I'm glad that we still memorialize the Challenger. It used to be common to talk about where we were when we heard the news about the explosion, just like people in the previous generation would talk about the JFK assassination or we now talk about 9/11.
I have no memory of where I was when the Challenger exploded. I wouldn't have gone into space before it happened and I wouldn't go now -- astronauts still have an approximately 5% chance of winding up dead, and, no thanks. (If the Challenger explosion is so damn important anyway, why no ongoing memorials for the Apollo 1 crew, who died far more horribly IMHO.)
I also think that's a dreadfully unfair comparison -- Americans had been doing spaceflight since 1961. Comparing aviation in its very earliest days to a technology that should have been 25 years old at the time is insane -- a more fair comparison would be to commercial aviation safety in the 1940s.
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-cchan8
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Cow orker: "If they offered you a seat on the next shuttle, would you still want to go, after this?"
Me: "Hell yeah. I'd be scared shitless, but I'd go."
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I also think that's a dreadfully unfair comparison -- Americans had been doing spaceflight since 1961. Comparing aviation in its very earliest days to a technology that should have been 25 years old at the time is insane -- a more fair comparison would be to commercial aviation safety in the 1940s.