30 Year Anniversary Remarks
as given by
Homer Hickam
in Huntsville, Alabama
in Huntsville, Alabama
at the USSRC Remembrance Day for Challenger
beneath the Space Shuttle Replica Pathfinder
January 28, 2016
We come here today to honor the men and
women who have gone on before us, they who were lifted from the Earth 30 years
ago today, they who were determined to venture into the far reaches of space,
they who met with tragedy instead, a tragedy that still causes pain in the
hearts of not only those of us who knew them but in all of us who believe in
our future in the great beyond, the great beyond of our solar system and, yes,
even the stars.
I was in Japan that day, there to train
the first Japanese astronauts who were to join us in a Spacelab mission. The
schedule showed that in all probability they would fly aboard one of America's
sleek space shuttles, the one called Challenger.
Although I was not there, I was told it
was not a normal day at Cape Canaveral. Ice was on the launch pad, icicles hung
from the tower. Yet, the sky was blue, the air clean. The countdown, after days
of frustration, was at last proceeding. An expectation was in the air. Challenger was going and where it would
go, so would its crew and, in a way, so would we all.
The call in Japan was very early in the
morning. In disbelief, I heard that Challenger had come apart in the sky. How
it had happened, my caller didn't know, just that it had. Within a few days,
the mission for the Japanese astronauts was put on hold for how long, we didn't
know. For all we knew, it might be permanent. I came home, home to Huntsville,
home to Marshall Space Flight Center, home to a shaken agency, a shaken
country, a shaken dream.
As the tragedy unfolded, and we began to
learn the physical causes of the accident, the national media and many elected
officials kept demanding: Of what value is all this? Is it worth seven lives or
even one life? Why proceed? Maybe what we should do is just give up. Maybe this
was the reckoning that had always been there, the bitter fruit of an endeavor
that is too much for the grasp of mere humans.
I had met all the crew and knew fairly
well El Onizuka. El came up to Marshall often, to put on a space suit and
venture underwater in the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator. I was often his safety
diver. He was a brilliant man with a fine sense of humor. All of us at the tank
liked him a lot. I also met another of the crew. Christa McAuliffe. The teacher
in space. She came to the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator on a tour and I was there
that day. We only shared a few words but her excitement for all things space
was truly evident. She was on a mission to show school children in the country
and the world the value of education, the value of exploration, the value of
pushing into the high frontier.
There is a beauty in anything well done,
and that goes for a life well lived. Christa lived a fine, productive life.
She was not afraid. None of them were
afraid. And that was why we were and are not afraid to continue her dream which
we do today.
There are many space programs in the
world today. In many ways, they share the dream with us. How could they not? We
are all humans. But we often forget, in our rush to be inclusive and fair, that
there is something unique about any great endeavor in which Americans are part
and this is especially true of the movement into space, there to explore and
even live.
We represent a minority but very
important view in this world of people as individuals. From our founding as a nation,
we have believed that we have the natural right to be free, that no man or
woman is inherently greater than another, that we do not have to accept tyranny
as a way of life, that we can remake and reshape ourselves any way we like
without others telling us we can't.
This outlook is actually a heavy burden.
It would be easier to let someone high and mighty tell us what to do. But
that's not our way. Those are not our values. When they go anywhere, even into
space, often without even realizing it, our people carry with them the values
of freedom, of representative democracy, of a disdain for oppression, and an
overarching optimism that if the goal is important enough, it will be obtained,
not by a collective following orders, but by individuals voluntarily bound
together for a common goal. That is our heritage. May it ever be so.
Of course, we make mistakes. Launching Challenger that day was one of them.
Seven extraordinary men and women died because those who held responsibility
for their lives did not fully understand their vehicle.
Afterwards, it was not a time for
heroics. It was a time for reflection and then to roll up our sleeves and get
back to work. This we did at NASA, at our contractors, and especially here at
Marshall Space Flight Center. When it was clear that President Reagan, God
bless him, and the Congress were telling us to go ahead, the engineers at
Marshall got busy. They solved the problem that caused Challenger and we began to fly again.
If they had not, if they had failed,
there would have been no Hubble Space Telescope, no Hubble repair missions, no
Spacelab missions which included those first Japanese astronauts and many
others from around the world, no International Space Station. The ISS could not
have been built without the shuttle. Those things we did but always, I think,
with the Challenger and her crew on
our minds.
As we come together today, in the shadow
of the past and the literal shadow of this magnificent space shuttle replica, we
recall a failure that was followed by the triumph of the human spirit and a
series of great missions.
The temptation always is to remember
those triumphs and those missions and put aside our failures but we must never
forget the awful lessons of Challenger even while we dedicate ourselves anew to
the high frontier.
The people who raised me in the
coalfields of the Appalachian mountains were no strangers to hardship and
death. But they sustained themselves by following a few simple rules of life.
They said to themselves and anyone who wondered about them:
We are proud of who we are.
We stand up
for what we believe.
We keep our families together.
We trust in God but rely on
ourselves.
By adhering to those simple approaches
to life, they became a people who were not afraid to do what had to be done, to
mine the deep coal, and to do it with integrity and honor.
I believe we of NASA, we of the American
space program, also adhere to those rules.
We are proud of who we are.
We not only
hold the dream of space. We're doing something about it.
We stand up for what we believe.
We are
not afraid to voice our belief that the future for mankind is not just here on
this planet but other planets and moons and stars.
We keep our family together.
We are a
family, just as sure as blood relatives. We are bound together as a family because
we have a belief that what we do is not just a dream but a requirement for the
survival of mankind.
And we trust in our Maker but rely on
ourselves.
Yes, there is a spiritual side to what we do, a sense that there is
something far greater than ourselves urging us to do what we do, to climb off
this Earth and try to touch the stars. We know it's not going to be given to
us. To reach this great goal, we will have to strive for it, to sweat, and,
sadly, sometimes to die.
And so we find ourselves here, 30 years
after Challenger, challenged by the memory of that vehicle and its crew to
dedicate ourselves anew to go forth from this place with not only the latest
technical marvels and the most advanced machines possible, but also with an
enduring belief in the old ways, the old virtues, the old truths that all but
force us to lift our heads from the darkness to the light, and say for the
nation and all the world to hear:
We are proud of who we are.
We stand up for what we believe.
We keep our family together.
We trust in our Maker but rely on ourselves.
We do what needs to be done.
We are Americans. We are NASA.
We are not afraid.
