On January 28, 1986 NASA set out to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger for it's tenth mission. The Challenger had launched and landed nine times, but 73 seconds into it's 10th mission it broke apart and resulted in the death of all seven crew members. One of the crew members was a teacher from Concord, New Hampshire. In 1985 Christa was selected from more than 11,000 participants to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project. As part of the mission, Christa was planning to conduct experiments and teach two lessons from Space Shuttle Challenger. With a teacher on board, so many students around the nation were tuned in to watch the launch on live T.V. Reagan spoke directly to these children.
"And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them."President Ronald Reagan was supposed to deliver his state of the union on that day, but he delayed it one week to take time to speak with the nation about the tragedy. This was the first time in modern history, that the state of the union would be delayed. And, when President Reagan did meet with members of Congress for the state of the Union. He opened the speech with a moment of silence to "to mourn and honor the valor of our seven Challenger heroes".
"Thank you for allowing me to delay my address until this evening. We paused together to mourn and honor the valor of our seven Challenger heroes. And I hope that we are now ready to do what they would want us to do: Go forward, America, and reach for the stars. We will never forget those brave seven, but we shall go forward."http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=36646
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_McAuliffe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Challenger_flight_51-l_crew.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment