What happened to the American space shuttle accident?

The space shuttle Challenger was launched over Florida at1the early morning of October 28th19861:39 (GMT 16: 39).

After the space shuttle Challenger took off, the O-ring of the right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed, and the adjacent external fuel tank failed under the high temperature combustion of the leaking flame, which led to the disintegration of the high-speed space shuttle at the 73rd second after launch, and all seven astronauts on board were killed. The wreckage of Challenger was scattered in the sea and was later salvaged by a long-range search and rescue team.

Cultural influence

Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire, was a crew member of Challenger, which attracted some media interest and was broadcast live at the launch site, but only CNN provided the national live broadcast. However, in a study after the accident, 65,438+07% of the respondents said they watched the launch of the space shuttle, and the remaining 85% said they learned about the accident within an hour.

According to the author of the report, "news of only two accidents spread faster." One of them is the news that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas; The other is that the news of President franklin roosevelt's death spread among students of Kent State University. Another study mentioned that "even people who didn't watch TV at the time of the accident will almost certainly see the replay of the accident in the almost uninterrupted reports of TV stations a few days later".