Do Go On - 151 - The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

Episode Date: September 12, 2018

In the mid 1980s, NASA was struggling to capture the imagination of the American public like they once did. To promote the future of space travel, they decided to send a civilian into orbit aboard the Challenger Space Shuttle. A teacher named Christa McAuliffe was chosen to accompany six NASA astronauts. Sadly, with the world watching on, the Shuttle suddenly exploded 73 seconds after launch. It was a terrible tradgedy that rocked the world, but could it have been avoided? Had several people warned NASA about this exact scenario?Our website: dogoonpod.comMelbourne LIVE show on October 13th : https://www.moshtix.com.au/v2/event/do-go-on-live/105917?&skin=4406&ref=hwlrUK shows : https://dogoonpod.com/events/Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/DoGoOnPodSubmit a topic idea directly to the hat: http://bit.ly/DoGoOnHat Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] AND FURTHER READING:Seconds From Disaster (2007)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTNXQSSZGGwhttps://www.space.com/12085-nasa-space-shuttle-history-born.htmlhttps://www.nasa.gov/pdf/566250main_SHUTTLE%20ERA%20FACTS_040412.pdfhttps://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/about/star/ssme_11.htmlhttps://priceonomics.com/the-space-shuttle-challenger-explosion-and-the-o/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012501455.html?noredirect=onhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/space/5-myths-of-challenger-shuttle-disaster-debunked.aspxhttps://www.space.com/31732-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster-explained-infographic.htmlhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/space/5-myths-of-challenger-shuttle-disaster-debunked.aspxhttps://www.space.com/18084-space-shuttle-challenger.htmlhttps://www.history.com/topics/challenger-disaster

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenji Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates.

And welcome to another episode of Dugo One. My name is Dave Warnocky and I'm here with Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart. Oh, hi, Dave Warnocky. Nice to meet you. I'm Matt Stewart. Oh, he already knew. That's right. I've looked at your resume. And I'd like to offer you a job. Thank you. I won't let you down.

Thank you. Fuck. Well, no, it's no swearing at this workplace, so you're out. No. Does that mean I'm in? You're in, Jess Berkins. You were number two. I must say, I don't know why I brought both candidates in to show you, Jess, that Matt got the job.

Yeah, that was mean. But it's actually worked that well for you. It's embarrassing, though, because I did start to torch the place. And so there is a small fire just in that corner. I will go. Nothing you can't take care of, I'm sure. Are you going to let that slide? I've got an elderly dog to look for.

Well, you should get out there and look for it. All right, well, I'll see you later. Dog to look for. It's not my dog. No, I just want to look at an elderly dog today. I woke up this morning and thought, God, I feel like looking at an elderly dog. I need a location and an occupation. Dog looker.

Okay, you ignored the location there. At the dog lookout. Dog shop, dog shop. Dog live at the dog. Dog, oh my God. And scene. And that is how easy improv really is. Hey, I've had this cool idea, Dave, and also Jess.

Thank you. For next month, October, right? I want to do a thing where every topic we do is a banger. Kind of like the last three years. But even more so, I want to make it, I want to call it Blockbuster Month. Okay. Okay. Or other working title, Blocktober Buster Month.

I just like Blocktober. No. No, I like Boktoberb month. Bloctoberb month would be a month of episodes about Lego. Yeah. And we've already done that. Been there, done that. Been that done that.

Thanks for nothing, Lego. You really should have saved that topic for Blocktober. So the idea is going to be that I'm going to put out a poll on our social media this afternoon. And it's going to ask what is, so all listeners can click on this link and let us know, what's your favorite kind of topic. So it's going to be mystery or. serial killers or celebrity biographies or cryptoid. Cryptoid, yeah, that's the word I was looking for.

Yeah, like the Bigfoot's and the moth men's. Right, yes, I also knew what a cryptoid was immediately. I was like, ah, finally they mentioned cryptoid. We've done a few cryptoid in the past. Yes, I've been really popular. Yes. We also did. Lockness monster.

And I think there's one other, but I'm losing it right now. But so there'll be a list of probably 15 or so different kinds of topics. And all you have to do as a listener is just click this link and then select what your favorite kind of topic is. And then next month we'll pick the top three, or we won't pick them. The top three that get the votes will pick us. And then we're going to put those topics to our patrons. So say, for instance, serial killers comes up, we'll put a handful of serial killers to

our patrons and then they get to vote on that, bringing it down to one single topic and that that'll be say week one of blockbuster tober. It's not quite right, is it? No, but I appreciate that you still trying. And then the last week, so before the last one, will be our most requested ever topic. Which I haven't figured out what it is yet, but I'm going to go back through the hat and find out what that is and we will finish. finished with a banger

Bloc Bang tober Bang banger Bang tober No that's not Anyway Check out our social media So on Instagram I won't be on Instagram

You can't link there It'll be on Twitter at Do Go On Pod And it'll be on Facebook Which is Facebook.com slash do go on pod So go check that out And I'll hopefully have that up shortly

And then yeah Let us know what you think And we're going to have it Bang, bangarang. Bank tober. Bank tober. Because you can put these ideas in the bank. In the bank.

The spank bank. Spanktober. Okay, I'm going to go back to... Boktober. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Cocktober. Okay.

Cocktoberfest. Oh dear. Dave, are you all right? There's no wrong ideas. No, there's some. Yeah, that is a wrong idea. Yeah. Dave, you're wrong as.

You're wrong A.F. Yeah. Sorry to go there, but Jess is 100% right. She's right A. F. I'm right A.F. Right A.F. Ober. There's something wrong with him. Oh, I love puns, but I'm bad at him.

I like how Dave came up out worse than me in that. Because it felt like... Yeah. Oh, you're definitely losing until he went to the Cocktoberfest. I just... He flew home late. I can't compete with the pun king. Matt Stewart.

Stop trying to make that a thing. Stop being so bloody good a pun. Stop saying so good, mate. Stop saying so good, mate. Look, I told you, talking's not as easy as you make it look. Is there also any update on our upcoming tour, Davey Boy? Well, the end of Octoberfest's working title.

That'll take us to Blovember. November, when we are hitting up the UK. And Dick Sember. Oh. When we're hitting up the UK in November, and I'm very pleased to tell you that every single show is now sold out. Thank you so much, UK people, except for our second Birmingham show, which confusingly enough is the night before the first Birmingham show,

on Thursday, November the 15th at 8 o'clock at the Glee Club. That's the only one with the tickets. So you want to get involved, make the trek to Birmingham, even if it's two doors down. Two doors? Yeah. There's also, I think, some tickets left for Melbourne, our Bon voyage show. Let's come say Bon voyage. If you want to come say Bon voyage, you should.

want to contribute to the Snacks and Magnets Fund. That's fine. This is the time to do it. We cleaned up. I say we. I'm distancing myself from this. Jess cleaned up big time in Sydney. Did you get it?

You got a couple of coins from countries we're not going to. Yeah, I love that. Well, I welcomed foreign currency. So I did get some British pound, which is very nice. Also got some Canadian dollars. Wow. So that's exciting. That's a future.

Well, hopefully. Yeah. Anyway, the way this show works is we talk about a topic or something like that And we get to that topic with a question. And this week, Dave is giving the topic or whatever. Okay, I'm doing the whatever. And it's a long whatever. So let's get into it.

That's what Dave's sex tape will be called. The long whatever. Hey, anything goes. No bad ideas. No bad ideas here. Nah, what's going then? Come on, guys. Let us know if you want to call it Cocktoberfest.

It's all right. Blovember. Honestly. Not bad. All right. Well, I've got a question to get us on to topic. And that, of course, is the report. I'm going to give a report on this topic and you two don't know what it is.

So my question is, what disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida on January 28, 1986? 86. A good year. Disintegrated. Atlantic Ocean. I'm taking over a good year, by the way. A very good year, 1986. It just doesn't sound the same from you.

Damn it. Sounds kind of lame. Well, I think you're just hearing what we all have heard. Okay, try again. Try again. 986. Oh, a good year. Oh, yuck. I went from lame to repulsive. Yeah.

All right. 96. What disintegrated? I don't know. I wasn't alive. I was. A moth man? Or? It's not a moth man.

This is a... Was it a cryptoid? No, it's not a cryptoid. Is it a plane? Similar to a plane. This is a big disaster. A helicopter. A helicopter.

Was it a gyroplane? No. We've already done a blimp one. So I don't know what. It's another big disaster. Was it a spaceship? It is a spaceship of sorts. In 1986,

disintegrating over the Atlantic Ocean. You know, Jess looks like she's about to get this. Is it, no, I don't know. Is it Roswell? Is it an Apollo or something? It's not an Apollo thing, but it is a NASA thing. It is the Space Shuttle. Sputnik.

Challenger. Challenger. You heard of the Challenger space shuttle? Is this a sad topic, Dave? Well, yes. But it's an extremely interesting one. I'd like to thank the suggestor of this topic, Megan Rife, and this was also voted for by our Patreon supporters.

There are three topics up for that. And Megan, they chose your topic. I also like to give a shout out to Will Manley, who suggested the topic of space shuttles in general. Okay. And I like to think I give a pretty good overview of all of it in the report. So hopefully this satisfies you too, Will. He suggested space shuttles in general.

Yeah. Wow. And he said, when everyone thinks about them, they think, that's pretty cool. but when you look into them, it's a few more problems. And I'm going to talk about one very big problem. Oh, interesting. Is it like an ethical problem or like a philosophical one?

Actually, probably both. Wow. Okay. Do you guys know anything about the Challenger? I know how to spell it. Nice one. C-H-A-L-E-N-G-7-8. Do you want to tell him?

Correct. Yay, yay, Maddie. It's hard to tell someone that they're great. It is hard. It's hard to hear. I'm jealous of how great you are. And so you should be. And also to you.

And so. Okay, Dave. Bring down the moon. Here we go. Bring down the moon. That was their mission. Really? I don't think that's true.

That's not true. We heart moon. Us on Earth. Yeah. Earth heart moon. If the moonlings are listening, we want them to know that we come in peace. We do it very, very quietly. It's also the tagline for...

Oh, no, hang on. It's also the tagline for Coctoberfest, I'll tell you very much. We come in peace. All right. This is no good. All right, now let me... This bit's for you, Will. The history of the shuttle program early on.

Now, during the 1950s, as the space race was heating up, reasonable shuttle-like space planes were increasingly viewed as the United States' answer to being able to further explore space over their Soviet enemies. The idea was popularised by the so-called von Braun Paradigm, named after famous German rocket scientist and engineer. Greg Dixon. Vernet von Greg Dixon. I mean...

He came up with a name so fast. Good job. I love the low bar that has been permanently set for Jess, for me, in Jess's mind. Oh, he said a couple of words. Oh! And there were actual words this time. So Vendorne Braun is basically the godfather of rocket ships And very early on he laid out the steps of how the United States could dominate space

And by godfather of rocket chips he is a mobster That's right, he is a Marlon Brando when he's old But still winning hot I was curious Still winning hot So according to the paradigm, space exploration should follow these steps It's sort of like a how-to plan that he wrote out. He said, first of all, to put a human in space, this is what you've got to do.

Develop a reusable spacecraft, making access to space cheaper and easier. Use this vehicle to build a space station, then inhabit the space station and employ it as a base from which to launch manned expeditions to the moon and later Mars. Simple. That was his plan. NASA basically used this as their blueprint and went to work. But then the Soviets got both the first satellite, Sputnik. Thank you.

and the first person, Yuri Gagarin into space. So they decided to skip a few steps and instead focus on putting a person on the moon, which I did an early report on. Episode 7 was all about Apollo 11 and the moon landing. Episode 7. I know. It's a long time ago now, isn't it? If you'd ask me if we'd done the moon landing on the podcast, I'd go, I don't think so.

Really? Episode 7. This is episode 100 and what? 51? Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't remember all. It sounded like you were surprised that it was so long.

long ago, but it turns out you were just surprised. Yeah. I just forgot it. Seven. It happened at all. I also talked about Vernabon Braun, aka Greg Dixon on that episode as well. Yeah. I remember his name well.

Gregi Dix. Invented the electric shaver. And discovered penicillin? Yeah. That suggests they all discovered penicillin. It was a team effort. In a way, didn't we all discover penicillin? I know I did.

Big time. That's your claim to fame. Every morning, I rediscover penicillin in myself. Wow. Where are you putting it? Are you all right? I'm very sick. So as we all know, the moon landing was a success in 1969,

but then after that, NASA needed a new direction. 1960. Nays. 1960 Nase. The President Richard Dixon had established, a space task group to help determine NASA's next phase. In September of that year, the group delivered its report, which recommended going back to the Von Braun Paradigm,

which remember is build a reusable shuttle, create a space station from there do several trips to the moon and then basically then go to Mars. Nixon didn't like it. So he asked for a report. They gave it to him and he went, I don't like that. That costs way too much money. Right.

And NASA had just had their budget slashed. In 1966, when they were gunning for the moon, NASA's budget was 4.4% of the entire. higher budget for the United States of America. Wow. So billions and billions of dollars. But by the early 70s, they no longer had this kind of money being thrown at them. So it was decided that NASA would focus on one standalone element of the paradigm,

and that is reusable space shuttles. These shuttles wouldn't go exploring into space, but rather go into orbit around the earth and could help build space stations and repair stuff and take up satellites and other things that went into orbit. So President Richard Nixon officially announced the existence of the space shuttle program in January 1972. A good year.

See, it sounds so stupid from him, doesn't it? No, but it's really, Jess, you're pretty much putting your catchphrase up into the public domain if you're not going to use it. Matt, it's just trying to... I'm not going to just throw it around willy-nilly. All right, well, I got a few more dates coming up, so you've got a few chances.

Okay. I'll show you how it's done. NASA got to work designing and producing these shuttles. The first shuttle made its maiden flight in 1977. Bores, nothing, okay. A good year. Yeah.

It was originally planned to be named Constitution because it was unveiled on Constitution Day, September 17th, 1976. No good. Next, what else they got? Well, instead, they got a massive letter campaign from fans of Star Trek. Oh, my God.

They convinced the White House and President Gerald Ford to name the shuttle the Enterprise after the ship on Star Trek. Oh, wow. He's just got tens of thousands of letters. And I guess wanting to go for the popular vote, he went, Constitution sucks. Let's just call it the Enterprise.

Constitution is a dud name. Too many letters. Enterprise, nice and snappy. Nice short word. What is that? Three four letters? I like it. Enterprise, three syllables.

Three. Constitution. Four. Fuck off. Had a nap in the middle. How many was it? Too many S's too. That's at least four letters.

No good. So the nerds named it's a, which I love. Gerald Ford's no nerd. Haven't you seen him on The Simpsons? He's Homer. Do you like beer and nachos? Do you like nachos?

Would you like to come over to my place watch the game and have beer and nachos? He's cool. You and I are going to get on just fun. Am I remembering that right at all? That's absolutely right. Great. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry

and some of the show's cast attended the entrop- The G-rod. The G-rod. They attended the N-Rod. Enterprise's debut. Or grod. Debutt. It was on debut.

The Enterprise itself was never intended to go into space. Instead, it was a prototype, and essentially it was an unpowered glider. So they just attached it to a modified Boeing 7-4-7 and towed it around. So if you got to fly that one, I suppose the nerves were probably like, we probably should have saved Enterprise for the next one that actually goes to space. Damn. Oh, well. Too bad, nerds. Well, the next one was Columbia.

That was good. That was the first spaceworthy orbiter, and it made its inaugural flight in 1981. It's the 90, I mean the 80s. 1981. It's happening. That's a good year. Oh. Did St. Kilda lose some sort of football match in that year?

Yeah, 80s were horrible for the same. Oh, really? Yeah, real bad time. I mean, apart from that one glorious year in the 60s, has there ever been any other good period? Yeah, but. The problem is our next best periods have been still losing periods, but pretty close. Like our next best period is probably the start of this decade or end the last decade when we had two grandfinal, two losing grandfinals. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Oh, it was it both. It doesn't matter. Oh, oh, hit a nerve. Oh, sorry. Oh, a room just got real icy. Matt's crying. Good boys. It's tragic.

I wish I cared about anything that much. Anything. Give me something. Me? Facts? Oh, facts. Jess, sorry. Wow.

No, fair. I choose facts over Jess. Yeah, okay. We all choose facts over Jess. It's a fact of life, which I like. The next shuttle that flew is the one that we're going to talk about today, the Challenger. I like the Challenger. Yeah, Underdog.

I like writing that in. of the name. Yeah. Now, all of this took me a sec to get it. I was like, huh? Others would be like going,

let's call ourselves the best ever or the champ. The victory. Yeah. The Challenger. Like that. I love that. They call it the underdog.

Yeah. The have a crack. Let's have a crack. Let's see how this goes. The have a crack. Have a crack in space. Fine. All of the space shuttles

were named after influential ships of science and exploration. Challenger was named after the British Naval Research vessel, the HMS Challenger, that sailed around the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean during the 1870s. And Challenger was the second operational shuttle, and it made its first flight on April 4th, 1983. A good year.

Fuck. You do it so much better. That was so good. See? Oh my God. It felt so natural. I even nearly moved on before I remembered. Hang on.

Exactly. And Matt did a whole buildup. And like he lifted out of his chair. Like he was going for a mark. Yeah. It's something that's a kill to often try but fail. Too many up. Something they did

all year. Who's down? Who's roving? One of you stay down in case it spells. They're all jumping. Every player, even if they're 50 metres away from the ball, they jump. It was pretty close. Yeah, they're a team.

Yeah, beautiful. They do things as a team. We could do a little bit more of that, to be honest. Yeah, let's all jump for the same line next time. Okay. Now, do you think anyone actually gave a shit about the shutter? Yes. No.

By the mid-1980s, the American General Public had really lost interest in space. No, then. No, my answer is no. Do I win? We could call next month Shuttle Cocktober. That's good. We do all episodes about badminton. Four of the big badminton champs. Oh, name one. Nominate your top three badminton players.

How do I choose? Greg Dixon sounds like a badminton blow. He'd be in there for sure. Simon Badminton Connell. That is about as niche as you'll ever get. He was a journeyman footballer in the 90s called Simon Minton Connell. Oh, boy, can you edit that out, please? Leave it in and all its mess.

I'll be turning the volume up on that bit just so it stands out. In fact, could you just replay it a few times? If anyone listening understood that. that, please tweet me and say I'm okay. Otherwise, I may not go on. Do guys in, do go on. Oh, I see. Thank you.

Well, I made a reference like that last week in our 150th episode in front of a roomful of hundreds of people and I heard it not be understood by that many people. So that's brutal. What was that? I made a reference to Matt talked about the New World Order, NWO, and I said, I remember them from the wrestling in the 1990s. No, I reckon there was 1% of the crowd who got that. Three people.

Yeah, thank you so much to those three people. They didn't laugh, but they got it. Yeah, they went, very good. Yeah, they did that sort of exhale laugh. Like a, no, that's too much. They got a heart. It's just like a... A bit of nose action.

I mean, it could have been someone just sniffing. That's how silent it was. I heard someone sniffing in the back right corner of the venue. Anyway, by the 1980s, the American General Republic had lost interest in space. And this, this actually is, this plot line is mirrored on the episode of The Simpsons. See if you recognize this. They decided that they would recapture the interest of the nation by sending the first private citizen into space. Right.

Remember on the Simpsons? Well, they put Barney and Homer battle it out and then Homer goes into space. Oh, I remember. Because Barney has a non-alcoholic beer. Yeah. It begins. I remember Homer eating chips in space, yes. Oh, it's a blue danube.

Beautiful, beautiful scene. So to capture the. attention of the general public. They decided to launch the teacher in space project. Yep. Just doesn't really like teachers. I'm getting from that. I've had some bad experiences with those people.

Yeah. Haven't we all? No. And many good. Only had good teachers. Respect the profession. Oh, I think that I come from a family of teachers. Me too.

It's hard work. Me three. Yeah. I got a lot of... Look at us all. We shunned the teaching profession and instead started podcasts. I mean, in a way, are we not tooting right now? Tooting?

Yeah, tuton. Tutong, son, two time. All right, that's six Simpsons references early. All right, well, there's a few more coming. The Teacher in Space Project, or the Tisp. Oh, don't like that. Oh, do I? Tisp.

Tisp. It's a NASA program announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. So started by Nixon, went to Gerald Ford, now we're on to Reagan. Ro Ray. The presidents are really handballing this to each other. Have they called Ro Ray? Not that I've heard, but I like it. Ron Ray?

I like it. Similar but not as good. I like both. What about Ronald Reagan? Was he referred to as that? Several times. Ah, sucked in, Matt. A win!

So Ro Ray, Ron Ray, not playing favourites, announced the Tisp in 1984 and it was designed to inspire students, honour teachers and spur interest in mathematics, science and space exploration. The project would carry teachers into space as payload specialists, which is just a fancy term for non-astronaut civilians.

Payload. Payload specialist. So when a shuttle goes into space, what they're carrying up is called the payload. So it might be a satellite or whatever. Whatever's in the trunk, it's the payload. Right. Do their shuttles have trunks? Well, they've got a bit that opens up.

They have a little boot. It's quite a big boot. That is cute. Cute boot. I had to fit a rug in my tiny cup. the other day and it fit. A rug?

Yeah. That is a story in a heart. Quite a long rug, thanks very much. I was like, oh boy, I have a small car. Put the seats down. No bloody problem. Anyway, so I get it. How have you saved that anecdote for 25 minutes in?

Yeah, I'm humble. Were you calling it, your payload? Obviously. Because they say drop your payload. I always thought it meant like a bomb. But it means just whatever you're holding. I thought it meant poop. I drop your payload

Got to go drop my payload Who's yelling that at you Matt hates it Who's telling people to drop their payloads Matt that you've seen In the cinemas I watched The recent Mission Impossible

They used the term payload In a film Not just somebody saying that in a cinema Yes As they walk in there Eating popcorn So I drop my payload on the weekend Matt's eavesdropping

He's very rude Always eaves drops Anyway He drops Eve. The plan of the test was that these non-astrolet civilians would go into space that would return to their classrooms to share their experience with their students, inspiring the nation. NASA wanted to find a, quote, ordinary person,

a gifted teacher who could communicate with students whilst in orbit. Okay, ordinary or gifted? Because I'm getting mixed messages. That's the same. But the same press release. Bally written. Rowe, what are you doing? So just a normal, everyday person.

With extreme gifts. Yeah. Extreme. So like... He's like, can we some put extreme in red? Is that too hard to do? Make that bold and size 14. Just a colour flyer.

I think it should be. Whatever you say, Mr. President. God, it'd be good to be the President. I'd imagine. A lot of pressure. It'd be real fun. Except I don't like the Oval Office, because I hate ovals. It's kind of like a circle that's fucked up.

Yeah. Give me a circle office. Yeah, I reckon what I mean as President, you'll be able to change that. Do you reckon? You can redecorate anything. you like. They always do that. You're all powerful, I believe.

That's true. But I don't think Australians can be American president. Oh, that'd be right. I'm sorry. Fuck, it is brutal to find out this way. Yeah. If I can be honest.

Can I be? Yeah, you can be. Can I be the president of this podcast? And snack captor at the same time. I'm so sorry. In the Constitution, it says, no jessers. What? That's so specific.

I know. What are the chances? There's only three of us. Yeah. And my name's Jess, which is only an incredibly popular name. Yeah. From the 80s to 90s. Which is what?

I was born. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, this is such a devastating day. Yeah. But. Oh, wow. I can't be the president. Yeah.

You also, I mean, you helped write the constitution. You really shouldn't have put your name on it. You know I was hungry when we were doing that. I wasn't paying attention. I know. There was no snack jug back then. Yeah, snacks. All right, Dave, carry on.

I'm just going to sit here and be depressed for a bit. So the search was on to find an ordinary but gifted person. More than 40,000 applications were mailed to interested teachers while 11,000 teachers sent completed applications to NASA. So 29,000 of them said, yeah, give me the pamphlet, and they never bothered filling it out. Nah, space, nah. I'm just going to go down to Florida instead.

I don't know that I would fill it out. I'd be too scared. I'd want to go to space. In that kind of scenario, go, I'll fill it out. If they ask me, I'll think about it then. Right, yeah, because you can always pull out later. Wow. Nah, you've committed now.

You're going to space. Yeah, even though they've got hundreds of people that want to go, they somehow pick the person that's like, please don't make me go. Please. Sounds like the start of a great 80s movie. Here we go, strap him in. Each application included a potential lesson

that would be taught from space whilst on the space shuttle. The applications were sorted and then sent to various state departments of education, who were then responsible for narrowing down their applicants to a final set of two each. Now, these applicants were notified of their selections and were garnered together for further selection processes before they were whittled down to 10 grand finalists. These were then trained for a time at NASA, and in 1985, NASA selected Krista McAuliffe to be the first teacher in space. Krista. A backup teacher, Barbara Morgan, was also chosen.

Okay. So they narrowed. Much like the homer to her barn in. Right. They narrowed it down to 10 and then picked one. Wow. That's cool. Yeah.

And then the second one is a backup. Yes. So Kristen McCalloff is the one that's been chosen. NASA hoped that sending a teacher into space would increase public interest in the space shuttle program and also demonstrate to the world the reliability of spaceflight at a time when the agency was under continuous pressure to find financial support. Really, this mission was designed to resurrect the entire program and prove that The shuttle could become a routine bus-like service to space.

Okay. So they're like, even an ordinary person can do this. This is the future. But bus-like, so what? Inconsistent and unreliable. Take that, P-TV. Overpriced and smelly. Yeah.

Yeah, it's stupid. Waving at the drivers of other shuttles. Oh, no, I love that bit. Oh, I love when kids wave. It's so cute. No, I like it when the bus drivers wave to each other. It's so cute. I thought you thought you were making talking about the passengers.

I would never talk about the passengers. What about when people on motorbikes wave to each other. That's cute. They should do a little nod. It's fun. I drive the same vehicle as you. Like, boop, hello. We should do that more often, I reckon.

There should be more like a solidarity between. I wave at every car I see. It's very tiring. Really get a wave. Most people look at you like, is there something on my face? Many accidents. Yeah, because I do both hands. My hands are barely on the wheel.

Wow, Dave. You are not driving in the UK. Matt, can we? Yeah. I'll be in charge of waving in the UK. And I'm in charge of snack. So I guess Matt's got a drive. Snack captain, driver and waving captain.

Hello. You can be driving captain. Okay, yeah. Could I be driving vice captain? Okay. Yeah. Junior vice captain. You can be whatever you want to be.

Do you reckon that teacher is the one, if you're trying to get the, Surely it's like NFL player or like Madonna or something. Send like 80s Donald Trump up there. You know, someone, obviously not modern day Donald Trump, it would have been a logistical nightmare to get him back 20 years in time before sending him up again. And plus he's president now. He's busy. I would have got someone from the 80s, number one, which they did do.

George Michael. Entirely agree with him so far that they got a present day person. But I would have just. just go off for someone with a little more razzle and or dazzle. How about this? Darrell Strawberry. Oh. From that episode of The Simpsons.

Yeah. Baseballer. Yeah. No, Jesus was my suggestion. Oh, Jesus. I reckon that would have got a lot of press. That would have got the press. Yeah.

For sure. Jesus is second coming and the first going to space. He's obviously, he's gone before, but this is first some going to space. He's okay. Well, Matt, it's funny you should say that. The teacher won't capture the attention of the nation, but sending a teacher into space turned out to be a great PR move for NASA and led the Challenger to be the most anticipated space mission since the Apollo era

and the moon landing 17 years earlier. It got the people talking. Krista McCallough was born in Boston in 1948, and she was 37 years old at the time when she was chosen for the mission. She was a mother of two and a social studies teacher at Concord High School in New Hampshire. NASA official Alan Ladwig said, quote, she had an infectious enthusiasm. And NASA psychiatrist Terrence McGuire told New Woman magazine that, quote,

I mean, why are they talking to NASA psychiatrist? She was the most broad-based best-balanced person of the 10 finals. Broad-based, like physically? Yeah. She had like wide shoots. And as a psychiatrist, that's what I look for. She's stable. Infectious big personality sounds like a nightmare on a shuttle.

And on a podcast. Oh, God. She's back. Pretend we're not here. Pretend we're not here. I was strapped in for the next 18 hours. No, she was good media talent. She spent five months training for the mission,

doing a lot of actual NASA training. She also went on many television shows to talk about the mission, turning into somewhat of a national celebrity. Her backup, Barbara Morgan was also trained. Barbara Morgan. Didn't do as much PR. Yeah, well, what's the name like Barbara Morgan? That is a real meat and two veg kind of.

Not even three veg. More like Blabra. Borgon. Am I right? Blabra. Well, we're going to talk about Barbara later. Oh, no.

No, no, don't bet yourself up. I enjoyed it though. And I was really fun until I remember that maybe she was, she doesn't explode, does she? It's a good ending for Barber. Oh, okay. Don't worry about Barb. Blabra.

Blabra is coming back in a big way. But let me get to that later. Then I stand by Blabra Borgheim. Right now we're talking about Krista McColliffe, the number one draft pick, not number two. Number one banana. She was. McCallov's plan duties included basic science experiments in the fields of chroma. I'm imagining a training montage of her just like pouring different liquids into a beaker.

And then they're like, and then the instructors behind her. or like got a clipboard and they're just nodding. Even though that every other NASA person is like the smartest scientist on the planet. She's doing the most crazy. She's there doing like she's built a fake volcano. She's for bicarb soda. Yeah. And they're going,

whoa. She's like, I will somehow put this egg inside this bottle using only a candle. Whoa, whoa, there's no flames on bottle. Crystal, whoa,

whoa, whoa, but I mean, I want to see you do it. So do it, but like you can't do it on the shuttle. They give it, yeah,

they swap out the egg for powdered egg. and take the flame away. You can try with this. And she still can't do it because of gravity. She's chasing the powder with a bottle. I'll get it. I'll get it, guys. I'll get it. Is this your card? Oh, she does magic.

That's magic. That is not maths. Or science, but it is wonderful. Yes. Yeah, we're on. She was also planning to conduct two 15-minute classes from space, including a tour of the spacecraft, called The Ultimate Field Trip. She'd already named it.

And a lesson about the benefits of space travel called where we've been, where we're going, why? I love it. I love it so much. I love that. See, when we have ideas on this podcast, we have a couple of other people of a spitball width. And like, um, Cock. Krista, McCall of? No.

I wasn't calling her. Oh, so I think you'd misremembered her name. I was like, geez, I've really misremembered this one. Cock to-October. Cocktober. Yeah, like that's a bad idea. And we're here to say, that's a bad idea. Yeah, exactly.

I would never print that on a pamphlet. Why would you? Again. Okay. I've learned the lesson. Let's not forget. 10,000. Let me know if you want one.

Nobody wants one. I mean, I came up with a pretty good logo. What is it, Dave? It's R-rated. It's really R-rated. Arthur rooster. Yeah. Lots of rooster.

Oh, these lessons, these science lessons slash magic tricks, were planned to be broadcast to millions of school children via closed circuit TV. Skype. So basically, 80s Skype. Yeah. McCullough was to join six highly trained astronauts aboard the Challenger. They were. What?

What are you laughing at? She's doing magic tricks and they're all like the smartest people in the world. This is completely unrelated. Please just move on. I mean, it used to be a real achievement to break Jess, but now people that aren't even here are breaking hair. I just remembered something funny that I heard the other day. You're remembering other jokes from Not On Air.

That's Steve Martin. He really is a wild and crazy guy. Why did he quit stand-up? He was so talented. So the six highly trained astronauts are board the Challenger, as well as Chris McCall if they were. Francis Dick R. Scobie. Dick Ars.

No, Dick R. Scobie. Dick-Arce. Dick-Arce. Okay. He was the... Dick Ascobie. That's a beautiful name.

He's the commander leading the mission. A bit of respect. Captain Dick. Commander Dick. Captain Dick was 46 years old and had been to space once before. It's a bit of experience. Michael J. Smith. Very boring name.

Michael Smith has already taken. Is Michael Smith taken? Okay. Jay. Is that taken? Probably. He was a pilot on his launch debut. He was 40 years old.

It's got the same initial as me. I like them. Each initial. Better than the last. M. Oh, that's a hot start. What are you got? Jay.

Oh, that is very good. Bring it home. Oh, can you? Oh, my God, please. S? Yes. S for yes. I spell things backwards.

Next up we had Ronald McCair, Mnare, sorry, mission specialist. I was going to say that's the best. but it's the second best McNair after McCare McCare what a legend McNair McNair very good

He'd been to space once before 35 years old Before the mission he'd worked with composer Jean Michael Jarrah Do you know him, the French composer I'm probably saying that very wrong On a piece of music for Jarrah's then upcoming album Rendezvous

It was intended that he would record His saxophone solo on board the Challenger Which would have made McNair's solo The First Original piece of music to ever be recorded in space. Can you play an instrument in space? Yes. Wow.

I imagine if he sucked. What's that, Dave? A terrible saxophone solo. Oh, what's a good one sound like? Sounded like a banjo. I think a good one sounds like this. I knew you were going to do that too. I really, because my first option was...

Yeah. I mean, Baker Street and Kailess Whisper, But if you're a saxophone busker, good luck to you because they're the two songs people. The other one is, of course, Just look at his mouth while he does it while he does it. It's so strange. Because it's so open. You see his tongue wagging on it.

That sounds a bit like Mr Bean having a heart attack. Yes. Into a saxophone. He needs help. Tequila. We've also got Ellison on a zoo cut. Oh, no. Crack a nose.

Mission specialist, 39 years old, had been to space on the Discovery Shuttle. It's a bit more experience. So it seems like you have to be sort of middle age-ish to get into space. I guess it's the kind of thing you've got to study. for a long time. Most of the people have either been in the Air Force and studied science, usually both. Right. And yeah, so that's sort of the background.

So you have to be pretty experienced. The other person was Judith Resnick, 36 years old, mission specialist from Akron, Ohio, which I've definitely mispronounced again. Resnick was the second American female astronaut in space, so she'd already been there before, logging 145 hours in orbit. And finally, Gregory Jarvis, payload satellite specialist. First trip to space for this 41-year-old engineer. Interesting.

That's great. So basically they're all, yeah, 36 to 46. All the experience and everything obviously outweighs any sort of physical benefits of being younger, if there are any. Yeah, I guess, I mean, they're all still, you'd say prime in a lifetime. Yeah, totally. I say middle age, but it's pre-middle-aged. Yeah, so most are in their 30s and then the more experience, like the commander's 40s. He's the oldest, but I suppose the most experience.

I just never really thought about that. For most things that are physical like that, they will go for younger people, but it's the kind of thing you can't. They're not plucking people out as kids like elite sports people, get trained from when they're six or four or something. So by the time they're, what, 19, they're ready to go. Yeah.

They're ready for space. Isn't that what space camp's all about? Have you heard of that? There's something in America called space camp. I don't know what it is, but I like it. I want to go. Am I too old? What's your favorite planet?

Saturn's the obvious one because it's got the big ring. Uranus is the classic. Now you make me feel like an idiot because Saturn's my favorite. No, Saturn's amazing. That's, no, I think it's, yeah, it's a great one. I think I like Jupiter? But now I feel like it's a bit cliched. No, I don't know if it is cliched because Mars would have its fans as well.

Yeah, no, I'm a Saturn girl myself. I reckon in the end, I know it's a bit vanilla, but I'm going to say Earth. New it was coming. His favorite ice cream, vanilla. Favorite planet. French vanilla. I like everything where France is. Earth.

French vanilla. Anywhere else? Well, I mean, give me another topic and I'll tell you my favorite. Country. French. Anything French. French France. Favorite food?

Probably French. There's got to be something here. Here we go. Pun King. All right. Warming up. Here we go. French for haters.

All right. Literation. Well improvised. People love that. I knew there must have been an F food. All right. I thought I'd take a second to save Matt there and very briefly explain how the space shuttle is supposed to take up.

This is for you again, Will. The space shuttle consists of three main parts. If you look at it, you've got two solid rocket boosters. These are long white tubes on either side of the shuttle, critical for launch. they provide 71% of the thrust needed to get off the ground. Thrust. Are these, uh... Oh, Matt's that's thrust.

Oh, God, stop. Stop, he's thrusting into the mic. Can you hear that? I want to go. I mean, is that, I suppose between the two of you, that's 71% of the thrust on this podcast. We're too old for that. I mean, I think I started thrusting at our live show last week and I was told to stop. Not in public, Dave.

Come on, Dave. Did you trust? God, I don't remember much of that show. No. I think I blacked out. It was after I sat like I was in a yoga position. Oh, yes, that's right. But it hurt my hips so badly to sort of pop mad.

Yeah, you're in, you did the French dog, didn't you? Yeah, the downward French dog. Yeah. Oh, la la. As the French say. We had one of our great listeners from Sydney, Dan Barley is a yoga master. A yogi. A yogi.

And he, I spoke to him after the show and he said your form was pretty good. Myself? Yeah. No. Oh, thanks, Dan. I mean, we were just talking about you doing yoga. Sorry, but I looked away to get my drink bottle and then he said you and I'm like, I don't want to be too arrogant here. I'm pretty sure he's talking about my form.

Who else could he be talking about? Who else has good form? I didn't know Dan was into yoga and I didn't know that he spoke about me so thank you very much. I mean, I could have told you this later, I suppose, but, you know, since you brought it up. Yeah, since I asked,

did anyone compliment me after the show? Anyway, two solid rocket boosts are 71% of the thrust. They're long white tubes. The tubes are reusable and break off and are intended to land to the ocean where they're collected and they can go again. Oh, that's cool.

Which is pretty amazing. That's nice. Because the solid rocket boosters are solid rocket engines, once they are ignited, they cannot be shut down. So therefore, they're the last component to light at launch. Basically, you've got to be very sure that you're going to lift off when you start these engines up. Because once they get going, they do not stop. Much like our thrusting. Yeah.

Can't stop, won't stop. Until I fall into the ocean and get collected. I get scooped up and I'll start the thrust again. They thrust it off your chair there. Worth it. In the middle of all of this is the external fuel tank. Orange in colour, it carries fuel for the launch, and it carries a shitload of fuel. How much?

The fuel is liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. It is 158 feet or 48 metres long, so it's huge, and holds 1.6 million pounds or 719,000 kilograms of propellant with the total volume of about 526,000 gallons or 2 million litres of fuel. Only the last one there was around number two, Jess. Yeah. I like two million layers. Because there was a lot of awkward Jess numbers in between. Thank you.

A fuel is burnt at an incredibly fast rate once it gets going. It's equivalent to emptying a family-sized swimming pool every 10 seconds of fuel. So it burns 4,000 litres of fuel every second. A family-sized. I have, yeah. Thanks for putting in our terms that we all understand in the affluentest. It's more like 50 butler's pantries full of fuel. That's that good?

Do you get that? What about people who don't have any of these fancies things? Oh, okay. It's something like probably 100,000 backyard swimming pools. I know. It's something that I grew up in my house. It's 100 Dats and cars from the 1970s. Yes.

Fuel tanks burnt every second. 280Bs? Yeah. Yeah, okay. No, 120. Why? Oh. Okay, yeah, great.

I also understand that. Did you have one of those growing up? No. No, we were a Falcon family. Oh, I should have said that. Big Mazda family in my house. XC. 1978.

Ford, Falcon, Bill, Ford, Tuff. Have you probably held on to that. Probably worth money now. I found out relatively recently, my dad took it to his school. He's a teacher as for their mechanics class. And I'm like, when they're done with it, let me know I'm going to come pick it up. He said it'll be there whenever you want to come get it. And then I mentioned it to him, he's retiring later this year.

I'm like, when should I come get the car? And he said, oh, that was scrapped long ago. Oh, my God. Real heartbreak. Oh, I'm so sorry. Anyway, I'm going to find another, I'll find a similar card to that one day when I got the time. Were you just, for the years, thought it was just sitting there way. Never mentioning it.

And it was going to be in tip-top shape because all those students had worked on it. All those awesome mechanics from Year 10. My dad is not sentimental at all. Good to know. But what a mustache on him. Yeah, great mo. I was thinking about your dad the other day. I don't know why.

Don't remember the context now. Just remember, I was like, that mustache. Bloody great. Anyway, Dave, do go on. It's bloody good stuff that, though, though. It really is. You did say at the start of this, this was the long report. I'm sorry that we're derail.

I just accidentally closed my document. Can you tell I'm storing? Oh, okay. Matt, thrust again. Thrusting saxophone. God, that's gross. The studio's falling apart. They can't handle.

Your sexual magnetism. Turn the thrust booster up to 71%. Oh, yeah. All right, found my place. Just a few more facts because it's one of the coolest things ever built. The engines have a combined output of 37 million horsepower, which is ridiculous. Yeah, that's a lot of horses. Yeah, there's heaps.

How many horses are there in the world, Dave, just quickly? I'd say in the billions. And how many? 37 million are killed to power this machine. Wait, is that? What that means? Yeah, how many horses have died to make this go? Oh, boy.

And you were saying there were some ethical problems. That's number one, baby. Yeah, killing so many horses. Sounds like even more than the Australian racing industry. Or similar amount, probably. 37 billion? Can we get sued first? Allegedly.

There we go, saved it. To achieve orbit, the shuttle must accelerate from zero to a speed of almost 29,000 kilometres per hour. No, too fast. Or 18,000 miles per hour, which is a speed nine times as fast as the average rifle bullet. That's how fast this thing has to travel. Wow. It's kind of hard to imagine how quick that is. I was doing 100 on the way here on the freeway thinking, this is pretty quick.

It's 290 times that speed. Could you put it into sort of a measurement that I could remember from my childhood? Okay, it's kind of like throwing Voltron really fast. Huh? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I understand that. Wow, throwing Voltron really fast.

It's like throwing Voltron down the stairs, but there's like a million stairs. Whoa. And each stair, it doubles in speed. Wow. Okay. And at the bottom, hey, hey, it's Saturday's playing. Darrell's there? Darryl's there.

Darryl Molley? He's red? The whole gang. Wow. Even Wilbur Wild? Uh-huh. He played the sacks. He sure did.

Did he? He played the shit out of those sacks. Hell yeah. It was the best thing in that show, I reckon. Do you reckon? Wilbur, yeah. All right, that's two out of the three things that I've explained. Finally, so, you know, there's the rocket boosters.

There's the fuel tank in the middle. Then finally there's the orbiter, which is the main shuttle part that carries astronauts and their payload, remember a satellite or whatever. The plan is that when their mission is over, they land using the orbiter's wings on a specifically built runway. Basically, it glides to Earth like a giant plane. So he doesn't come down on a parachute,

like the Apollo mission and crash into the ocean. It's actually got to land like a plane, which is amazing because it's traveling so fast. The whole thing weighs 4.5 million pounds or 2 million kilos and needs to get between 115 to 400 miles or 185 to 650 kilometres above the earth. So with this much fuel and so many millions of tiny actions, there is obviously a lot that can go wrong.

But up until this point, nothing had ever gone wrong. Don't like those odds. The Challenger had a good history and was considered the most reliable of all of the shuttles at the time. Since debuting two and a half years earlier, it had flown 40% of all the shuttle missions. 40%. So it was like their, you know, their go-to shuttle.

Yeah, their numera uno. This flight, which is called STS 51L, was Challenger's 10th mission and the 25th shuttle mission overall. So at this point, Challenger had sent 51 astronauts into space on nine trouble-free flights, so they had no reason to worry. Been there, done that. On this flight, the Challenger's mission was to deploy a data relay satellite and a satellite to examine the approaching Halley's comet. The other main focus of the mission was to get Krista McCullough,

into space where she would of course conduct live educational broadcast from the shuttle and transmit them to classrooms around the world. Can you imagine how shit that broadcast would have been though? I would have been in the 80s. Like even today it would be a bit crappy, probably. What, the broadcast quality? Yeah. Right.

It's the 80s. Standard definition. 80s, ear of MTV. Other, you know, the TV show, hey, hey, it's Saturday. The Simpsons debut. Looking to us to help, we were not alive in the 80s. Right. Sorry, man.

Dave? Sorry. Jess? He's younger than me. Dave? Why are you commenting on it then? Like you said it was no good, but it sounds like you have no direct experience there. Just taking pot shots from the future.

Yep. Wow. Come at me, 80s. What's it going to do? What's we going to do? Gordon Gecko, ever heard of him? No. There's a lot of money around back then.

Musicians could make a real big living back then. Think about that. The internet hadn't ruined the careers of musicians. Dave, do go on. Okay. That seems to be pretty jaded by the industry that he never even tried to be in. All right. So we're finally ready for takeoff.

The takeoff was originally scheduled to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 22nd, but was delayed six times due to bad weather, bad crosswinds, equipment failure and technical issues. It's not a great start. Because there is so much interest in this mission, pressure was really starting to build for NASA to get this thing off the ground. Finally, on January 28, almost a week after its original schedule, it looked like Challenger was ready to go. Thousands of people traveled to Florida to watch the shuttle take off, and it was big news around the world. forecast for January 28, however, predicted an unusually cold morning, with temperatures close to minus 1 degrees Celsius or 30 degrees Fahrenheit,

which is the absolute minimum temperature permitted for launch. Oh, don't go at the absolute minimum. The shuttle was in fact never certified to operate in temperatures that low, and the next coldest condition they'd ever operated in was much warmer, up to 10 degrees warmer. That's quite a difference. The weather was so cold, the launch pad was covered in sheets of ice, 7.5 centimetres or 3 inches thick. Whoa.

And again, no shuttle had ever launched in such freezing conditions. I mean, I've got to say, before I go on, I'm not a scientist. Thank you for clarifying. Okay. Because what I'm going to say is going to sound pretty scientific. And I don't want anyone to be confused. Okay. But that seems too cold.

There I said, I'm sorry. Hey, don't apologize. I didn't understand a word of that. So scientific. But I assume it was very clever. Yes. Much like a scientist. Yeah.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Now, it wasn't just scientists like Matt here, so I believe, were concerned. There were concerns from some of the engineers that the weather was too cold, and they were concerned mainly about the O rings and the solid rocket boosters, the big white tubes on the other side. Tell me what rings aren't O shaped? Hmm.

Okay. Sorry to chuck science back in your face there, but. Wow. Yeah. Satin. That's so much better than my... comment of onion rings

I call them my rings I don't but I'm going to now they're nice your onion rings I don't

I do too oh let's get them yeah let's get them jump cut those beating up

onion rings cup that onion ring and then all high fiving woo we sure showed them

and then we all feel a bit remorseful. As we're like eating and we're we're weeping. I'm so sorry. So sorry. Greg. Greg and Gary and the boys.

Greg and Gary and the boys. Jeff, Gerald. Gareth. Guys, it's 2018. Okay. Our new rings can be girls. Gerolina. Thank you.

What was that name? Geraldina. Gerolina. Oh, so close to Geraldine. A real name. So close. Oh, nearly. I was thinking of spirulina.

One of those. One of those beautiful names. Yeah. Now, I'm going to talk a bit about O-rings because they're very important in this story. So the engineers are concerned about the O-rings and the solid rocket boosters. They're the ones with the 71% thrust on either side of the big boys, the bad boys, the reusable things. Don't make me get up. The big boys.

These reusable long tubes were made up of four sections. that were put together on the launch site and held together by joints. Marijuana cigarettes, am I right? Blaze it. 420 somewhere, am I right? Blaze it. Let's go to the moon, baby. Let's get jazzed.

You were spoken two joints there. Yeah. Well, that's cool. Yeah, you know. It's not cool, kids. I just let that sink in. It really makes you think. about how uncool marijuana is.

Marijuana cigarettes. I'll never touch a marijuana leafily. Again. I've touched so many leaves. Yeah. Get your hands off those leaves, Dave. I like to put them in between a big thick book. Make them real flat.

Cop that marijuana. Yeah, like your future will be. Flat? Or in a big book. A big book. That's where your future is, Dave. You nerd? In a big book.

I always get his nose on a bloody big book. You know what he's like. Oh, oh, Shakespearean. Oh, oh, chapter two. I was pretty pleased with myself that I made it through chapter one. Matt as a high school boy is brutal. I know. Oh, chapter two.

What are you reading there, point, Dexter? Shakespeare. Can you explain it to me? We've got a testimony. Yeah, that's you. You're the jock, Matt. You're such a sporty man. Thank you.

Wait. Is that a compliment? I don't know what I'd be. And I'd be the, oh, I know, I'd be. You're the drama captain. No, I know you were. I'm the pretty girl's funny friend. Comic relief?

Yeah. What is this in a movie of? No, life. Life, in the movie of life. Can you introduce me to your friend? Dave, Dave's the sleaze bag. Yeah. No, Dave's the nerd who thinks he's cool.

He's the, what was the American pie guy? Stifler? No. Oh, yes, I know who you're talking about. Fuck, what was his name? Red-headed guy. Yeah, I'm trying to think. Yeah.

Gone back in time to change the life of one lucky lady. Yeah, it's like spined blur or something like that. I was also thinking of in 10 things I hate about you. Oh. The guy in the AV club or something. Anyway, fuck. Stop D-R-R-R-Haw-Hardly. Orin can't hardly wait, the guy who's in Buffalo.

These are all great references. Or in Buffy, the guy who kind of reminds me of Chandler Bing. Oh, yeah, no, you're talking about? Yes, that guy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could I be any more confused right now? You don't even get that reference.

Dave, please. Do go on. I want to talk about O-rings, damn it. Fine. You're making me hungry. So these reasonable long tunes are made up of four sections that were put together on launch site and held together by joints. I was trying to say. Oh my God

That's where it all went wrong We suck The joints are sealed by a pair of compressed rubber O rings At ignition the rocket fires up in under 100th of a second Super quick The metal casing quickly expands with the heat The O rings must also quickly expand

To seal in the heat And stop the rocket fuel From escaping at the joint So it's basically like a big rubber plug It keeps all the gases and heat Inside the middle tube Plug is such a fun word. Plug.

Got anything to plug? Plug. Love that. The plug is very important because if any of this heat gets out, it causes a massive explosion. So the O-ring is very important. Right. The O-rings didn't have enough data to prove that they would function properly in such cold conditions, and some were worried that the weather would make them too rigid to expand.

On the evening of January 27, so the night before the launch, engineers and managers from Thio-Cole, who are the company that built, the solid rocket boosters held a teleconference with NASA to discuss the weather conditions. Several engineers, including most famously, Roger Bojolay, incredible name. Great name. Stated their concerns. Robo-bo-Bodjolay. Stated their concerns about the effect of low temperatures on the...

Robo-Jolay. Stated their concerns about the effect of low temperatures on the resilience of the rubber O rings. And they recommended a launch postponement. They said, it's too cold tomorrow. Let's cancel it. I'm going to agree with them. as a scientist. Roe-Bogelow.

Roe-Bogelay argued that they did not have enough data to determine whether the joints would properly seal if the O-rings were colder than 12 degrees and it's way colder than that, 54 Fahrenheit for people overseas. This was an important consideration since the O-rings had been rated as critically one or a critical one component,

meaning that there was no backup if they failed and their failure could destroy the orbiter and kill its crew. So there's like a scale and this is like a number one thing. So we can't fuck with this. because if this goes, it all goes. Roe-Bogelay had first written a memo pointing out the dangers of the cold weather on O-Rings

the year before in 1985, but he was ignored. Bo Jolay had discovered on examining a booster from the Discovery Shuttle that the O-ring had been badly burned and was less than one millimeter away from burning through completely. Like, so, so close. If it had burned all the way through, it would have exploded. His theory was that this was because of the cold weather

on the day of the launch in 1985 where it was 11 degrees Celsius, 10 degrees warmer. Wow. Yeah. Actually, 12 degrees warmer than on the day of the Challenger launch. So when he saw they were planning to launch on an even cold a day,

he started freaking out. And he went to his bosses and said, we've got to stop this. Oh, my God. It feels bizarre that this is even, these stories, you just expect them to be on top of all this stuff. Yeah.

For sure. And if somebody comes to them and says, like, we can't do. This is a bad idea. And here's why. You'd think that the answer would be, Let's not risk it. Yeah. Well, you think so.

NASA Protocol requires all shuttle subcontractors to sign off on any flight. And the night before a launch, they have a go-slash-no-go telephone conference. So if Thio called... So Robo was in the no-go-on-the-O rings? That is so good. I say this often. Because it keeps happening. It's just like one thing after another.

But I have never been proud of you. I'm waiting for a real roast there. Was that a take down? No, no, it was like, that was praise. That was great. That was so good. Matt, that was so good. We played that at your funeral.

Matt, can I just say you are so cool. That was so great. I've been bullied by the nerds. I'm praising you. And the nerds, hot friend's friend. I'm not friends with a hot girl. I know her acquaintance

From primary school Yeah Our mums were friends Yeah Hi Justine Oh that means you're the boy next door then Yeah That's good

She ends up with you Yes Even though you're ugly And a bit nerdy Well more than a bit And socially awkward Oh what But you got a heart of gold

Could have cut it out Oh okay It's a horror flick Got it all right sure So they're having the go-slash-no-go teleconference. If Thiakol didn't give the go-ahead, the shuttle couldn't take off. So all the subcontractors have to say, yes, it's safe. So Thiakol recommended to postpone, but NASA heavily questioned their recommendation.

They told the manager of Thiakol that their data was inconclusive and that they shouldn't be bringing this up the night before a launch. According to Bojolay, Lawrence Malloy, who was head of NASA's rocket boosters division, said, my God, Thuyacol, when do you want me to launch next April? Why are you guys trying to come up with launch-commit criteria on the eve of the launch? It is weird that they're bringing it up very late. So they didn't tell them about the O-ring nearly burning through? No, so nothing had happened since 1985 from that memo.

Right. So the four managers of Thichol put the teleconference on hold and reconsidered their position. When Thier-Cole looked like they were changing their minds, Bojolay claims that he made a last-ditch attempt to make them cancel the launch. He was literally screaming at them not to ignore the photo. of the Discovery's Shattered O-ring. Despite this, all four of Thuyahaw's managers agreed to give their... They were bullied into it by the sense of it, sort of.

Yeah, they agreed. They took a vote. They all said, let's go for it, and gave NASA the all-clear to launch, which NASA immediately accepted. Bojolay, Robo, is convinced that they were bullied into giving the go-ahead just to keep NASA on schedule. That's what it feels like. According to NASA's own pre-launch estimates,

there was only a one-in-one-hundred-thousand-chance of the shuttle failing to launch. So they were pretty confident that they'd be fine. Failure to launch. One in 100,000. Wonderful film. McConaughey. Parker.

Georgie. Deschanel. Et cetera. Who's Parker? Sarah Jessica. Oh. She'd been in something good. No.

Absolutely not. It's a piece of shit. All right. There you go. We're all learning something. Well, I thought I did. I clearly didn't. Nope.

So NASA. Got the all clear to go ahead. Takeoff was scheduled for 9.38am. Is that annoying Jess? Oh, what the fuck is wrong with you? It would have been something to do with weather or something, right? 930! 9.38.

9.45 I'm okay with. 10 o'clock, fine. 938. Fuck you. I also read that the astronauts got a 617 a.m. wake-up call. Oh, get fucked! Because everything's like down to the minute and the second with these people. I say that.

People. 938 was delayed due to concerns about ice that had accumulated in the launch pad that I talked about. Icicles over one metre long hung off the bottom of the shuttle. And this caused considerable concern for the launch team. Yeah, no shit. There's like legit, stalic tides of ice hanging. 938. That is infuriating.

That's the concerning thing. Oh, yuck. Jess, there were 19 icicles hanging off. Oh, you fucking. You know what? Even 940 I'm okay with. That's fine. 22?

10 minute. 20 to 10. That feels good. 22's fine. This is not going to get any better. The seven crew members had breakfast and left the crew quarters and rode the astronaut van to launch pad B arriving at 803 a.m. 8.03 and there's seven of them.

They were in their seats in the Challenger at 836 a.m. No one cares. At 844 a.m., the ice inspection team completed its second inspection. After hearing the team's report, the program manager decided to allow additional time for the ice to melt on the pad. At 1115. They had an ice inspection team. Yeah, that's people's job.

EIT! 1115, the ice inspection was complete. I-I-T. E-T. Anyway, that's my contribution. At 1115 a.m., pretty good. They've rounded that up. The ice inspection was completed and during the hold at launch minus nine minutes,

which is nine minutes before launch, The mission 51L crew and all the members of the launch team gave their go for an official launch The final flight of the challenger began at 1138 a.m. And one one thousandth of a second. Oh, honestly. 1138 won 1,000. 1,000th.

It's hard to fucking say. 1,000th. So they're ready to go. Very easy to say. Everyone's watching on. Finally, go time. The crew counter down and the shuttle lifted off to cheers of everyone watching on. thousands of people

except one person in the front row with their arms crossed Buh Bored Within seconds Challenger was travelling at over 1,500 kilometres per hour Engineers on the ground

including Roger Bogley were amazed that it hadn't exploded He was fully expecting it to explode on the pad Right He was happy to be wrong About the O-Rings Good

But it was more than just him Who were concerned Yeah so there's a whole team but since what is about to happen, he's the one that's come out and being the most vocal, written books about it and stuff. Robo Jolay.

Robo Jolet. So he's like the face of the, and he, you know, I'll talk about him a bit. As the shuttle hit the 10 kilometre mark, a severe crosswind slammed into the shuttle, causing it to shake. At 58 seconds into the launch,

the shuttle encountered another side wind and was shaken for a second, but then it seemed to steady, seemed to go back on course. At 66 seconds, the shuttle was ordered to turn up its engines to full power to accelerate away from the Earth's gravity. It was all looking fine, but then at 73 seconds after liftoff, Challenger was suddenly engulfed by a ball of fire.

Down on the ground, NASA's mission control was completely stunned. In an instant, they had lost all contact with the spacecraft. Their data from over 2,000 sensors had failed to indicate anything was going wrong, so they were not immediately sure of what had happened. If you watch the footage back, you can hear one of the operators from the mission control saying, Obviously there's been a major malfunction But they're all stunned Wow

Everyone except Robo Jolay He's kind of smug Which is inappropriate No he said he was crying And he was so upset Oh Oh wow Because he probably still feels somewhat

He probably feels like he could have Said something more Yeah Yeah It'd be very frustrating I saw an interview with him And he said that he actually Had a nervous breakdown following this

I'm not surprised yeah That is a nightmare scenario Oh, absolutely. He tried. Isn't it amazing? They're like, now, we've got to schedule. Yeah, but I'm telling you that you're going to cost yourselves lives and billions of dollars of equipment, millions probably. It's wild.

Hopefully, more importantly, the lives. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, what's this schedule? Why is it so important? This is going to be slightly embarrassing if we delay this again for a few months. Because, remember it's their big PR exercise. And they want this to, the irony is that they want this to go well so badly that they risk, they, you know, went against safety instructions and it went even worse than delay a week.

There's no such thing as bad publicity, you know. True. I hadn't considered that. Any publicity is good publicity. On the ground watching on where, of course, the families of the people on the war. And they don't know what exactly has happened because it's so high up in the sky, but they can just tell something he's gone horribly wrong. On the ground and on the live TV broadcast, people could see the two rocket boosters that remained in. intact, careering wildly off course.

So we'll probably link to an image of this. So it looks like, and this is quite a famous photo, a big main explosion in the middle and two trails of smoke, trails of smoke from these rockets have just split off and they just kept going. NASA remotely detonated these two rockets for safety reasons afterwards. So they go off for a bit and then they suddenly stop because they were detonated. The debris spiled and fell to Earth and started to land in the Atlantic Ocean and everyone on the ground was just praying that the orbit.

containing the crew was able to separate and remain in one piece. Suddenly it was a recovery mission and ships, boats and helicopters were immediately sent to the spot where the orbiter was thought to have landed in the ocean. Everyone was hoping that somehow they were still alive in there. Come on. The compartment amazingly did stay in one piece during the explosion. Wow. However, the crew compartment had ascended to an altitude of 12.3 miles, nearly 20 kilometres,

before free falling into the Atlantic Ocean, and it hit the water at over 320. kilometers per hour. Wow. With an estimated deceleration of impact well over 200 Gs, which is far beyond the structural limits of the crew compartment or crew survivability levels. And it's actually far greater than almost any other automobile aircraft or train accident ever.

Sadly, the crew didn't stand a chance. So, but they didn't, oh, so like they did, what am I trying to say here? it wasn't even like it was a quick explosion and they were just gone. It's like it was not a quick and easy demise. Well, there's debate over that. The horrible part, it's not exactly known how they died. Oh, God. Whether it was during the explosion or when they hit the water.

Whether the crew members remained conscious long enough, long after their breakup is unknown and largely depends on whether the detached crew cabin maintained its pressure integrity. Because all seven crew members were supplied with personal egress air, packs or peeps, which provide each of them with approximately six minutes of breathable air inside their helmets. At least three of the crew were alive and at least briefly conscious after the breakup as three of them had turned their peeps on on the flight deck so they were found to have been activated. But the peep, as I said, is only useful in the cabin

if it maintained pressure integrity. But if it had, which they don't know, they may have been conscious during the two minutes and 45 second freefall back to Earth, which is pretty awful. Horrible. There was also evidence that switches had been activated in the cabin, like they'd, futile, but tried to power up again. Shit. Yeah. That's awful. Absolutely tragedy.

And it's such a strange thing to think or say, but like you'd wish that they'd just blown up. Yeah. You know, you'd wish that for them. Yeah, it's a long two and a half minutes. Whoa. That's awful. On the night of the disaster, President Ronald Reagan had been scheduled to give his annual state of the union address. He initially announced that the address would go on his schedule, but then postponed the State of the Union address for a week and instead gave a national address on the Challenger disaster from the Oval, sorry, Jess, office in the White House.

So it was big, big news around the world, but especially in America. Of course. Three days later, our memorial service was held and President Ronald Reagan paid tribute to the brave crew. It was attended by 6,000 NASA employees and 4,000 guests, as well as, of course, by the families of all the crew. A thorough presidential investigation was conducted over the next five months, and it was painstaking as the Challenger had exploded into thousands of pieces that had all landed in the ocean. Debris rained down for over an hour after the explosion, so the recovery effort had to wait until it was safe before they could start collecting the material. Sonar, divers, remotely operated submersibles and man submersibles were all used during the search, which covered an area of 486 square nautical miles, which is over 1,500 square kilometres. and took plates at water depths between 70 feet and 1,200 feet, or 21 metres and 370 metres deep.

The crew compartment wasn't found until six weeks later on March 7th, and it was buried in 100 feet of water. After six weeks of being in the ocean, the bodies were referred to as, quote, remains not bodies. Navy pathologists performed autopsies on the crew members, but due to the poor condition of the bodies, the exact cause of death couldn't be determined for any of them, so it's not sure if they did. suffocate up there or, you know, when they hit the water. Wow, that's awful. The recovery operation was able to pull 15 tons of debris from the ocean, but 55% of the challenger, 5% of the crew cabinet and 65% of the satellite cargo are still missing.

So it didn't get a lot of it. Some of the remaining debris continued to wash up onto Florida shores for many years, including in 1996, 11 years after the incident when two large pieces of the shuttle were found at Cocoa Beach. Well, Cocoa Beach sounds nice, but the rest of it... The rest not so much. All the recovered debris from the Challenger was ultimately buried in a former missile silo

at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where it still is today. But you're probably wondering, what the hell happened? The President's Commission, also known as the Rogers Commission, named after its chairman, William P. Rogers,

had the five-month investigation. Also on the commission was Neil Armstrong. Really? Willie P. Willie P. Good question. And Matt's back. Hello, Matthew.

The commission worked over five months. As I said, in their report, they found that due to the freezing temperatures, the O ring, the right rocket's lowest field joint did not enlarge as they should have and gases twice as hot as the inside of a furnace were able to escape. So Robo Jolay was correct? Almost exactly what Robo Jolet said. Wow. The cold rubber had become stiff, failing to fully seal the joint, just as Robo Jolay and many other engineers, had feared.

The commission compared over 200 different videos taken by NASA and by witnesses on the ground to try and look at the takeoff frame by frame. So it was very painstaking. They found that immediately upon lift off black smoke billowed from the rocket booster near the joint that failed, and their findings published that this was smoke from an O-ring burning, which is not supposed to do. But it's all happening.

quickly that NASA couldn't see that happening. It burns for about five seconds and then stops. Only when you go frame by frame can you notice it. The commission said that as the shuttle took off, a flame escaped from the joint of the rocket booster. This flame burnt through a support that attached the booster to the huge external fuel tank. Like a blow torch, the gases cut through the skin of the external tank

and ignited the liquid hydrogen fuel. The attachment quickly broke free and the entire bottom section of the fuel tank gave way and this meant that the nose of the rocket booster pivoted into the side of the fuel tank and it caused all of the fuel to ignite at once and that's why it exploded. Like in an instant. The failure of the O-rings was attributed to faulty design whose performance could be too easily compromised by factors including the low temperatures

on the day of a launch. The report also strongly criticised the decision-making process that led to the launch of the Challenger saying it was seriously flawed. They heard that several engineers pointed out problems with the O-ring but because of the flaws in NASA's management structure, the launch went ahead. Because he'd complained a year before, and his complaint had never been passed on to the right people,

which is... It sounds like the PR department was running the show. Yeah, no, no, no, we're going to take off. People love the shit. Yeah. NASA! Yeah, to go with the cane and one of those old straw hats. Some sort of step right up guy.

He's the one in charge. Yeah, totally. There are a few other hearings. the US Committee on Science and Technology also had a hearing, they found their findings were very damning on NASA. They said, quote, the committee feels that the underlying problem which led to the challenger accident was not poor communication or underlying procedures as implied by the Rogers Commission. Rather, the fundamental problem was poor technical decision-making over a period of several years by top NASA and contracted personnel who failed to act decisively to solve the increasingly serious abnormalities in the solid rocket booster joints. like, you really fucked this. To paraphrase.

There's been questions over the years as to why the shuttle didn't malfunction on the launch pad as Roe-Bogelay had predicted. Remember, he thought if the oaring was going to fail, it was going to fail right away, and it was just going to go up in flames. So he was amazed when they watched it take off and it took 73 seconds before it exploded. He would have been feeling quite relieved. Yeah, he was thinking, all right, it's probably going to work. Like, I was wrong.

Thank God. Yeah. But author James Child. re-examined the footage of the takeoff and found that on the takeoff, the O-ring did fail and that smoke can be seen billowing out, as I said before. But then it stops after a few seconds, and he wondered, why did the smoke stop? He posits that it stopped after a few seconds because aluminium residue from the burning rocket fuel actually sealed the joint shut. And that everything went normally until the gust of wind that I talked about that slammed into the side of it, it knocked the shuttle and it knocked the aluminium out of place and this opened up the hole in the joint again.

It's also possible that the O ring itself did burn and that it melted and momentarily formed a seal on the joint. But then the wind smacked into the side of it. It opened up and that's when the flame started coming out. Charles's theory is that if the wind hadn't knocked it and that the seal was maintained for just 60 more seconds, the rockets would have detached as planned and the crew would have gone into orbit and no one ever would have even known. Wow. So it's likely... 60 seconds is a long time.

It had to hold for another minute. Yeah, that's a long time. Yeah, that is a minute. 60 seconds. In a lot of ways it is anyway. It's a minute. Yeah. It's basically, it's nearly double the time that it was already there.

So like you say, it is long. But it's likely to have been a combination of many things going badly at the same time, just like in Chernobyl. It was probably a combination of cold weather that made the O-rings less effective, actual poor design of the joints and crosswind and bad luck that the weather knocked the solid rocket boosters so much that the aluminium or the rubber sealing the joints was knocked out of the way. What if they'd just gone later in the dust? day. Like I wonder if it got to a more reasonable temperature later that day. Or if they postponed a week, maybe this would have been okay? But then the question is, of course, would they have learned anything? And was one of these O-rings destined to fail?

Yeah, true. If not then, when? Yes, but also if that crosswind hadn't hit it, if they'd gone on different weather conditions, who knows? There's so many, like, what ifs. And if it did blow up on the runway, would that have taken out spectators and? Probably not spectators, but possibly ground crew. Right. I don't know. I imagine that they probably make people get far away enough.

They're quite far away, I think. Just because it is. But you're talking about a huge explosion from so much fuel. So big. Two million liters. Yeah, true. Of rocket fuel. It's like, it's insane.

Basically, they are strapped to a bomb. Right. And it unfortunately went off. Because by the time they exploded in the sky, a lot of the fuel had already been burned. But if it was on the ground and it went off. Yeah. Would have been insane.

In the long run, NASA redesigned the solid rocket booster joints. They implemented new rules regarding launches in cold weather and built a new system for the crew to escape from the shuttle during Ascent. That was another thing people criticise. They had no escape. Right. Once they were in the air, there was no way, really, to come back down safely. Yeah, what would they do now?

Ejector seat. Yeah, like parachute. People did say ejector seat. But I read that that actually would have been quite dangerous because you have to have a small explosion for an injector seat to go off. Right. So now the shuttles have been retired now, but they made some change that they were able to get out of the shuttle and then they'd parachute. Yeah.

But it only worked if they were traveling horizontally. So it actually wouldn't have helped because they were going up, straight up. Right. So even if they had this escape tube or whatever it was, it still wouldn't have helped them. You know, sometimes, and this is probably the other. other end of the mission, a successful mission. You see the tube coming down with the big parachute? Am I imagining that?

Oh, yeah, yeah. So those rocket boosters that fall off, they split into four pieces and they have a parachute. So there's no way of doing, having a backup one of those. I wonder if scientists had thought of these things. They should have got us in. We could have spitballed. Seriously, the power of spitballing. Honestly.

Come on. Have other people to bounce ideas. off. Hello. This Johnny Nasser or whatever this guy's name is who makes all the decisions. I reckon he should get a committee. Johnny, get me in there. Come on. Well, they were keen to get a civilian involved.

They should have got us involved. So was the teacher on board? Yes, sadly, she did perish for the other six. Krista. Krista McCallough, yeah. Oh, man. And sadly, her school was watching on. Oh, no.

Which would have been so horrific. Oh, so many great names. They'd all be like remembered as heroes in America. Yeah, so they're all buried in different places, but they have memorials to them. And actually, I'll talk about it, there's actually quite a legacy that the challenger left behind. After the disaster, the shuttle program was grounded for nearly three years. In September 1988, the space shuttle discovery took off, and then the shuttle program continued until 2011. So it doesn't exist anymore.

It suffered another major disaster. 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia broke up upon re-entry. So the other way, on the way back down, and it killed all seven crew members again. I don't remember that at all. Do you remember that? No, no. It was, again, there was a commission, and the findings was NASA didn't learn enough from the challenger. Right.

It was similar risk. People had said, I think it was when they were on takeoff, a piece of foam had smashed. Fankly remember that. I smashed a tile or a set of tiles on the Columbia. Yes. And people had said, should we worry about that? But they thought it would hold. But then it didn't hold.

And I think fortunately for them, they would have died very quickly. It just, it was a little nick and that created so much friction that. Yeah, the whole thing disintegrated. Far out. I do remember that. Well, you was that, sorry? 2003. Right.

Columbia, yeah. Approximately 17% of Americans witnessed the launch live because of the presence of payload specialist, Kristen McCallough, who had been the first teacher in space. So big news, like I said. Media coverage of the accident was extensive. One study reported that 85% of Americans surveyed had heard the news within one hour of it happening. So it's one of those big things like September 11 or when everyone just knows. And pre-social media.

Yeah, this is in the 80s. Now news spreads even faster. Yeah, but in the 80s they just everyone knew. But it is a common misconception, this is according to national geography or a false memory that everyone watched it live on television. Most of the major TV networks did not broadcast the launch live. The launch occurred on a Tuesday at 1139, which when most people were at work, and the handful of people who did see the tragedy unfold were watching it on NASA's channel via satellite dishes,

like Krista's classroom, technology that relatively few people had at the time or on CNN, which not everyone has. But National Geographic interviewed a lot of people, and everyone remembers watching it live because they've seen all the replays. Yes. Pretty much instantaneously. It wasn't lot. Every January, NASA pauses to remember the lost crew of the Challenger

and other crews lost in pursuing space on a NASA Day of Remembrance. Challenges explosion changed the space shuttle program in several ways. Plans to fly other civilians into space, such as journalists, were shelved for 22 years, until a certain someone flew aboard Endeavour in 2007. Any ideas on who that would be? 2007. It wasn't Kevin Rudd.

Kevin 07. I feel like I'd remember that. I do know who you're talking about. And as soon as you say it, I'm going to be like. That certain someone was a certain Blabra Morgan. Oh my God, Blabra. Kristen McCallov's backup, 22 years later. She went.

She actually became a full-blown astronaut. She went back to teaching after the disaster. Obviously feeling like, my God, that could have been me. Yeah. Twelve years after McColleth's death, she started training to be a full-time astronaut. She flew on the Endeavour Shuttle in 2007 and went to space for 12 days. Wow, go Blabra.

Go Blabra. She's not so borgon after all. No. Been a bit rough on her, really? Nah, Blabra. See, it's a great ending for Blabra. NASA stated that she wasn't a teacher that went into space, but rather a proper astronaut that used to be a teacher.

Nice. So she's got the life experience. There's a lot of articles were coming out being like, finally a teacher goes to space and they're like, no, no, she didn't just do five months of training. She did years of training. But teachers did eventually go to space. In 2009, NASA's educator astronaut project saw three teachers.

Again, normal people go into orbit. Wow. Can you imagine sitting there knowing what had happened to the last teacher? No, absolutely not. About to take off, you would... No. In nearly exactly the same shuttle. I would not do that at all.

Well, depend on what it is, because I'd be like... A couple years later, I'd be like, there'd be no safer time to go. They would be so anal about everything now. But then after 2003, I'd be like, oh, maybe they don't go. Which was. So when Blabra went, both the disasters had happened. Yeah, so you'd be like, surely now after these two incidents. I don't like flying.

I love to fly. So I'm not going to space. I also don't, I love, I mean, when you see them in space, it looks so amazing. But I don't think I could overcome this fear. No. Because they sit there on the launch pad for, two hours before you go. I would need to pee.

You've got a long time to think about it and a long time to probably piss yourself. Yeah, several times. Is there anything about going to space and like changing, changing you physically when you come back? Like you lose a lot of weight and those sort of things, right? Yeah, I think they compared two NASA twins recently. One had been to space longer than the other one and their genetic makeup had physically changed. Yeah, isn't that fascinating? Yeah.

I think when they said when you come back, back from space, you're taller for a while until, because you're used to the gravity up there. But then very quickly, you compress back down. Like your spine and everything expands when you're because there's less gravity, but then I think it's, you know, within a day.

The way to the world. Yeah, the way of the, oh, blood, the bloody rat race. Yeah, and you said Earth is your favorite planet. So stupid. Come on, Matt. Change my mind. The moon is now my favorite planet.

No rat race on the moon. I'm not a scientist. I should underline that. You have made that abundantly clear. But that is the very interesting, but very tragic story of the space shuttle challenge a disaster. Yeah, there's so much in that. That was fascinating. That is really fascinating. Like just the study of humans and how they deal with stress and pressure.

And you think of NASA, you're like, well, they're that organization that's spent more time, you know, with safety and stuff than anyone in the world. Yeah, not going, we need to make this happen. tomorrow. People are watching. 0.001% chance. You think that they'd be like, nah, let's not risk it. Because like you say,

it's extremely dangerous for the people and also extremely expensive and also the people on the ground. If it had exploded on the launch pad, I would have put a big hole in the earth. Yeah. Oh, man. And then, like, I hadn't really considered that,

but you're saying how Barbara... Excuse me. Blabra. I'd like to call her Barbara, if I may. Barbara Morgan. Barbara Morgan, yes. Labla Bourgbrun. Thank you.

Official, no, a full astronaut, yeah. She, but so she'd be thinking how that could have been me, but there was a top 10, so there were eight others. Or everyone else in that list, I imagine. Just be going, oh my God. And they all did a bit of training, a bit of your proper audition process. They must have all, like, who knows how you take that, you could probably take it either way,

but some would have been like, wow, I've been given a second chance and others might have just been like, it would ruin you. It'd be very hard not to think about that a lot. Barbara is very brave. Yeah. Yeah, I love, I love Barbara.

Me too, that's why I go over a cool nickname. Matt, do you hate me? No, no. In fact, I would say I love you, Jess Popperkins. You're one of the best in the biz. That's cute. Wow. A bit clingy.

Dave, well, this report was very great as always. Very great. Very great. I mean, on the scale of greatness. Very great as, I think that's Code Red. Yep. Code Red. Just before Code.

Brown? Yeah, Code Brown when I'm about to shit myself. So bad. Shit myself. It's so good. And then you got Code Red and Brown, which is when you're shit in blood. Yeah. Go see.

a doctor. Hospital immediately. Called the police. Because you're shit and black. But there's a segment on our show after the report that we love to do. It's called fact quote or question. That's right. And this segment is of course brought to you by our, and pretty much the whole show

was brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Basically, anyone at any time can become a Patreon supporter and support the show. If you think it's worth a buck or two or a few a month, for example, I spent probably eight to ten hours writing that report. I watched a lot of stuff. That's too many hours, Dave. I mean, if you're interested, I'll put all the sources below. That was about 20 of them all in total.

But, you know, if you think the show is worth it and you listen every week, you can, you know, keep the show going. And also get rewards in exchange, for example, two bonus episodes every single month. We're released just for our Patreon subscribers. You can vote on topics. For example, this one was chosen by Patreon people. And we also give you a shout out. and some people get to give a fact quote or question, Matt. You're going to find this funny, Jess, but I would,

eight to ten hours would be low for me, if how long it takes to write a report. Anyway. How many hours are you, how many hours are you reckon you're putting in? I'd say, I'd say probably on average about 15. Oh, actually, yeah, now that I think about it.

But isn't it, isn't it a bit sad that it, my report is to get what my report ends up being in 15 hours? And he does that in 8 to 10 anyway. He is good. He is good. I'm just trying to say, we love doing the show and we put a lot of time into it. Too much. Too much time.

And then people say, it's just Wikipedia and you just start crying. Yeah, no, people do describe that sometimes as comedy Wikipedia or something. Yeah, oh God, that's so heartbreaking. I think what they mean is Wikipedia is like a resource that is people, whatever. I know. Encyclopedia comedy. I'd be happy with it. that. Fact quote or question.

This week. It's actually our second, because there's only a limited amount of people, obviously, in the world. And also in this section of our Patreon. So we're dipping back around to people for the second time around. This is Joe Smith's second. These are also the same people that voted for this topic. So I wonder if Joe voted for the Challenger disaster. He joded.

Okay, not my best. No. I disagree. So Joe got to give a fact quote or question, but he also gets to give himself a title. And some people who have dipped in for their second fact quote of question have remained with their original title. Joe has changed his up. Initially, he was the most average American because of his name Joe Smith. But he has changed it now to vice president of Malarkey and shenanigans.

Oh. And in brackets, in brackets, we all know Bob is the book. president of that division. So he's your two I see. You've got heaps of portfolios. Yeah, look, I'm a pretty busy lady. Snacks and malarkey. Yeah, I can do it all.

And he has chosen a question. And I probably should have given you guys some warning about this. I legit thought you were going to say equestrian. Yeah, he's given us the Olympic event. And his question is, if you all, so I guess this is to each of us, If you all could choose any person Ever as a guest on the show, who would each of you choose?

Any person. Any person. And they say don't meet your heroes, though, don't they? They do say that. Yeah, that's tricky, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Because immediately I thought Paul Kelly. But then I thought, oh God.

The Sydney Swans captain of the 90s. Fuck you. You know that's not who I mean. Fuck you. Oh, I just bought tickets to see Paul Kelly. I got to see him again. Anyway. Maybe you should tell Joe Smith, who might not be aware of how great Paul Kelly is.

Who, Paul Kelly is. Paul Kelly is an Australian musical icon. And gravy expert. He is a gravy expert. One of his iconic songs is called How to Make Gravy. My favourite musician ever. But I think I'd be too intimidated to talk to him. Like, I'd just be sitting here like, oh, I don't know.

I love you, you know? Right. I mean, I already feel that with you guys, but I contain it because I'm a good actor. I think he'd be great, Paul Kelly. I think that's a great one. I don't know. I think he seems really funny. If he was coming and he wanted to be here.

Oh yeah, if he wanted to be here, yes. I reckon you if you go for Paul Kelly wanting to be here. Yes. Then that's a great suggestion. Wonderful, thank you. What about you, Davy Dee? D for Dush. David Dooche.

Okay, Davy Duke, like Daisy Duke. Oh, that's actually pretty. Or D for W. Davy D. Davey Dubs. Anyway, just answer the fucking question. I'd probably have like a pretty, oh, it'd be great to have a previous report topic. Yeah.

Just be like, do I get it right? And then what would they be sitting in on? Oh, that's true, that's true. But if you can have anyone from history, I'd love to have someone like William Shakespeare or something. Oh, yeah, he hasn't said, he hasn't said alive or dead. Oh, true, true, true. You did say anyone, right? Yeah.

Any person, yeah. Yeah. So it couldn't be a dog. Oh, damn it. because I'd love to have that first chimp in space. The ones that came back intelligent. No, I don't think we should do that. Another Simpsons reference for those.

Oh, there's so many today. Yeah, too many? Maybe. Yeah, probably someone like William Shakespeare from history, I'd say, because it's just be... I'd thank him for inventing my name. Right. I'd say, hi, I'm Jessica, and he'd go, ah, one of mine.

Oh, yes. I'd say, fun of fact, Will. They shorten it to Jess. Very good. A bit more informal. And once again, no. Once again, thank you. It's an abomination.

I like your little neck ruffle there. That's fun. Yeah. Oh, can I touch it? You know. And then give him a little hair ruffle. Yeah. Like your neck wreck ruffle, he's a little hair ruffle.

Your own. Your name. Gallywag. How about you, Matt? I want to say, I think I guess I would have to say, Darryl Bulldock Okay I'm

I'm throwing a blank here Saints player Yes 1966 Captain Yeah So and I'd get him in To do a report on the

On that That fateful day Because you'd want to just sort of Close your eyes and just picture it Daryl the Doc Bulldog I think I'd enjoy that Him telling you it how it was back now One of the

One of the Heartbreaking facts, but one of the sort of iconic facts about that was that he, the tradition back then was to swap Guernsey's with the opposition. So he's holding up the Premiership Cup. The only time a Saints player ever held up the Premiership Cup wearing a Collingwood jumper. Oh! No!

Wow, I didn't know that. That is awful. Yeah, so I'd love to, yeah, I wonder if he, yeah, I wonder if he, yeah, I'd wonder if he, you, Yeah, if you put any thought into that beyond. But anyway, that's who I'd go. Another thing we like to do on the podcast as well for our Patreon listeners is give them a little bloody shout out at the end of the show. A little pat on the back.

Pat on the back and a big old smooch on the cheek. Say, oh, thank you. And sometimes a little pat on the bum if we've had a couple of white wards. Okay. Which we haven't. I was saying the other day I was at work and I was like daggy dancing. and I was like, look, I'm doing mum dancing. And then I was just being a mum, like, oh, I've had a white white.

I just get hitting everybody with the back of my head. Like, stop it. Ooh. Did know any mums or what? I don't do any work. That may shock you. I reckon my daggy dancing and my regular dancing are pretty similar. Very similar, yes.

I was dancing, is what I was saying. I was dancing and talking about being a mum. Oh, I'm kooky. I'm going to be the best dance. naggy mum ever. Not a very good parent. But a great daggy mum. Oh, I'm going to embarrass the shit out of those kids.

Anyway. And we also, we normally do a game as well. Yeah, what are we thinking? Oh, no. Could we name their shuttles? Yes, great one day. Challenger, Enterprise. Yeah, Atlantis.

Buzzwords. They're going to be buzzwords. All right, cool. So what are they traveling on? Can I kick off by here by thanking from Hoffman Estates in Illinois? In Illinois, I believe. I.L. Yeah, Illinois, baby.

This is, I think this is all-time great names. This is like, this would be top right up the top. All right, hit us with it. Nathaniel Gingrich. Oh, shit, son. Oh, that is great. Yes. Holy moly.

Gingrich. That's a. I like that. It's a belt of a name. And that Nathaniel would be traveling on the, Raptor. The Raptor. I like it.

Well, that sounds pretty good, doesn't it? The Space Shuttle Raptor? Yeah. Even though the Raptors are a Canadian team from Vancouver. Not far from Chicago. Not too far away. Illinois, I should say, sorry. Very close.

I'm not sure where Hoffman Estates is exactly, but it's not far from Jurassic Park. From the top of Illinois. And I'd also, thank you, Nathaniel Gingrich. The captain of the Raptor. So good. Oh, captain as well. Wow.

Captain Gingrich, reporting for duty. Oh, that sounds good. Holy shit, yes. Sounds really good. I believe him. This, I mean, it's another great name, but this city name is so good. Christopher M. McAuliffe. Very good.

Which is the same name as Christa McCalliffe. That's exactly the same spelling. Christopher McCallough. No, Kristen McCalloff, the teacher that was on board the challenger. And this is Christopher. Oh. Oh, my goodness. Oh, if it, if she's a relative of yours, holy moly.

Yeah. It's a, uh, a heroes, heroes relative here from Snohomish in Washington. Christopher M. McCaworth. Could Washington be the shuttle name? Oh, like George. What about George? Yeah.

That's better. Sorry. George is better. Yeah. Yeah. Better than Washington. Hey there, Georgie boy flying through the sky so fancy free. Another Simpsons.

Hey there, blimpie boy. But also the Seekers, a wonderful Australian band. Amazing that they got referenced on The Simpsons. Was that their original song? Amazing. Christopher M. McCallough. Wow, thank you. Sorry for calling him McCall Life.

Just looking at Snow Homish, not very far from Seattle. which we hope to get to one day, and the Patreon is powering us closer and closer. Yeah, we want to get some of those tossed salads and scrambled eggs. Well, maybe I hear the bulletin. Dave, would you like to thank some people? All right. I would like to thank very, very much.

Now, this is more of a company, a collective, than an individual. But an team effort. I would like to thank from, am I saying this right? Element it. I've never heard of that. that. In Victoria, right here in Australia.

I'm sorry. Big supporters of comedy in Victoria from OCR FM the community radio station, Loll Radio. Lowell Radio. Out of Colac. So I'm wondering if Ele Minot is a Coalck suburb potentially. That's, um... Is that Joff?

That is Joff. Joff. Appreciate all your support. And Tyson. Yes. Oh, yes. Thank you very much. So maybe that's a lull radio together supporting Melbourne and Victoria.

in comedy, so thank you very much. Now, Loll radio, those dudes, what shuttle are they flying on? Laughter. Humour. Chuckle? Chuckle. God, you are on fire today, yes. The space shuttle chuckle.

The chuckle hut. I love it. I love it. It's got tiki torches for some reason. Oh, legend. No bad ideas. That could be. No bad ideas.

Okay. They're not lit. Just, yeah, okay. Fake. Okay, sure. They got like cellophane in them. It looks like fire. I like that a lot.

Yeah, now you're on board. Oh, that is awesome. Thanks so much to Law Radio. And you can check out our Lowell Radio's interviews with comedians. Each week they play two hours of comedy songs, sketch and stand up from 5 to 7 on OCR FM, the community radio station.

It's also, you can download it on Wushka, the podcast of it. So, Wushka. Support the dudes at Loll Radio. They support us. Thank you very much. At some point, I was the record holder for most interviewed.

Oh, well done. I don't know if I still hold that record. And that counted because it dropped out mid-interview one time, so that counted us two. Nice. I did it. Well, they had to dial you back up. Yeah. Matt, you still there?

After the song, that's a fresh. That starts again, baby. Do you have to start, you know? I had a planned interview, start again. Anyway, Matt, we've already asked, but how did you get into comedy? I know we covered this. I'll take this one. I'd also like to thank from Launceston in Tasmania.

Tazzy. No, I definitely recognize this name, so maybe we get a bit of correspondence from Hannah Schollard. Hannah Schollard from Lonnie. Great. Oh! I've got it. What is it? The shuttle.

It's called Scholar. The Space Shuttle Scholar. Oh, I like that. Yeah. You know, because it's all about discovery and learning and shit. Yeah, they'd actually go with something like that, wouldn't they? The Scholar. The Scholar.

I was thinking flying apple because of Tazzy, but that's better. Mine's much better. Yeah. The flying apple. Picture it. Someone's just throwing an apple through the sky. Have they thrown or have they piffed it? Piffed it. Yeah, you don't throw an apple. You're piff an apple. Come on, mate.

A big shout out and thank you to all of our Tazzy listeners. We do hope to get there one day. I did notice after we announced the UK tour, someone tagged their friend and said, like, loll, they fly to the other side of the world before they come to Tasmania. Oh, sorry, Tazzy. If you would like us to come down. I was in Tazzy. Matt was there very recently. But if you'd like us to come down, basically, we look at where the downloads are coming from and then we go to those places.

So if you're from a smaller place overseas or from Tasmania, Adelaide or Perth, for example, get some friends to download the show. We see a spike and we go, there's people there, we're going to go. Totally. We are total. We're like moths to the flame. Exactly.

We're like sheep to the flame. Mm, lamb. So a lot of pressure there, Hannah, but please organise your island of people to listen to our podcast. Heaps of you, Hannah. And if you are, if you're looking for comedy in Launceston, there's a monthly room there called Fresh Comedy, which is so good. They get Bigger Saxon, Australia down there.

So go there. And get some lulls. And tell me to bring us down. Can I thank some people? Please do, Jess. Thank you. Bring us home. I would like to thank from Riverstone, New South Wales,

just north of where we are, quite a bit north. Blake Fishburn. Oh. Blake's a great name. Fishburn is great. Yeah. Well, how about the Morpheus? Yeah.

Lawrence Fishburn. Yes, very good. Great actor. I mean, Morpheus, the Space Shuttle Morpheus sounds pretty cool. Oh, yeah. Or the Red Pill. I'm going to go with Morpheus. Thank you.

Morpheus totally sounds like a spaceship name. The Space Shuttle Red Pill. No, no. The Space Shuttle, the Red Pill. I love it. Which one's the good one? Which one's the bad one? And which one's the MRA one?

I don't know. I cannot remember. So thank you very much. Blake. Thanks, Blake. And can I also thank from Langrange? What's GA? Georgia?

Georgia? I think it is Georgia. Is it in the US of A? US of A, yes, that's correct. Got Georgia on my mind. GA. It's Georgia. Georgia, well done.

I'd like to thank Rory Hicks. Oh, that is it. I love the name Rory. That's a bad ass name. That's great. All, every name. game again tonight. Yeah, killing it.

All killer. Absolutely. Rory Hicks. Rory Hicks. Bosen, the Bosen Blues. Oh, the Space Shuttle Bosen Blues. Oh, yeah. Wow.

That nice. Higgs Bosen Blues is a Nick Cave song. Oh, right. I thought you were. Which is, you know, the Higgs Bosen. The Bosen Blues, take the Bosen Blues pill? Space Shuttle Bosen Blues pill? I mean, I know I said no bad ideas, but.

Yeah, let's give him something better than that. I think the Hitson. Space Shuttle Boson, because that's a scientific word, so they'd probably bloody love that. Yeah, but it's all about accelerating things into each other. Yeah, they probably wouldn't like that. Well, I mean, we accelerate it into the sky. What about the bad seed?

I don't know if they'd call anything bad. The good seed. Good seed. Space shuttle, good speed. Godspeed. Godspeed. Godspeed. Nicholas Cage.

slash Nick Cave. It's all come back together. Godspeed was his character, it was Nicholas Cage's character's name in. In the rock. In the rock. The rock. There we go.

Called the Rock. Space Shuttle the Rock. Yeah, the Rock. He's got a picture of Dwayne the Rock Johnson on the side. And is the people's elbow. The people's elbow. Oh my God. Stop.

Let's call it the people's elbow. And it's in the shape of Dwayne Johnson's elbow, just flying through the sky. And it lands. down on like Sean Michael's head or something. Nothing could possibly go wrong this time. Oh, that's funny. All right, we'll enjoy that, Rory.

Rory Hickson, and thanks to everyone that supports the show at Patreon. You can do so at any time. Patreon.com slash do go on pod. Or you can get in contact with us. All the links are on our website, including tickets to shows and all the like. Do go onpod.com is that place. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. We're at Do Go OnPod.

And YouTube. We're talking about putting up some more content up there, including recently, who released another live episode from the Melbourne Comedy Festival that we filmed. Yes, so there's at least four videoed, live episodes up there now,

going back to the Loch Ness Monster. Yeah, with Nick Mason, that one. And then also episodes from this year as well. So check out our faces. Yes, check those out.

And yeah, we are looking to maybe add some more video stuff. Potentially during our UK tour, we'll upload some sort of tour diaries there. And lots of people say, there's comments along the lines of, oh, it's weird to see their face. And that could be you. That could be you.

We posted a video a few weeks ago of some stand-up that I did on TV. A lot of people were like, oh, it's strange. I'm assuming they meant seeing me in person and not the content. The material. Oh, God, that was some weird material. God, that's odd. Strange take. There was a lot of very positive feedback there, too, Bob.

People should check that out. If you follow us on social media, you'll be able to see that too. Um, there's also a podcast out, uh, from the people to bring you to go on called primates. And it's a pop cast, a podcast about, I think it's a podcast. It's a pop cast about primates and popular culture. And we, uh, Jess and Dave have been on a few episodes each. I've been on every single episodes of us. I'm sorry to brag.

It's the same one in this show, mate. It is true. I'm a real hog. Uh, get off the mark. It's, but it's, I reckon it's big, it's funnier every week. It's such a fun show. It sounds so dumb, but it is, I think it's a really good show. So if you're, if you're, have been hesitant, maybe just give it a body.

Yeah, the number one feedback is, I didn't think this would be good, but it's very good. Why didn't that? As soon as I heard the idea, I was like, yes, genius. I love a niche podcast. Like, I love an oddly specific theme. I love that. Very good. It is a lot of fun.

And we've gone through a bunch of stuff. Jess has been an episode about, uh, George. in the jungle and also an episode about the Marvel character, Hit Monkey. David has been on an episode about The Simpsons and their musical version of The Planet of the Apes. And also an episode about Congo. We had both forgotten.

It was the most recent episode we've recorded. That was. And so much fun. I've just been listening back to bloody hell it's funny. I'd say, don't watch the movie. Just listen to the episode because the episode was more fun than the movie, which was terrible. It was a tough watch.

Right. And actually that would be the episode that's most recently gone out. So, yeah, so much fun. Check it out. I have very fun memories of that afternoon. It was good fun. It was a whole lot of fun up in Sydney. And cuties.

Hanging out. Absolutely. I think we're going to sign off for another week. But yeah, check out all our stuff online. Drop us a line. Do go on pod.gum.com. Or suggest a topic. That's another thing you can do.

Do go onpod. com. There's a little tab. You click there. You tell us why it's great. we're looking to it and then we make it an episode. That's how the cycle of life goes. Hakuna metata.

You say Hakuna Matita. I say Hakumana Matita. Time to go. All right. Thanks so much for listening, guys. We'll be back next week with another fresh episode. But until then, I'll say thank you and goodbye. Later.

Hakuna maitima. That isn't tired. Simon Badminton Connell. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. I mean, if you want, it's up to you. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there.

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