Word: launching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Houston intently monitored Challenger's roaring ascent for a different reason. It is the most critical and most dangerous phase of a space mission. "When you have that much power, you have to respect it," said Flight Director Jay Greene in Houston. "If you get complacent about the launch phase, you don't understand what's going on." In the shuttle, the crew was about to be jammed back into their couches by three times the force of gravity. Their immediate fate was out of their hands...
...would happen to somebody else." Recalled Ohio Democrat John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth: "We used to speculate, the first group of seven, how many of us would be alive after the program." (One of them, Gus Grissom, died in a 1967 fire on a launch pad.) His voice thick, he added, "We always knew there would be a day like this. We're dealing with speeds and powers and complexities we've never dealt with before. This was a day we wish we could kick back forever...
Like most Americans, television news editors had begun to treat space shuttle flights as routine. Cable News Network, the Atlanta-based all-news channel, was the only network to carry live coverage of the shuttle launch. Correspondent Tom Mintier, narrating the spacecraft's ascent, retreated into shocked silence for several seconds following the blast. Then, after the explosion was confirmed by Mission Control, he announced "what appears to be a major catastrophe in America's space program...
Still, all three networks performed with admirable sensitivity and restraint. Some viewers were offended at the oft-repeated shots that had been taped by WNEV-TV in Boston of Schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe's parents viewing the launch at the Kennedy Space Center. But interviews with grieving relatives were refreshingly absent. Though NASA had immediately sequestered the crew's families following the accident, network executives insist they would have avoided such interviews in any case. "We had our chance at the time of the accident," says Jeff Gralnick, vice president and executive producer of special programming for ABC. "The first rule...
...immediacy, newspapers across the country also responded with extraordinary efforts. The New York Times devoted its entire front page and nine more advertising-free pages to the disaster, virtually unprecedented coverage. More than 80 staff people contributed to the package, including a Times technical manager who witnessed the launch while on vacation in Cape Canaveral. The paper departed from its traditional discursive headline style for a stark opening line: THE SHUTTLE EXPLODES. Said Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal: "I didn't want just another headline. Using 'the' was the most important decision. It gave almost a biblical quality...