21-Go at Throttle-Up

It's been more than thirty eight years, but the words still echo in my brain from that day. Roger go at throttle up. After that, an event happened that would change how he looked at spaceflight forever. I'm Jimpolling, and this is my View from the Middle. In the early days of my broadcasting career, I had the privilege of covering Space Shuttle missions for two of my employers, WHOO and then later the Florida Radio Network later renamed Florida News Network or FNN now was there for the very first launch in April of nineteen eighty one, an eventful day that I related in my View from the Middle podcast episode entitled Blood on the Floor, and then all the other Shuttle missions up until around mid nineteen eighty five. I kept up with the details of the missions, the astronauts, and the technology. I'd made frequent trips to the Kennedy Space Center and visited the press site in order to gather the latest info. This was before the World Wide Web became a thing, so in order to stay on top of things, you had to visit the place in person instead of simply googling it like we do now. I got to know some of the NASA Public Information officers, and could usually pick up the phone and call one of them if there was some detail I needed to get. While at the press site, wasn't all that unusual to see some well known broadcasters such as j Barbery from NBC or Jules Bergmann from ABC, making their way through the press center or throwing out questions at a news conference. Both, by the way, were a bit stuck on themselves, especially Bergmann, and weren't that popular with the common rabble in the press corps like me. Somewhere around nineteen eighty five, FNN, along with many other media outlets, stopped covering every launch. They were expensive to do, and listener interest wasn't what it was in the beginning. They were launching these things every month or every other month, just like in the Apollo days. Interest is always hot for the first handful of missions, but then they become almost commonplace and the novelty wears off. At FNN, we didn't want to stop covering the launches completely, mainly because a good many of our listeners, unlike those out of state, could walk outside their houses and look up and see the shuttle launching in the orbit. It seems stupid not to provide some sort of coverage on the radio that was so localized. So now here's some inside baseball on the Florida News Network. Now bear with me here. FNN was a network, which means we provided radio newscasts and resources to radio stations throughout the state of Florida. You could tune into a station almost anywhere in Florida at the bottom of the hour and hear a newscast being produced out of our place. The audio was sent to the stations via telephone circuits and then later via satellite. Stations simply switch over to the network when it comes time for the news. Same concept as your national TV newscast. The local TV station switches over to their national network at six thirty pm for the CBS Evening News or ABC's World News Tonight or NBC nightly News. Same concept for a radio network like FNN, and the same thing with Shuttle launch coverage. My voice could be heard from the Panhandle to the Keys, as we'd like to promote on many radio stations throughout the Sunshine State. FNN was also an affiliate of United Press International UPI. In those days, UPI was a radio network as well, although a national network when we were a state network, and they delivered news resources to radio stations as well, and also delivered those same things to us. We mostly use them to cover national international news of interest to Floridians. Also, UPI did their own live coverage of the shuttle launches. Rob Navius was the anchor. You would probably recognize Rob Navius since he later was hired by NASA and became the voice of Shuttle Launch Control. He still does some launch commentary for Artemis missions. So instead of sending me over to do live launch coverage, FNN decided to take UPI's live coverage with Rob Navius and distribute it to our affiliates instead. Since we were already partnered with UPI, it wouldn't cost us anything to do, and we would still be able to offer our affiliates coverage of the launches uninterrupted. It would just be Rob anchoring instead of me. UPI was not very sophisticated technically. For one thing, they used only one circuit to feed everything, So, for instance, UPI sent a national newscast at the top of every hour. If there happened to be a shuttle launch at the same time, they would have to pre empt the newscast. These days, network send feeds to stations on multiple circuits or channels, so a station could choose whether to run the newscast or the shuttle coverage. Another non sophisticated thing that UPI did in those days was the use of DTMF tones to get the station's attention. Now, DTMF tones, in case you don't know, are the same tones your phone makes when you dial a number. Yeah. Those the tones sent by UPI had no real technical function. They didn't trigger any equipment or alarms or anything. If someone didn't have a speaker turned up somewhere when UPI sent those DTMF tones, no one would ever know they were sent. But it is what it is, and that's what they used at the time. They would use the tones to let stations who were listening know that a newscast was coming up or a special report, bulletin, or something. Usually, one long blast of a tone meant a newscast was about to come on, and multiple short tones would mean that a special report or a bulletin was coming. Okay, so you got all that, now, don't glaze over on me. Now I'm telling you all this stuff for a reason. I'm getting to the meat of it now. So it's January twenty eighth, nineteen eighty six. The Space Shuttle Challenger is on launch Pad thirty nine B at the Kennedy Space Center. It was a cold morning following an even colder night. It got as cold as eighteen degrees overnight, pretty cold, especially for Florida. Ice had formed on the Shuttle and the service structure on the pad, and engineers at Rockwell International, the makerates of the orbiter, and NASA disagreed on whether the ice could possibly damage the vehicle during the lift off or ascent. Potential problems with the twin solid rocket boosters didn't seem to really come into the conversation on launch day. Oh the possibility that the O rings, the rubber gaskets that sealed together the segments of the boosters could fail in the cold temperatures was discussed the previous day, but they all decided it wouldn't be a problem. That turned out to be the fatal mistake. Back at FNN, I was no longer part of the news department. I had been promoted and took over as operations manager of the radio network and the radio station there wkis. They had just hired a brand new news director a week before all this happened, so he was the guy calling the shots on news coverage. So January twenty eighth was launch day for STS fifty one l the Challenger, with seven astronauts on board, Commander Richard Scobie, pilot Michael Smith, mission specialist Ronald McNair, Ellison on Azuka and Judith Resnik, then payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, and Christa mccauliffe, the latter of which was to be the first teacher in space. The mission had been originally scheduled for the previous July, but delayed to November, then January twenty second, and then finally January twenty eighth. Launch time was set for nine thirty eight am, but because of the ice forming all over the place, the launch was delayed until eleven thirty eight am, so they lit the wick and the vehicle lifted off the pad at eleven thirty eight. It was a beautiful launch. The voice of Shuttle launch control in those days was Hugh. Harris nine eight seven six. We have main engine starts four three two one. And lift off. Lift off Crossly twenty fifth faced a mission and a d the tower. The Row program con Challenger not heading down range. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly until they got to about forty six thousand feet seventy three seconds into the flight, we hear commanders Scoby on the air to ground radio Challenger go and throw up, Roger go at throttle up. A phrase that will be etched in my mind and the minds of many forever. Those were the last official words anyone heard from the crew of the Challenger that morning, except for an off the cuff remark by pilot Mike Smith, who simply said, uh oh. The voice of Mission Control in Houston was NASA Public Affairs Officer Steve Nesbitts. You're looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major function, obviously a major malfunction, probably the understatement of the century. But I don't fault him for the subdued comment. No one knew exactly what had happened at that point, but then they knew to. Have a report from reslight that amis officer that the vehicle has exploded. Hyderator confirms that we are looking at checking with the recovery forces to see what can be doing at this point. Remember those nearly frozen o rings that they thought wouldn't be a problem, Well they were and cause a chain reaction that led to a massive explosion on the orbiter and the external fuel tank. Oddly enough, the solid rocket boosters didn't blow up, they were sent wildly off course and had to be manually destroyed on purpose by the range safety officer. They later determined that the crew cabin detached from the stack during the explosion, with the crew still alive but probably unconscious due to the loss of pressure. We can only hope that really was the case, because their likely cause of death was the crew cabin hitting the ocean as if it were a giant slab of concrete at two hundred and seven miles an hour. Remember when I said that UPI had only one circuit or channel and could only feed one audio event at a time. Well, Anchor Robs on this day had been instructed by his producers to cover the lift off live then bail out right after it cleared the tower so as to make room for a business report that needed to air on the network. So Rob did as he was told. As soon as Challenger cleared the pad, he did his sign off that As soon as he did, he realized something awful had happened. In an interview with him later, Navius said he began screaming down the line at the producers to put him back on the air. At FNN, we carried Rob's launch coverage live. He signed off, and we thought everything was peachy. But luckily someone in the control room left that UPI audio channel up on an off air monitor and we heard this. Now, you may remember that those short DTMF tones meant that a special report or bulletin is coming up, so we put the feed back on the air. That's when Rob continued his coverage of the shuttle disaster. Since I was now operations manager, I had no real purpose for hanging out in the news department and control rooms that day during the launch, but after covering a million missions, I kind of felt like I wanted to be there anyway. After the explosion, our brand spank, a new news director, had a look of sheer terror on his face, but he knew what had to be done. We need to get someone over to KSC now, he said. He looked at me and said, who should I send. I thought for a few seconds and realized that really none of the reporters or anchors on the staff had the experience or background on the Shuttle missions, so the choice seemed obvious. Send me, I said. The news director looked at me like I had six heads. Look, I've covered dozens of these things. I'm the only one here who knows the drill, I explained. He paused for a moment and then simply said, go. I ran to my office to collect my stuff and ran down to my car. All of a sudden, I was a space reporter again, like so many times in the past. The drive to Kennedy Space Center that I had made so many times was fairly easy that day, since the light coverage of the launch and the waning interest played in my favor when it came to traffic. I think I made it there in about ninety minutes or so, although it seemed like an eternity. As I drove the route on State Road fifty, the twisted contrail of what was left to the shuttle, the external tank and the rocket boosters loomed overhead as a cruel reminder to what had just happened. It was as if it was following me or me it I'm not sure which In any event. This whole thing was creating a pit in the middle of my stomach. When I got to the press side, I parked and ran into the press center. Normally hustling and bustling with chaotic activity, it was eerily quiet, like a library. NASA public information officers stationed behind a large counter that extended the entire width of the center all looked as though they had just had their stomachs kicked in. This would be's first in flight disaster with a crew on board. All the positivity and verbose, eloquent answers given with bright smiles and filled with pride for America's space program that these folks normally give us on launch day were now reduced to five words, we don't know anything yet. Nevertheless, I collected as much info as I could and called in the first of many live reports to the network and the radio station that afternoon. So here I was in the middle. When I got up that morning, I had no idea I would be in the midst of a Space Shuttle disaster. In retrospect, I'm glad I was in the newsroom that day. I could have easily stayed away or neglected to volunteer to go cover the event. I was a manager now and could have easily pawned off the assignment to a less experienced person who would not have appreciated the gravity of the situation. I don't remember when I got home that evening, but when I got inside my house, screwed by my wife, I took one look at her and said it was awful. They all died and I broke down in tears. I had managed to hold it all together all day until that point, and then it all came out. January twenty eighth, nineteen eighty six was a dark day from me and for a lot of people. Even now, more than thirty eight years later, I tear up recalling the events of the day. NASA resumed shuttle flights about two and a half years after the tragedy, with all the usual pomp and circumstance. But for me, and I'm sure of everyone involved, the words of Roger Scobie would always ring in the back of our minds. The challenger go and throw up. I'm Jim Polling, and that's my view from the middle. In the next episode, how a dinner of pisquette and meatballs can turn in to a thirty eight plus year marriage Pasquetti. Next on my view from the Middle