Susan Sarandon narrates film on Challenger disaster

wrote:


Now JimO brought up the question of groundstation, ComSat or TDRSS
window to get a com link. This may be a question for a TV link. But
wasnt a window for voice link open for most of the orbit? Is somewhere
a paper claiming no com link window for the State of the Union speech?


What would be fun to do, and settle this once and for all, is to get
hold of the flight plan for the 51L Challenger mission via a FOIA request.
If anything was going to happen it would almost certainly be in the
flight plan, as time would have to be set aside to do it.
A check on the orbits and the downlink possibilities (the TDRS
constellation wasn't finished at the time, and IIRC Challenger was
carrying a TDRS when it was destroyed) during the time scheduled for the
SOTU address would at least be able to generate a sure negative answer
if not a sure positive one.
Of course the wild card here is that the launch was delayed a day by the
hatch problem (there's an interesting alternative history thought...the
hatch doesn't have a problem, and the launch goes ahead as
scheduled...is the weather still cold enough to cause the O-rings to
fail? If not, what happens on the next flight, and the ones after that?
There's some fun research here regarding the scheduled launch dates for
1986, and what the weather was like on those days.), and so if anything
was scheduled - and you've got to admit, pulling off some sort of a talk
with Krista during the SOTU would be exactly the sort of thing the ever
media-savvy Reagan White House would drool over - the whole thing could
have been thrown off by the orbital mechanics of launching on the next
day instead. Well, at least we seem to have confirmation that here
flight was going to get mentioned in the SOTU from the Challenger
Center, and whoever wrote that little insert for the speech knew
exactly how Reagan spoke, because you can just hear his inflection on
every word in it. In fact, it sounds like something written by his
speech writers, and not NASA.




Besides this, I remember a statement I thought important. Before the
launch, MacAuliffe told to relatives: "This time they will launch
regardless what happens." Or something that line, its from memory
only. I thought that a very strange and odd statement until I got
to hear of the SOTU link.




If there is anything to this all, then that woman who has been doing
research on the story for the Sarandon-narrated special is almost bound
to have found it, as she's been researching the flight for several years.
The NGC special has recreations of the squabble at Thiokol over the
launch decision in it, judging by the previews.


Pat