Rene's Ramblings

Rembering Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia

Yesterday, was a Day of Remembrance for the brave men and women lost in our space program. Here is an excerpt from the CNN link above:

Administrator Sean O'Keefe said in a televised address that space exploration is risky but never should result in fatalities because of "complacency, indifference, failure to attend to detail." That should be a solemn pledge for anyone who works in the space program, he said.

The Day of Remembrance falls three days before the first anniversary of the Columbia disaster. O'Keefe said it will be an annual event, always on the last Thursday of January coming as close as it does to all three of the nation's space program catastrophes.

The Apollo 1 fire during a countdown test on January 27, 1967, left three astronauts dead in their spacecraft on the launch pad. The Challenger explosion during liftoff on January 28, 1986, left seven dead. The Columbia breakup during re-entry on February 1, 2003, killed seven more.

O'Keefe choked up as he read the roll of 17 who "lost their lives because we failed."

"Grissom, White, Chaffee, Scobee, Smith, McNair, Resnik, McAuliffe, Jarvis, Onizuka, Husband, McCool, Chawla, Anderson, Brown, Clark and Ramon.

"They are not with us today because when it mattered most, we failed. And so it is incumbent upon us to remember not just today, not once a year, not on the anniversaries, but every day, every single day that the consequences of us not getting it right are catastrophic, and each of those families will live with this consequence for the rest of their lives."

To commemorate Apollo 1, three hills on Mars near Spirit were named in honor of the Apollo 1 crew.

Image source: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040127a/HorizonHillsApollo_br.jpg

The landing site of Spirit has been name the Columbia Memorial Station.

Image source: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040106b/NAVcam-Patch-01-05-04_br.jpg

The landing site of Opportunity has been named Challenger Memorial Station.