Space Shuttle Challenger : Ten Journeys into the Unknown Authors preface Acknowledgements The Geritol Bunch: The Development of the Shuttle History of Challengers Design and Her First Mission Ride Sally Ride: The Flight of STS 7 Weightlifters: the Flight of STS 8 A Heck of a Big Leap: the Flights of STS 41B 41C and 41G The Untouchables: the Flights of STS 51B 51F and 61A Dont Break our Airplane: the Disaster and Aftermath including Rogers inquiry Appendix: Challengers Planned Missions during 1986 and 1987 Glossary of Acronyms Bibliography Index Ironically the loss of Challenger in January 1986 fired my interest in space exploration more than any other single event. I was nine years old. My parents were at the time midway through moving house and luckily the TV was one of the few domestic items still to be packed. I watched the entire horror unfold live on all of the network stations. Admittedly my fascination with rockets and astronauts stars and planets had begun several years earlier but Challengers destruction turned it from an occasional hobby to a fascination which has remained with me ever since. In September 1988 aged 11 1 came home from school to watch STS 26 return the Shuttle fleet to orbital operations. Five years later I gave a speech on the STS 51L disaster to my teacher as part of my GCSE English assessment. Another decade passed and now a teacher myself I returned to my school one cold Monday morning to explain to my pupils what had happened to Challengers sister ship Columbia a few days earlier. In some ways the loss of Columbia affected me more deeply than Challenger