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An Extra Credit Question
Years ago, I was beginning as a student teacher in a middle school in Westchester County, New York. It was exam week for the kids, and since I was new in town, I was given the task of coming up with an extra credit question for the 8th grade American History class. It was about 11:30 a.m, almost lunchtime.
I came up with this: “Who is Christa McAuliffe?”
Not that far away, in the skies east of the Florida peninsula, the following conversation between Dick Scobee (CDR) and Michael Smith (PLT) was heard by Mission Control and the rest of the Challenger crew:
T+58…………..PLT….. Throttle up.
T+59…………..CDR….. Roger.
T+60…………..PLT….. Feel that mother go.
T+60………… Woooohoooo.
T+1:02…………PLT….. Thirty-five thousand going through one point five
(NASA: Altitude and velocity report, 35,000 ft., 1.5 Mach).
T+1:05…………CDR….. Reading four eighty six on mine.
(NASA: Routine airspeed indicator check.)
T+1:07…………PLT….. Yep, that’s what I’ve got, too.
T+1:10…………CDR….. Roger, go at throttle up.
(NASA: SSME at 104 percent.)
T+1:13…………PLT….. Uhoh.
T+1:13…………………..LOSS OF ALL DATA.
The State of the Union speech was postponed. President Reagan addressed the nation:
I wonder if today’s average eighth-grader could answer that extra credit question.
Published in History
< devil’s advocate mode = on >
Without looking it up, can you name any of the other astronauts from STS-51-L?
Can you name any of the astronauts from STS-107?
Heck, can you name any of the astronauts from STS-1? How about STS-135?
What makes Christa McAuliffe so special?
< devil’s advocate mode = off >
I can name all 7 of the astronauts from 51L.
I can name one from 107.
I can name both from STS1.
I can also name all three from Apollo 1.
And the Mercury 7.
Aside: What is it about the last week in January and first week in February that’s so deadly for NASA?
I’ve always wondered what it was that Smith saw that made him say “uh oh”.
Who was Gus Grissom?
I don’t think anyone under the age of 40 would likely know who Christa McAuliffe is. Mainly because it was such a hyped up moment to have a teacher go into space. Also I think 90% of classrooms were watching the challenger launch. It was pretty traumatizing as an elementary school student sitting there super excited to see the launch and all the teachers excited as well then to watch the shuttle blow to bits a few minutes after launch. I remember the teachers wheeling the TV out of the room and we said a prayer (catholic school). But everyone was in shock. You don’t forget that. But kids now have no idea.
Well, average student? No. But if the sample were limited to intelligent children from good families then I’d bet on “Yes.”
I don’t have any specific insight into this specific question, whether McAuliffe is remembered. But I consider that she was a complete luxury, a supernumerary on that flight. She was a middle school history teacher, IIRC. Superficially, at least, she was a poor one – I recall some newsy bit about the irrelevant (my judgement, not theirs) content of her pedagogy.
So she seems like a perfect totem for the left. Yes, I bet today’s front row kids would do better on your question than you might expect.
Ellison Onozuka, Ron McNair, and Judy Resnik
Ilan Ramon
John Young and Bob Crippen
No idea
She was cargo.
Yes. To the first three questions. Hell, I can name every crew member in 51-L (no STS, except retroactively) and STS-107. Of course I was there through most of the Shuttle program. And had just moved back from Palestine, TX (where bits of STS-107 landed) to rejoin the Shuttle program eight months before STS-107. I worked with or for many astronauts that flew on the Shuttle. A few were even friends. (Not many, though. Different circles.)
As to what made McAuliffe so special? In truth it was that she wasn’t. She was just an ordinary American, and was supposed to prove space wasn’t just for demigods and demigoddesses.
Not to change the subject too much, but my 6th grader just finished a group reading project at school where they read a book titled “Bomb: The race to build — and steal – the world’s most dangerous weapon” about the Manhattan project and the Russian attempts to infiltrate.
My kid was pretty disgusted because none of the kids in his group knew a thing about WWII. They hadn’t even heard of Normandy, and pretty much (according to him) didn’y know who was on which side.
I’m not at all sure 6th graders need to know those things, but I’m quite sure 12th graders should know all of them, and a lot more besides.
Judith Resnik.
She went to CMU.
There’s a small memorial to her near the Engineering buildings.
This is kind of a non-sequitur, but here goes…
In the weeks leading up to the launch, and, of course, in the months afterwards, I was always terribly annoyed by the way the media kept referring to her as “the first citizen to go to space”. Of course, they meant “civilian”, but didn’t know how to say it. Which really bothered me.
And, of course, even that was wrong.
Harrison Schmidt, former US Senator from New Mexico, was the first civilian the US sent to space, and obviously the only civilian (and last man) to set foot of the Moon.
What they meant was first non-NASA, non-military, non-foreign individual to travel into space aboard a US spacecraft. Harrison was a NASA astronaut. Even there, she wasn’t. That was Charles Walker, who flew aboard 41-D.
What they really meant was she was the first ordinary American to fly in space. She was that. Believe me, a lot of NASA astronauts disliked that, and most were glad, when NASA stopped flying “ordinary” people in space after 51-L.
I’ve been to four of the graves from Challenger.
Smith and Scobee are buried at Arlington.
Onizuka is in Punchbowl, right near Ernie Pyle.
McAuliffe is in Concord New Hampshire.
BTW, just saw an article on CNN yesterday, Scobee’s son is a three star Air Force general, in charge of the Air Force Reserve.
Yeah, I get it, but how hard would it have been to actually use the one word they were trying to convey? None hard, and that’s my point.
Dude – you’re dealing with journalists. You know, folks who could not cut it academically majoring in education.
They couldn’t call her “ordinary” as that would imply that NASA could have chosen pretty much any American at random to take her seat.
How about “first civilian American without a science degree”?
Elon Musk and Buzz Aldrin aside, space tourism is going nowhere fast.
If they could, I dare say they would insist Christa McAuliffe got her assignment based on white privilege.
God bless the Challenger Seven . . .
This wasn’t about space tourism. It was about reducing space to a non-mythic activity. If space plumbers have to PhDs, guess what? Space is going to be going nowhere fast, either. It pretty much is, anyway, in large part because the astronauts have built up a mythos about space taking supermen and superwomen.
Not sure that was the astronauts. I’ve seen The Right Stuff.
(Filmed partly in Albuquerque, as Dr Lovelace actually was the one who did all the physicals on the astronauts in the 60s.)
And that is what made her special.
How about “first passenger on an American space flight?”
So… what were the results?
That was “barfin'” Jake Garn. To commemorate his flight they named the space-sickness scale units of measure for him. At 20 Garn you have an “event.”
Maybe it was a jolt rather than something he saw.
Oh, they all got it right. I never liked to give a question designed to stump them, but one designed to make them think. They had a lot to think about that afternoon.
I was born later in 1986, and I couldn’t.
Thanks! Now I really feel old . . .