 15:20

We have to stop by the station on the way down. There's four people, and we're gonna have to choose who's coming home with us.

Stu 15:25

Yeah, it's sort of Sophie's choice. Sophie's space choice. Yeah. The Challenger was actually the second shuttle to be used, and it successfully flew nine missions prior to the disaster. Nine for nine. Yeah. Well, you know, as a kid, I remember thinking that the challenger was a new space shuttle. I had a lot of misconceptions, probably because I was a child. So five? No, four. I was four, almost five, and then it when it blew up. And I remember thinking that the Discovery, which is the first shuttle to fly after the Challenger disaster, after lengthy hiatus between launches, was also new. This is all wrong, you know. But I had a child's understanding, let it let us not forget. We're gonna let it slide today. Okay, the big deal about this mission was once again, you know, there's a lot of excitement about this new space vehicle. Um, you do you remember this? I mean, I feel like the space shuttle launching when we were kids was still kind of a a novel event, right?

Michael 16:29

Yeah, I this one, no. But like I mean, uh it was something that I you you do sort of recall happening. You hear about it on the news. Yeah, absolutely. And also, like while it was diminished compared to where it was, I think it was obviously still much more important than it is today. Um but again, like when it comes to the disaster, um, I think we touched on this briefly last time, but I was very familiar with the fact that it happened, and probably just as a result of in the late 80s and early 90s, you know, you of course are going to hear and it came up, it came up a lot. I mean, the anniversary of and you know, memorials and all that stuff. So, you know, it's kind of in the in the disc in the zeitgeist, in the zeitgeist, absolutely.

Speaker 17:16

That's right. And what's like you, what about you?

Speaker 1 17:19

You you do remember watching?

Stu 17:21

Yeah, I do remember, I do certainly remember it happening. Um, I think part of the reason is because of Krista McCulliff, who was the teacher who was being sent up into space. So Right.

Michael 17:35

And so even though a ton of people did watch these things back then, prior to that, there was one of the reasons this is a it was a publicity stunt. Yes, that's what I was saying. So one of the explicit like missions of the mission, right, was to kind of re-engage the youth in the wonder of space. This is not funny, but so they actually it is it is ironic. They do create this scenario where they have this full contest, actually, um, that gets whittled down to 10 contestants from thousands of teachers who apply to go to space, and they actually fully train to sort of pass the physical requirements to be in space. I I did see clips of the training. Doesn't feel as exhaustive as it is today, but um Oh no, it was pretty it's pretty it was pretty exhaustive. I'm sure I weren't the footage they had in the news is like them being spun around on like a barber chair and doing like a really basic grip test.

Speaker 18:32

They also did the they did a lot of graph zero G like stuff they flew up into the low atmosphere to they did a lot of stuff, like and then they end up and they did swim like a lot of water stuff in case of disasters.

Speaker 1 18:48

They have to jump in a lake on the moon.

Speaker 18:50

I don't know, but yeah, they like No, because when you touch down, if you land in water, you know you're gonna have to survive. I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 18:58

They get these ten, and they bring them all, they bring them all to DC, and not not Reagan, but but Bush one. Bush is the one who announces the winner, announces the winner, um, and she gives a sort of like tear-filled acceptance and how she's become such good friends with these other ten. Obviously, it's all so reality that she know, you know, she sort of saved their lives um in a way.

Speaker 19:23

It's no, it's all very grim, right?

Michael 19:26

Yes, but yeah, anyways, you have this idea uh bringing the teachers in directly then engages all these teachers to engage their kids. You're gonna roll out your you know, your substitute TV, substitute teacher TV sets for everybody, get the big assemblies going, they're all gonna watch this thing. So this was part of the really crazy piece to this was like everybody under the age of 18 was watching this happen.

Stu 19:53

That's right. And I, you know, I lived at the time not far from where Krista McCulloff was from, also. I mean, she was from So you're hearing about this in the run-up. And she was in Concord, New Hampshire, which I've been to several times. It's the I think that's where St. Paul's School is, and I remember visiting that place. She has a very specific memory of listening to uh the Steely Dan song, Bad Sneakers in my Dad's Car as we were leaving. I don't know why. The things that stay with you. Um The other thing about that time was I was in nursery school. I think I wouldn't go to kindergarten until the following year. And I had a broken leg at the time uh from this from the skiing accident, which I mentioned in the cybernetics episode, right? And you know, having a broken leg is not ideal, but when you're a kid, uh after you get over the initial trauma, it's kind of fun because you're kind of the center of attention. So all I remember is after the disaster, we have to spend all these days talking about these stupid astronauts. And I'm like, hey, what am I, chopped liver? Like uh injured kid over here. Can we uh can we get a little focus back on what really matters? My broken leg, please. Uh, which is uh the narcissism of a child, which thankfully I've completely outgrown. Anyway, um that's just one thing I remember being kind of annoyed at that this happened. Also, it was the same weekend as the Super Bowl, where the Patriots got absolutely trounced. Or it was a few days after that. The launch was the fridge. Yeah, the fridge, uh Walter Payton, the whole uh what was his name? Jim was it Jim McMahon, the quarterback?

Michael 21:43

Yeah, 1985.

Speaker 21:44

But it was 86 Super Bowl for the 85 bears instead of team. Which were uh 15 and 1 or something, right? Yeah. And uh so I have that memory of it. I remember what else I remember is coming home from school that day, or like. I remember having talked with my mom the night before about like we were gonna talk about something in school. Um, maybe the Super Bowl, maybe something, you know, and then it was like, What did you talk about that? It was like, no, all we talked about was the challenger. All we talked about because it happened in the middle of the day, too. That's the thing. The launch was at 11 30 Eastern time, so it was like a lot of kids like on their lunch break at school would be watching this, you know, in excitement. The teacher's gonna do a couple lessons in space, right? All this stuff, and then it just blows up in front of everyone. And there's really no here's the other thing like you've probably encountered this. When the moon landing happened, Nixon had speeches ready for if they all died up there, right? And these have all been released. You can like read what Nixon would have said if they'd if they've perished on the moon and they will be there as a forever memory for us as we must push forward. You know, but there was none of that in place for this, as we'll talk about, right? So it's the whole thing is is a kind of a huge media botch, right? Yeah. Um, I watched a documentary, a four-part documentary on Netflix that came out in 2020 called Challenger, The Final Flight, which was was quite good. It uh, I'll put a link to it in in the show notes. And it has a lot of interviews with the family members and surviving astronauts from that time talking about the trauma of this event. And basically, the the first comparison a lot of people made in the aftermath of the explosion itself was to the Kennedy assassination, that this was that kind of galvanizing national tragedy. And I would say prior to 9-11, uh, this had that character for me. You know, if you'd asked me what was the biggest like national disaster uh you know as a kid that I experienced, it would definitely be this, right?

Speaker 1 24:01

Yeah, in fact, we did learn uh just today that the State of the Union itself was delayed for a week as a result of this, as sort of like a period of national mourning, kind of.

Speaker 24:12

Yeah, I mean, flags were flown at half staff. I think everyone really had built up in their mind since Apollo, really, this sort of idea of America's preeminence in space, and that this led to a certain degree of arrogance, maybe hubris, our old friend. Doesn't seem like it. Um now we talked the the doc the first part of the documentary, I'm not gonna go over it exhaustively, but it you know covers a lot of what we've already discussed. Nixon was actually the one who authorized the space shuttle program as as Apollo was winding down. There was originally a much more ambitious plan, which would have involved building a space um a space station where you could have launch vehicles that would return to the moon and then building a base on the moon. So you'd use the space shuttle to fly to the space shuttle, get or to the space station, switch vehicles there, and then fly onto the moon. Right. So this was like a much broader space shuttle program. All of that, of course, uh got scrapped. And instead, we just had this space shuttle, which was essentially a glorified uh scrap it.

Speaker 1 25:23

We'll just go up and we'll just go up and back a bit.

Speaker 25:24

We'll put satellites, we'll drop off some satellites. That's all we that's all we really need, right? And um one thing that is interesting, and the the Krista McAuliffe uh selection points to is that everyone who went on went to the moon was a wasp. They're all just like white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, right? And certainly not this crew, though, the Challenger crew. No, I that's what I'm saying. The space shuttle crew was woke. Uh, and then people probably suggest that's why uh it all ended in disaster because that's how I mean Hegseth would. That's that's how fucking stupid people are. Yes, it's like anyway. Uh but they thought it would be good for this program to more accurately represent, you know, the American people. So there were the first black astronauts selected, and many of the first women astronauts. And there were a lot of successes, right? We had 24 successful launches, these featured um a couple hiccups here and there. One of the issues was lightning. There's an interview, there's a clip in the documentary where a kid, a kid at a press conference is like, what would happen if lightning would strike the space shuttle? And the guy's like, Well, that will never happen, son. But it's like Son, don't be so fucking ridiculous. Don't be so negative, you little negative Nancy or whatever. It's just like um there were also there was also one time when a fire broke out on the launch pad, but it was successfully caught and disengaged, like you know, sprayed down and it didn't cause the rockets to ignite catastrophically. But these seem indicative of a kind of streak of arrogance, as the documentary puts it. Uh, and and that especially after Apollo 13, there was this idea that like if anything goes wrong, American ingenuity. Yeah, like we'll figure it out. There's like an ideological faith in like American exceptionalism that that's gonna that's gonna handle this.

Speaker 1 27:28

And I'm glad that, you know, that one of the good things of you know, unfortunate but good things about the Challenger disaster was that ended that streak of arrogance once and for all.

Speaker 27:41

Yeah, and we definitely didn't have a second space shuttle disaster 17 years later. Oh, wait, no, we did. We did. Anyway, so the second episode of the show, we get to see uh uh there's a it opens with a big Seinfeld bit from his tonight show era, you know, this mid 80s Seinfeld.

Speaker 1 27:58

And he's talking about how send someone who doesn't want to go.

Speaker 28:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're familiar with this one. Uh it's pretty good. And you know, once again, the issue is there people are getting bored with this. Uh whatever they like, you say, oh, they go up, they go around a few times, they come back. Oh, they're up there for a week. Who cares?

Speaker 1 28:20

There was a plan to put I mean, it makes sense. It's similar to the to the to the four-minute mile, right? Yeah, there's an obsession with that race for someone to finally get under four minutes. Not only does Bannister do it, and then very shortly after, a bunch of other people start to do it. Uh, but people don't care about that race anymore. And the in, you know, it doesn't matter. It's not, we get it. We did the thing.

Speaker 28:43

It's not even metric. I mean, it's uh 1600 is is slightly longer. Anyway, uh Big Bird was in play to go up. That was one of the one of the ideas of a media space. Can you imagine, Michael?

Speaker 1 28:57

Can you imagine Big Bird dies on the channel? Like it was, it could have been Big Bird. These discussions were being had, as they say, at the highest levels of government.

Speaker 29:08

Do you imagine the the Sesame Street funeral for Big Bird?

Speaker 1 29:10

I mean, maybe it all falls down, right? So Big Bird goes into space, right? Challenger. Now, I'm maybe 10 times as many kids are now watching. I mean, think about it.

Speaker 2 29:20

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 29:21

Now, Big Bird goes up, boom, incinerated, right? Now, all of these families have to explain the weirdest thing to the really young ones. That's not Big Bird, but someone was in the costume, and that person's dead, and uh that could have shattered illusions of the city.

Speaker 29:44

No, but it's not like they're gonna re-broadcast, they're gonna like recast Big Bird, right?

Speaker 1 29:50

I know you'd have I'm just saying all of these things that you're I'm talking about, the really young, kind of like your age. It's like Easter Bun, right? Santa Claus. I mean, all these things, just as soon as you have to explain that the big bird wasn't actually Big Bird, it was just like someone named Greg who was wearing the coffee and is now dead. Uh who knows? American life could have been vastly different.

Speaker 30:12

Um he's a real bubble verse. No, I think they would have maintained Kfab. I think they would have said Really Big Bird. I'm the show Bird is dead. Sesame Street would have, yeah. There would have been a few.

Speaker 1 30:24

And then the documentaries about like the the family of the Big Bird guy would be like talking about how hard that was to have to pretend.

Speaker 30:35

I'm not saying it would be a conspiracy to just pretend like Big Bird was real, but I'm I'm saying in the universe of Sesame Street, I'm sure that's how it would have been played. That's how they dealt with it.

Speaker 1 30:43

I almost feel like they could have done Big Bird, they could have put him in that eighth seat, but just the actual costume with stuffing in it. Would you really need like a person to be wearing the costume to say?

Speaker 30:55

Because the whole point is to broadcast Big Bird from space. Yeah, but you could get an angle, get Kubrick back, you know, little Big Bird, uh, the costume was too big to fit in the shuttle. So dodged a bullet there. Uh so the issue was the O-rings, right? Uh the O-rings are the thing that it turns out were the cause of all this mayhem, the cause of the destruction of the shuttle. And these are brushes. It's a rubber ring. There, so the the booster rockets are built in sections and they screw, they screw together, and the o-rings are kind of like almost like washers, but made of rubber at that that are inside the joint. And what they do is they're made of rubber and they can expand with pressure to prevent leakage, essentially, because the seal is going to be imperfect between the metal sections uh twisted together, essentially. Does that make sense? There's two o-rings. What was the problem with them?

Speaker 1 31:58

What what was the threat about of using them?

Speaker 32:01

Well, we'll get into that in a little bit. But essentially, they were susceptible to heat to cold. When they got cold, they wouldn't expand enough to react to. So that I mean, that's the issue, essentially.

unknown 32:18

Okay.

Speaker 32:18

Uh there were other issues prior to the disaster. Uh, in certain tests, they didn't cause a rock the rocket to expose explode in a test, but it they were worn down, they were eroding too much.

Speaker 1 32:33

Uh so they NASA was aware that these were not in tip top shape.

Speaker 32:38

Yeah, NASA was aware that there were issues with the O-rings, and there was actually a signed waiver granted acknowledging right before the Challenger disaster that there wasn't like some similarity here too, to like the amount of time that the Soviets knew that there was this problem with Chernobyl's design. Very, very fascinating. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 33:00

I wonder I wonder if the director of a Challenger TV show would give this the same treatment, but we'll have to wait and find out.

Speaker 33:06

Oh, that it was like the flaw of our ideology that caused us. That's right. Uh, probably not. But there was a lot of media stuff about Krista McCallough. She's in the videos, she seems like such a lovely person, you know. Oh my gosh, yeah. You're just like, oh my gosh. I mean, in fact, all the teachers do.

Speaker 1 33:24

They interviewed some of the interview some of the teachers after they lost, and the one guy's like, hey, I mean, I'm I'm in DC. I'm at the White House, and I'm going up back to Boston tonight. Yeah, my city, the mayor, other teachers, the kids are coming. There's a there's a parade for me, it's gonna be great.

Speaker 33:40

Yeah, no, it and the in the documentary, there's a bunch of interviews with uh all the alternate, who if Krista had you know caught the flu or whatever, she would have gone in her place. She also seems lovely.

Speaker 1 33:53

And you get a sense today. I don't even think that teachers would be invited into the White House at all. Never mind, get to join a space space shuttle trip.

Speaker 34:03

That's exactly what I was gonna say. I mean, you get a sense that teachers were respected and valued in American life at this time in a way that just as a teacher myself does not feel accurate to the moment.

Speaker 1 34:16

Um so the over it felt like they were celebrated. I mean, obviously, this moment is also propagandistic a little bit. So of course, but like that there was a feeling of there being this like direct tie to community that teachers are responsible for building.

Speaker 34:36

Yeah, no, I mean 100%. And there's an understanding that our lead in the space race is because of teachers, and that teachers and education play a vital role in the national interest, right? Uh, I mean, the Cold War was an enormous boon for education in this country. Uh, you say whatever you want about the ideological evils of the Cold War, which of which there are many. Uh, this is something that's very well documented in terms of the funding of higher education, you know, science in schools. And somewhere along the line, we just completely lost sight of that. I guess as neoliberalism takes hold. And but it's funny to see Reagan talk about it because even Reagan is like, teachers are so valuable. You don't think Trump would ever say that? Trump would say teachers are liberal scum or something, right?

Speaker 1 35:29

Um I mean, that's the whole thing. They've gone after these people as though they're sort of what's it, the cultural Marxism of it all.

Speaker 35:35

Yeah, yeah, which is which is crazy. Um, so they're very aware, a lot of the engineers working on the project are very aware that this O-ring thing is a real roll of the dice. And they try and send warnings up the food chain, so to speak, and these keep getting batted back on the grounds that they are, quote unquote, an acceptable level of risk, right? So the third episode is called a major malfunction and focuses on the disaster itself, the the explosion. Scientists on the day of the launch uh are are riding in to their work and are kind of like sweating because this is going to be the coldest ever launch. In Florida, it is 38 degrees and was below freezing overnight to the point where the launch pad is covered in icicles. Now why do they carry on? We'll talk about that in a second. It's uh it's they've already delayed it twice. So initially the launch was on Super Bowl Sunday, and there was a weather forecast that it was supposed to rain, and that could bring lightning, as we discussed before. So they they they scuttle that. Turns out the forecast was wrong, they could have launched fine, and it was warmer on that day, so the whole thing may have gone off perfectly. But no. Um it's rescheduled for Monday, and once again, on Monday, there's another mishap where during the launch window, they have trouble getting the door sealed on the shuttle because a screw becomes uh, you know, what's it called when a screw you're try doing a screw and the the teeth of the screw get uh dulled? Yeah, they get dulled, but there's there's a term for this, which I'm I'm tip of the tongue phenomenon is occurring. Uh as I mentioned, you know, one of the advantages, and some of the astronauts are. Oh you mean stripped. Stripped, thank you. Yes.

Speaker 1 37:33

You can't oh you mean so like you can't. You can't unscrew it or screw it. Right.

Speaker 37:36

So they have to like drill it out, and it's they have to get all this gear up there. It's a real it's a real nightmare, but it's just one little screw. But they bring the f when they first bring up the gear, they forgot to charge the batteries because you can't have anything plugged in near the you know huge fuel tanks and stuff. So it's a whole they end up having to pull it out and get a hacksaw, and so it's it seems like it seems like a really ill omen, right? In addition to the Patriots getting absolutely slaughtered by the Bears and their defensive linemen scoring a touchdown, right? I mean, they just uh you know, Chris McAuliffe from New Hampshire felt a little ominous, I wonder, you know, and uh certainly felt ominous to me at the time, although I do not remember a minute of that Super Bowl, I will say. I do remember the aftermath in which everyone was sad, however. Um the people are you know, a little this these two delays, not unusual, right? This is this is something that happens all the time. Uh the fatal launch then is at Tuesday, on Tuesday, January 28th. It's supposed to happen at 9.30, gets pushed back to 11.30. It went down to 22 degrees Fahrenheit the night before the launch, which is below freezing. And seems very cold for Space Coast, Florida to me, right? I don't know if I've ever been in Florida when it's below freezing.

Speaker 1 39:00

Yeah, I don't I mean, I guess I mean I was living there at the time.

Speaker 39:04

Well, that's another thing I was gonna ask you. You what part of Florida were you guys living in? I knew you were living there. Orlando. It's not that far.

Speaker 1 39:11

No. I mean that's my brother his impressions of this. I'm sure my brother remembered it.

Speaker 39:16

Yeah, it would have been good if you had done that even before the episode that we never mind, never mind.

Speaker 1 39:25

Anyway, uh I just remembered now that I lived right down the street from where this happened, but that's fine. Not right down the street, a hundred miles or so, right?

Speaker 39:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:34

I mean, compared to you up there. Up there in hanging out with McAuliffe, you know.

Speaker 39:40

Living next door to Bobby Orr, as I did as a child. John Havlichek was seen in the neighborhood riding his bike. You know, it's a real real uh Boston suburb utopia. And I, you know, I would go swimming in the Walden Pond, right? I mean, this was real New England. Um idyllic. Idyllic. But anyway, launching below 53 degrees was not recommended. So here we are at 38 degrees, and it had been 22 degrees overnight. And the space shuttle sitting out on the dude, those numbers just don't add up. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. And a lot of people are warning about this, but there's an enormous pressure to proceed. Even the orange crop in Florida was blighted by the frost, and so that was the other big story the morning of the launch. And Larry Malloy is the guy who overrides these. He's one of the NASA higher-ups, or he he's the one who's like, no, we're gonna go ahead despite the warnings. And when they go to get on the shuttle, the launch gear is still covered in icicles, and there's more, there's like and they're still just like, oh, it's fine, it'll be fine. Yeah. How strange. It's quite strange, and there's worry that the icicles will break off and damage the paneling on the back of the shuttle, which could lead to problems on re-entry, which is actually what happened.

Speaker 1 41:06

So the idea of it just the fact that ice it was cold enough for ice to form wasn't enough, but they're like, hey, we do have to be concerned about what might happen with the icicles, also very strange.

Speaker 41:15

Uh it's like we say when there's a near-miss penalty in the box, it's not enough.

Speaker 1 41:20

Yeah, not quite enough for a penalty.

Speaker 41:22

Yeah. And 18 students from Krista McAuliffe's school were in attendance for the launch, along with her parents and her immediate family. And tons of people there. Tons of people there. But this is a big spectacle.

Speaker 1 41:36

Plus the families circumstance, yeah.

Speaker 41:38

All the families of the other astronauts, and again, this is the first civilian person who's gonna go, you know, the first everyday person is gonna go in space, right? Yeah, and there's just this weird pressure to proceed that to this day does not really make sense. The main issue seems to have been there was a a lot of launches scheduled, and any delay in this launch would delay future launches, and NASA was under a lot of pressure to kind of crack the whip and keep this schedule going.

Speaker 2 42:10

Really?

Speaker 42:10

Which seems, in light of what happened, extremely short-sighted because of this disaster. There were no launches for over two and a half years, right? So we see the footage of the launch, everyone's excited, goes up, looks great, no problem. Then it blows up uh 114 seconds into or no, 74 seconds. One minute and 14 seconds. Sorry, wow, my my mind is slipping, and there's just silence. And you hear over the broadcast, obviously, a major malfunction is what the intra NASA people say to each other. And then over the inner intercom at the site, someone says, the vehicle has exploded. And I mean, it was quite clear. Well, right, but I mean, but you imagine you see your your husband or your wife or your child blow up, yeah, and then just a voice confirming that that's what's happened. Yeah, and I think a lot of people are in denial about this. They're like, Oh right.

Speaker 1 43:08

And it's important just to note again, though, that like this is happening, like the footage that I watched is just on CNN. Oh, yeah. Like they are walking through, then they they hand it over to um, they actually have the like, what is it, the command, the command center, like so that you could hear what they were saying. Yeah, just on regular television.

Speaker 43:27

Well, that's where the major malfunction line is heard.

Speaker 1 43:30

Right. Looks like this is going well. Oh, got some good streams here. What looks everything's pretty good. Then silence, and everything disappeared, and there was just a huge plume of smoke, and then it's just like we are paying attention to what is going on here.

unknown 43:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1 43:49

Obviously, it made function. It was it's it is it is still uh jarring to watch today.

Speaker 43:56

I find it I'm I find it quite upsetting. I found it upsetting all the time. A lot when I was younger, too. Yeah. Just when I'd watch a history channel thing about it, I just always just the whole thing feels really uh just the teacher and like just the other astronauts, and this is just such a total fuck up, basically. And you know, NASA is like we have an enormous stream of data, we'll figure out what happened. And they're they go in to tell the families like everyone, no one could have survived that. Like your family members are dead, and the the family members, the kids are there, you know. It's it's horrible. And Chris McCallov herself had two kids and a husband who are never interviewed, they've kind of stayed out of the limelight.

Speaker 1 44:40

But yeah, and she gives an interview, like kind of, you know, where she's talking about. I mean, she follows the space program her whole life, sort of a child, obviously of that era. Yeah. Um, and also on top of that, like how much joy it gives her to tell her kids who don't really understand why it's a big deal, exactly uh how huge this is. Um, and yeah, just one of those things where this sort of effort, this publicity effort, creates this sort of oversized amount of what feels like sentimentalized coverage, but then in the aftermath. Becomes pathos. Yeah. Yes. It's really strange phenomenon to watch the sort of almost feeling like if you were to watch it in the days running up, it would feel hyperbolic. And then when watching it after, it feels so uh real.

Speaker 45:31

And I think very yeah, and I know what you mean, it's a little eerie, right? Like almost as though they knew a tragedy was incoming, but that's not obviously the case. I think part of it is just the media was very different at the time, it was more positive. Um, you know, we have uh this just becomes a jarring psychological moment for people across the United States.

Speaker 1 45:57

Uh, you know, and for kids, it's like the first time you you've ever like it see someone die, basically. Yeah, right.

Speaker 46:04

Yeah. I mean, that's it certainly was for me. Like I hadn't had any relatives die at that point. Uh my parents were very young, right? I think my mom was 26 when this happened, right? And you know, a couple years later, my grand my stepgrandfather died, and then my grandmother, my mom's mother passed away in uh 1988 and 89, I believe.

Speaker 1 46:29

And you were like, this is just like the challenger?

Speaker 46:31

I mean, not exactly, but it's no, but you know what I mean. Like reminds me of the challenger disaster. Just like the reality of death had been introduced in this in a sense by the challenger, but it's obviously different when it's someone you personally know. Uh and not just into thin air. Right. But it's also abstract because when you're a kid, it's not like they take you into the death chamber of your cancer-ridden grandmother to see her die, right? Um so I I received that information uh in the same kind of alienated way that you received the information of these astronauts' death.

Speaker 1 47:11

I I'm not quite sure what I'm saying, but like if you're watching it as a kid, I don't know if you remember, but like you obviously know something's gone really wrong when you see the explosion. But you probably, if you're young enough, it doesn't really process that this might this necessarily or inevitably or invariably would have led to the death of everybody on board. Yeah. Right. There's no way to like consider that that was sort of possible, you know.

Speaker 47:36

Yeah, and I remember being even a little later confused about how far they'd traveled before they blew up. Because I remember I was looking at a map, and there's that part of the Marianas Trench that's called the Challenger Deep. And I was like, oh, is that like how far the Challenger rocket like flew and like crashed into the deep Pacific Ocean? And it's like, no, you idiot, you child, you foolish child. But it's like I didn't have a because you know, you know they're going to space, so it's like, well, space, couldn't you just go up into space and then you land somewhere else on the earth, right? Uh it's just it's just a childish confusion. Reagan gives that famous speech um where he quotes the poem High Flight, which I had always thought before doing research for this was a poem from the 1700s or something. Or, like, you know, when he says, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and touched the face of God, is the line that he that he cites. I'd always thought those were lines that were um from an old poem, but no, in fact, they're from uh an American pilot named uh John Gillespill McGee Jr. And he wrote this poem in a letter he sent to his parents before he was killed in action in 1941. He was actually flying for the Canadian Air Force because it was prior to the US entry, and so he went to Canada and volunteered to be an airman. He's like, I'm a pilot. Can I fly for you guys? Yeah, a lot of people did this. And uh, I'm gonna read the poem just because I think it's actually pretty good as far as this kind of thing goes. And Reagan actually, what he quotes is from the first and the final line, uh, but the rest of the poem is is it's kind of old school. It's got a sort of 19th century romantic vibe to it, but it's uh metrically quite accomplished in its way. Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter silvered wings. Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun split clouds, and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of, wheeled and sword and swung high on the sunlit silence, hovering there, I've chased the shouting wind along and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air, up the long delirious burning blue, I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace, where never lark or even eagle flew, and while with silent lifting mind I've trod the high, untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touch the face of God.

Speaker 2 50:07

Right.

Speaker 50:08

It's uh it's a sonnet, a sixteen-line poem. Um and not Shakespearean. Oh no, no, it is Shakespearean. No, it's not Shakespearean, it's some kind of Italian form or a Miltonic sonnet. But never mind. It's a good poem, it's fine, it's not like amazing, but it's good. And I apparently a young Ben Lerner, uh, who's I think Ben Lerner is a little bit older than I am. Seriously, he heard this. No, he heard Reagan read this, and that's what inspired him to become a poet and a novelist. Yeah, he's amazing. Isn't that cool? Well, you know, just like the possibility of language to console in the face of tragedy is is something powerful. So just to wrap up what the aftermath of all this, um, yeah, the O-rings were indeed the problem. And there was a presidential committee formed by uh led by this guy called William P. Rogers, former attorney general, I think, a Republican hack essentially. And he had the mandate to whatever you do, do not embarrass NASA. We need them for the Cold War, was sort of Reagan's thing. Uh, Richard Feynman, uh, who is one of the people on the Manhattan Project, very famous physicist, Nobel Prize winner, uh, famous for playing the Bongos a lot. He's in uh Oppenheimer, played by uh Jack Quaid, I believe. And he's kind of also a countercultural figure. So it's a little, it was kind of a mistake to put him on there because he was not a big fan of authority. Uh interesting. He's the one who ends up basically showing the media and everyone at one of these public hearings how if you cool down these O-rings, the rubber, the rubber loses its elasticity. So he does a little experiment where he brings out a mini O-ring that he's like cooled overnight and he's like, see, see what happens? It retains the shape, it doesn't spring back. And and this is the thing that kind of forces NASA's hand to admit that there is this structural problem. And Feynman kind of couldn't be ignored because alas, he had a Nobel Prize. Anyone else trying to do this to be like, who's this asshole? We had NASA do real science, and he's like, Oh, yeah, well, where's your Nobel Prize? You know, it's sort of he had a he had a level of authority that allowed him to do this. Um, basically, the cause of the of the disasters is capitalism, right? Uh, gotta get those commercial satellites up in the air, gotta save money, gotta make money, say you gotta save money to make money, you know, all this sort of stuff. The family members are kind of appalled as this news comes out, where people are like, we knew there was a risk, but it was an acceptable risk. And it's like, oh, it was acceptable for my family to die. Is that what you're is that what you're telling me?

Speaker 1 52:52

Well, it's interesting that you bring that up because um uh as I mentioned, I was watching some of the older footage, sort of the next day stuff, and they interviewed John Glenn. Oh, yeah. Uh and he that's basically like this is the next morning, yeah, you know, and he's just like, I don't know if you watched it, but he was just weirdly calm about it, and he was just like almost not just calm, like resigned. Like his exact quote is um, I think that anybody who's had any connection with the program, space program, just felt that someday there'd be a loss in flight. I mean, we're dealing with tremendous powers and speeds. Are we gonna be perfect? Guess the answer was proven this morning. No. Seems incredibly bizarre.

Speaker 53:39

Like, yeah, like it's like read the room a little bit, maybe. Um, yeah. But by the same token, that's the pragmatism of the astronaut, the scientist, the military man, right?

Speaker 1 53:53

Oh, sure. Like I could see writing that in your memoir.

Speaker 53:57

But it's not great, it's not great on the podium the day after.

Speaker 1 54:00

Yeah, like the teacher's dead, is the kids.

Speaker 54:04

And I think in general, the family members of of Chris McCulliff and the other, you know, astronauts are all appalled by this sort of cavalier, you know, of course.

Speaker 1 54:14

I mean, Reagan, too, I mean, there is this responsibility because you can't abandon space research and space exploration. So they, of course, Reagan sort of right away is turning these people into martyrs, as like as th the space, the space program could only exist with people like this. Yeah. So to honor them, we will go right back into space. Um, but you know, and there had been people who died in the run-up to Apollo.

Speaker 54:41

There were those astronauts who who uh asphyxiated during a test and burnt and burned to death uh because of an oxygen leak. Uh so yeah, I mean they found the shuttle about a month or two after, and the cabin where the people were was intact, which kind of implies that they may have lived until it crashed into the water, which is pretty grim. What? Yeah, like they may have they wouldn't have survived the impact with the water, but they may have survived the initial explosion. Uh, there's even footage you can find of them holding the challenger, like the words challenger, that it's like burnt and twisted. You can pretty eerie stuff. Uh so Morton Thiacol is the company that built the booster rockets, and they had to fire 200 people. There this eventually was one step in leading to them merging with some merging themselves out of existence, essentially. Uh it's a pretty bad look. Although they did build the replacement. Reagan gives this quote that I think I'm gonna read in full, it's a little bit long, but I've already read a long poem, so what the heck? Well, not even a long poem.

Speaker 2 55:53

All right.

Speaker 55:54

In America, we learn from our setbacks as well as our successes, and though the lessons of failure are hard, they're often the most important on the road to progress. Okay, sure. We've learned in these past few months that we are frail and fallible. We've also learned that we have the courage to face our faults and the strength to correct our errors. This so sure about that. Yeah, this has been a difficult passage for America, but we will go on, just as the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger would have wanted us to. We'll simply do what has to be done to make our space program safe and reliable and a renewed source of pride for our nation. We've suffered a tragedy. What? Yeah, starting now. Starting now. We've suffered a tragedy of a setback, but we'll forge ahead, wiser this time, and undaunted, as undaunted as the spirit of the challenger and her seven heroes.

Speaker 1 56:48

So I just love the way this stuff too, because it's like they this wisdom, there's always this implication of like what we've learned and this wisdom, but like they said not to go if it was cold.

Speaker 56:58

Yeah. The day before they were like, don't launch tomorrow. It's too cold. And they were like, Yeah, it's acceptable.

Speaker 1 57:06

It's still cold, then they launched, then everyone died. And like, you know what? The important thing is to look back and make sure we get it right next time.

Speaker 57:12

And also the way that their deaths are being marshaled here, like these people died, and they'd want they would the you know what they would want, they would want us to keep doing this.

Speaker 1 57:20

Yeah, they we just won't take this particular risk again.

Speaker 57:24

Yeah. So the shuttle program was put on hold for over two years, and I remember the relaunch of the discovery, as I mentioned before, September 88.

Speaker 1 57:34

This is a time when I recall as well.

Speaker 57:37

I was living in Maryland. We'd moved from Boston area to Maryland, and I remember I spent a lot of time around then at this air and space museum in DC because we would go drive into DC. We actually lived across the uh Chesapeake Bay from DC, but we'd go still go to DC pretty frequently for school field trips and stuff like that. So I was very space-pilled at this time. You know, we get the space. Do you ever have the space ice cream you could get at the museum? It's like free freeze-dried ice cream, you know, because you can't really have ice cream in space because it floats everywhere. So they'd freeze-dry it and you could eat it. Very weird. It was sort of a meme, a meme product of that era, the space shuttle era. Uh and it, you know, they fixed they fixed the issue. There's never an issue with the booster rockets again. And like for the next 15 years, 86 missions were run successfully. And on February 1st, 2003, the Columbia, the first space shuttle ever launched, tragically broke up on re-entry. Seven more crew members lost, no teacher this time. Uh but again, it was a similar issue that had been mentioned with this. If the panel gets damaged during launch, could cause a problem in re-entry, sort of like with the icicles that we were talking about. Uh oh. I feel like the Columbia disaster much less uh memorable than Challenger. Different time post-9-11, Iraq war, you know, about to start, right? A lot of stuff in the news. Also, simply uh no video of it, right? Because it was in re-cause I was gonna say, yeah.

Speaker 1 59:20

The visceral aspect of the Challenger is the families and people there watching it blow up. Yeah, and ends up sticking with with the Again, like the zeitgeist and then and the national response, the image of it for years and years, where I am, you know, I'm three at the time and I'm presented with the image dozens, dozens of times through my early youth, right?

Speaker 59:41

Yeah, no, exactly. So in 2007, as a kind of coda to the whole challenger, a teacher.

Speaker 1 59:48

Uh, this I remembered.

Speaker 59:49

The teacher did fly aboard the Endeavor, which was the shuttle made to replace the Challenger, and delivered lessons in space as Krista McAuliffe 20 years earlier, 21 years earlier, had wanted to do. It's kind of crazy that they waited 21 years to finally be like, all right, is it safe to yeah, it's safe. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, another one just blew up. Well, whatever. That's not gonna happen. So that's a challenger. I think it's interesting. It doesn't have obviously the global apocalyptic dimension of Chernobyl. We'll say you're Chernobyl.

Speaker 2 1:00:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1:00:22

Yeah. But I think it does have a psychologically powerful impact on Americans, the American psyche, and this the spirit of American 80s like domination, you know, like oh, we're winning the Cold War. But it's it's sort of like a chink in the armor that maybe points towards problems to come.

Speaker 1 1:00:43

Um I think that's right. And it's also it's it's a exact type of incident that if it had happened under the watch of the Soviets in '86, you could see a bunch of mid-80s Americans being like, yeah, of course that's the case. Of course that would happen. You know what I mean? Like in terms of just like that that inability to self-reflect on the the own flaws of the system. Like you said, talking about um this idea in the Chernobyl episode of like, oh, there was the good the good uh uh meter for the radiation is in the safe, you know, like they use all of these terrible Soviet-era technologies. Yeah, uh, and like you said then, it's like, oh no, is uh not not like capitalism's ever cut any corners, you know, famously. Now we're now there's just these like withering O-rings that they're like, oh, I'm sure this will, you know what, we'll fix it next time. This one's stripped. Let's just try to let's just push through this launch and then we'll deal with it after.

Speaker 1:01:43

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, Challenger, big, big moment. Uh interesting to put myself back in that in that headspace. And uh we're gonna be continuing our revisiting of earlier headspaces uh next week when we discuss the utopian promise of the internet.

Speaker 1 1:02:02

Yeah, I thought it'd be interesting to kind of look at some early articles, types of things that were promised to us, and one by one without fail were delivered.

Speaker 1:02:16

So maybe we'll look back to the late 80s, early 90s, and uh go go up to about the dot com, boom, and bust. True.

Speaker 1 1:02:26

And we'll have plenty of time to do some research on it because we're both working those 10-hour work weeks they promised us.

Speaker 1:02:34

Yeah. All right, so there's been some weird technical difficulties in the head of this episode. Ironic, given technical difficulties was in sense, the subject of this episode. But if you like the show, you can uh follow us on the podcatcher of your choice. If you really like the show, you can leave us a rating andor review on that podcatcher. Always appreciate ratings andor reviews, so feel feel free to leave one. You can also follow us on Instagram at the end of the worldwms, where we post exciting reels from the show. Uh so next week, internet and it's promise, and failure to deliver on that promise. And until then, this has been the end of the world for Michael and Stu. I'm Michael. And I'm Stu, and we will talk to you real soon.