25 anniversary of the catastrophe in the sky

Read why the catastrophe in the sky was also a disaster in the newsroom.

It's the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. This was an event so shocking, so unexpected, so emotionally intense that most of us still can recall that day with rare clarity. Today I am linking to an earlier post that examined the disaster and why newspapers around the world had disasters of their own when it came to running the picture of the shuttle disintegrating high in the sky off Florida.

The linked post was inspired by an editorial by Paul Berton the former editor-in-chief of The London Free Press: Catastrophe in the sky.
_____________________________________________________________________

As to the question of did or didn't Challenger explode, the following is from the Huffington Post comments accompanying the Huffington Post article on the 25th anniversary of the disaster. As you can see, the argument continues 25 years later.

jsarets   4 hours ago (4:26 AM)

499 Fans

After reading the comments below, it's worth noting that Challenger did not explode.

A jet of hot gas leaking from the aft segment joint of the right solid rocket booster burned through the aft attach strut between the SRB and the external tank. When the aft end of the SRB swung loose from tank, it drove the tank and orbiter into the oncoming airstream at a high angle of attack.

Aerodynami­c loads caused the near-immed­iate structural failure of the external tank, releasing a massive plume of hydrogen and oxygen that ignited in the wake of the left SRB. This is called deflagrati­on, which differs from detonation in that the propagatio­n of the flame front is subsonic.

The rest of the vehicle, including the wings and vertical stabilizer of the orbiter, proceeded to break up due to the aero loads, but the crew compartmen­t -- which is a self-conta­ined pressure vessel attached to the airframe at four points -- was flung from the vehicle and remained structural­ly intact until it crashed into the ocean at over 200 mph.

Three of the four Personal Egress Air Peaks (PEAPs) on the flight deck were activated and exhibited air consumptio­n consistent with the 2:45 ballistic trajectory between breakup and crash. These packs provide unpressuri­zed air and would not have kept the crewmember­s alive if the crew compartmen­t had lost pressure integrity at over 60,000 feet in altitude.

Additional­ly, several lever-lock­ed switches on the pilot's right-hand electrical power system control panel were thrown after the loss of telemetry downlink, which indicates a futile attempt to restore power to the crew compartmen­t (which had ripped free of its connection­s to the fuel cells).

Even if the crew had been equipped with full-press­ure ACES suits and parachutes as they are today, it is unlikely that they would have been able to successful­ly bail out the crew compartmen­t on a free-fall ballistic trajectory­. The emergency egress system designed in the aftermath requires that the orbiter is in stable controlled flight (but will not be able to make a safe landing).

The only thing that could have saved them would have been a parachute system for the whole crew compartmen­t, similar to those equipped on the F-111 fighter-bo­mber. This was rejected, ironically­, because of the perceived cost and complexity of separating the crew compartmen­t from the vehicle, when Challenger plainly demonstrat­ed that the crew compartmen­t is quite capable of being flung free of the vehicle in the event of a complete aerodynami­c breakup.

Where were you when. . . ? Watching TV?

Two days ago, I blogged on a column "Where were you when. . . ?" by Paul Berton, editor-in-chief of The London Free Press. I pointed out how the paper, like many others across North America, messed up the Challenger disaster photo big-time. The Free Press was forced to pull the original colour plates and replate for the city edition. For details see my earlier blog.

I must now add that the black and white picture at the bottom of the Challenger disaster front page is not as presented. In the haste to get the best images from the disaster on the wire, AP erred when captioning the photo. Here is the correction from the New York Times:

Editor's Note: A picture on Jan. 29, published after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, showed the parents and sister of Christa McAuliffe, the teacher astronaut. Under the heading ''Family in Shock,'' the editors' caption said the family was watching ''as the space shuttle took off and exploded.'' In response to inquiries, The Times has reviewed its film, frame by frame, against television tape of the sequence, from liftoff to the announcement of the explosion. The review shows that the published photograph was in fact made slightly before the explosion. The suggestion that the family was reacting to the explosion was mistaken. (The London Free Press used the word "reacts" in their cutline.)

Note how the New York Times used television tape to clarify the situation. The dog (television) wags the tail (the newspapers) again. Now, what was Paul saying about, "Newspapers may be increasingly late to breaking news parties, but they have the advantage of getting more (if not all) the facts right."

I wasn't going to mention the following, but since I have had to revisit the column, let's look at some other stuff said in Paul's column.

First, Paul writes: "It (video of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon) was made possible by the electronic media, and, conveniently enough, by the fact the camera was somehow on the moon and rolling before the big step became a news event."

Forty years after the event and The London Free Press does not know there was no camera magically "somehow on the moon." Geesh, shades of moon landing hoax stories or the moon landing conspiracy theories. The historic event was telecast live from the side using a television camera ingeniously attached to the lunar module.

Wired has an excellent story on how the filming was accomplished. Briefly, a young electrical engineer at Westinghouse, Stan Lebar, was given the task of developing a camera that could capture the most memorable moment of the 20th century – the Apollo 11 moon landing. The goal was to send back a live television feed so that everyone could watch it – particularly the Soviets.

Paul tells us, "Those on Twitter were clearly the first to learn about the miracle plane crash on the Hudson River last winter."Yes, but . . .

According to CNET News, "TwitPic, an application that allows users to take pictures from their mobile phones and append them to Twitter posts, went down after at least 7,000 people attempted to view the photo of the airplane taken by Janis Krums." (Krums, by the way, is a man, and not a "she" as reported by The London Free Press days after the Hudson River landing.)

"According to Noah Everett, the founder of TwitPic, . . . the resulting traffic was too much for the site's servers."

According to Silicon Alley Insider, "Thirty-four minutes after Krums posted his photo, MSNBC interviewed him live on TV. . ." Twitter was first out of the gate, but it was the mature technology of television that won the race and made the world aware of Krums amazing photo. As usual, newspapers were not in the race.

Let's do a little creative editing and let Paul Berton win the last round by quoting his closing words, "Newspapers may be increasingly late to breaking news parties . . . " Well said, Paul.