Two In The Think Tank - 151 - The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
Episode Date: September 12, 2018In 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: dogoonpod@gmail.comREFERNCES 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey everybody, Jess and Dave, just jumping in really quickly at the top here to make sure
that you are across all the details for our upcoming Christmas show.
That's right, we are doing a live show in Melbourne Saturday December the 2nd, 2023, our
final podcast of the year, our Christmas special.
It's downstairs at Morris House, which usually be called the European beer cafe.
On Saturday December the 2nd, 2023 at 4.30pm, come along, come one, come all, and get tickets at dogoonpod.com.
This episode is brought to you by Progressive.
Most of you aren't just listening right now.
You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising.
But what if you could be saving money
by switching to Progressive?
Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750
on average, and auto customers qualify for an average of 7 discounts.
Multitask right now, quote today at progressive.com. Progressive casualty and trans company
and affiliates, national average 12 month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved
with progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary, discounts
not available in all safe and situations.
Are you working way too hard for way too little?
There's never been a better time to consider a career in IT.
You could enjoy a recession-resistant career
and a rewarding field with plenty of growth opportunities
and often flexible work environments.
Go to mycomputercareer.edu and take the free career
evaluation.
You could start your new career in months, not years. Take classes online or on campus Visit PlanetBroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates
Hello and welcome to another episode of do go on my name is Dave Warnocky and I'm here with Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart I'd have 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 nice wearing this workplace, so you're out.
No.
Does that mean I'm in?
You're in, just perfect.
Yeah.
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 out well for you.
And it's embarrassing though,
because I did start to torch the place.
And so there is a small fire just in that corner.
I think, I know.
Nothing you can't take care of, I'm sure.
Yeah.
Are you gonna 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.
That's a wee dog to look for it. All right, well, I'll see you later. That's really dark to look for.
Is that my dog?
No, no.
I just want to look at an elderly dog today.
Well, you know, it's morning and thought,
God, I feel like looking at a dog.
I need a location and a docky patient.
Dog look up.
Okay, you ignore the location there.
At the dog look out.
Dog shop, dog shop.
Dog look at the dog.
Dog look, dog oh my god.
And seeing.
And that is how easy improv really is.
I have 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 Blocktober Buster Month. I just like Blocktober.
No.
No, I like Blocktober Buster Month.
Blocktober would be a month of episodes about Lego.
And we've already done that.
Been there, done that.
Thanks for nothing, Lego.
You really should have saved that type of 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, 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
big foots and the moth men's. Right. yes, I also knew what a cryptoid was, immediately. I was like,
ah, finally, they mentioned cryptoids. We've done a few cryptoids in the past. They've
been really popular. Yes, we also did a lockdown monster and I think there's one other, but I'm
losing it right now. But so there, there'll be a list of probably 15 or so different kinds of topics.
And all you have to do is 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.
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 gonna go back through the hat
and find out what that is, and we will finish.
For the-
Fits with a banger.
Oh, bangtober?
Bang-banger.
Bangtober? 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 gonna have a bang, bangarang,
bang tober, bang, bang tober.
Because you can put these ideas in the bank.
In the bank.
In the bank.
This bank, bank.
It's bank, bank tober.
Okay, I'm gonna go back to...
Block tober.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay. Cock tober. No, okay Boktober. Yeah. Yeah, okay.
Boktober.
No, okay.
Boktoberfest.
Oh dear.
David, you're right.
There's no wrong ideas.
No, there's so.
Yeah, that is a wrong idea.
Yeah.
David, you're wrong as.
So wrong.
You're wrong, AS.
Yeah, if I could.
Sorry to go there, but Jess is 100% right.
She's right AS.
I'm right AS.'s right, A.S. I'm right, A.S.
Right A.F.O.B.A.
It's something wrong with him.
Oh, love puns, but I'm bad at them.
I like how Dave came up out worse than me in that,
because it felt like.
Yeah.
Are you literally losing until he went into a cocktail of this?
I just got a flu home late. I can't compete with the pun king match to it now
Stop trying to make that a thing stop being so bloody good a pun stop saying so good man
Stop saying so good mate look I told you talking so does easy you make it look
Is there any also any update on our upcoming two-it, David Boyd?
Well, at the end of a cocktail of its working title, that'll take us to Blow Vemba.
November, when we are hitting up the...
And Dick Samba.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, 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 isn't the night before the first Birmingham show on Thursday November the 15th at eight o'clock at the Glee Club
That's the only one with tickets. So you want to get involved make the tractor Birmingham even if it's two dollars down two doors
Yeah, there's also I think
Some tickets have for Melbourne our our Bon Voyage show.
It comes as Bon.
It's Bon.
If you wanna come say Bon Voyage, you sure?
If you wanna contribute to the Snacks and Magnets Fund,
that's fine.
This is the time to do it.
We cleaned up, I say wait, I'm distancing myself
from this, yes, cleaned up big time in Sydney.
She got, 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 pounders, 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 six tape would be called.
The long whatever.
Hey, anything goes.
No bad ideas.
No bad ideas here.
Now what's going on there?
Come on guys.
Let us know if you want to call it Cocktoberfest.
All right.
Blow them, but honestly.
Yeah, not bad. All right, well I've got a question to get us on to Let us know if you want to call it Cocktoberfest, alright? Blow Vemba, 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 of the coast of Florida
on January 28th, 1986?
86.
86.
Good year.
Disintegrated Atlantic Ocean.
I'm taking over a good year, by the way.
A very good year, not an 86.
It just doesn't sound the same from you.
Damn it.
It sounds kind of lame.
Well, I think you're just hearing what we all are doing.
Okay, try again, try again.
No, 86, all right, a good year.
Oh, yuck! Went from lame to repulsive.
Yeah.
All right.
No, he's six.
What does he know?
I don't know.
I wasn't alive.
I was a moth man.
Or.
It's not a moth man.
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 disaster.
Was it a gyro plane?
No, we've already done a blim plan, so I don't know what else.
It comes to another big disaster.
Was it a spaceship?
It is a spaceship of sorts.
In 1986, disintegrating over the...
You were first.
Was, you know, Jess looks like she's about to get this.
Is it... No, I don't know.
Is it Rosewell?
Is it Apollo 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?
Oh, this is a sad topic, Dave.
Well, yes.
But it's an extremely interesting one.
I'd like to thank the suggestion 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.
Oh, 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 reports.
So hopefully this satisfies you too, Will.
He suggested space shuttles in general.
Yeah. Wow.
And he said, whenever one looks at things about them,
they think that's pretty cool, but when you look into them,
there's a few more problems.
And I'm going to talk about one very big problem.
Oh, interesting, maybe.
Is it like an ethical problem, or like a philosophical one?
Actually, probably both.
Wow.
Oh, OK.
How'd you guys know anything about the challenger?
And I have a spell.
Nice one.
C-H-A-L-L-E-N-G-7-8.
Ooh.
Do you want to tell me who?
Correct!
Yay!
Yay, Manny!
It's hard to tell someone that they're great.
It is hard.
It's hard to hear, everybody.
I'm jealous of how great you are.
And so you should be.
And also to you.
And so with you.
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.
Earth heart moon. If on earth. 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 Cocktoberfest.
I'll tell you very much.
We come in peace.
All right.
This is no good.
All right, now let me, this bits 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 plans were increasingly viewed as the United States'
answer to being able to further explore space over their Soviet enemies.
The idea was popularized by the so-called Von Braun paradigm, named after
a famous German rocket scientist and engineer Greg Dixon.
Vernon 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 set a couple of words.
Oh!
And there were actual words this time.
Daze!
So, Vendor von Braun is basically the godfather of rocket chips, 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 heart.
I was just still winning heart.
I was still.
Maze.
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're going to do. Developer
are 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. Okay, 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, Yuriga Garren, 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.
It was so, it's seven.
I know, it's a long time ago, isn't it?
If you'd asked me if we'd done the moon landing
on the podcast I'd go, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Really?
Episode seven.
This is episode 101. 51.
Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't remember all.
It sounded like you were surprised that it was so long ago,
but it turns out you were just surprised.
Yeah, I just forgot.
Seven. It happened at all.
I also talked about Venn of one brawn, hey Greg Dixon on that episode as well.
Yeah, I remember his name well.
Greg Dixon invented the electric shaver.
And discovered Tennis Hillen?
Yeah, that suggests they all discovered Tennis Hillen.
Yeah, it was a team effort. In a Yes, they all discovered in a cylinder.
Yeah.
It was a team effort.
In a way, didn't we all discover in a cylinder?
I know, I did.
Mm-hmm.
Big time.
Mm-hmm.
It's your plan to find.
Every morning, I rediscovered a penicillin in myself.
Wow.
Where are you putting it?
You're right.
I'm very sick.
Oh.
So as we all know, the moon landing was a success in 1969, but then after that NASA needed
a new direction.
1969.
Nice.
1969.
The President of Michigan 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, builder-reusable shuttle,
credit 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 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 to 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. I good year. It sounds so stupid from him, doesn't it?
No, but it's really just, 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.
Okay.
All right, well, I've 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.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was originally planned to be named Constitution
because it was unveiled on Constitution Day, September 17th.
1976.
No good.
Next, what else I 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.
There's got tens of thousands of letters.
And I guess wanting to go for the popular vote,
he went, Constitution sucks.
Let's just call the enterprise.
Constitution is a, is a dud name.
It's too many letters.
Enterprise. Nice and snappy.
Nice short word.
What is that?
Three four letters.
I like it.
Enterprise.
Three syllables.
Constitution.
Four.
Four.
Fuck.
Oh, how to nap in the middle.
How many was it?
Too many essays.
That's at least four letters.
No good. So the, the nerds named many was it? Too many S's. That's at least four L's. No good.
So the nerd's name is,
it's a roast, which I love.
Gerald Ford's no nerd.
I mean, you see him on the Simpsons?
He's home.
Do you like beer?
Do you like nachos?
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 fine.
Am I remembering that right at all?
That's absolutely right.
Great.
Our Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenbury,
and some of the show's cast attended the interview.
The G-Rod.
The G-Rod, they attended the Enterprise's debut.
Or Grod.
Debate.
It was on Debate. 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 7.7 and towed it around.
So you've got to, yeah, 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
Oh, that was the first space worthy orbiter and it made it's an auger flight in 1981. It's the night. I mean the 80s
I'm 81. It's here. It's that one. Good year. Oh
It's the night. I mean the 80s. I'm 81. It's happy. That's a good year.
Oh, did some kill to lose some sort of football match in the...
Yeah, 80s were horrible for the last really.
Yeah, real bad time.
I mean, apart from that one glory as you're in the 60s,
there's never been any other good period.
Yeah, but the problem is that 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 and the last decade when we had two
grandfathers, two losing grandfathers.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Oh, oh, hidden over.
Oh, sorry.
Oh, I've room just got real icy.
That's crying.
The boys. It's tragic.
I don't care about anything that much.
Anything.
Give me something.
Me?
Facts.
Oh, facts.
Jess, sorry.
Wow.
Nuff here.
She's facts over Jess.
I mean.
Yeah, okay.
We all choose facts over Jess.
It's a fact of life, which I like.
The next shot all that flew was the one
that we're gonna talk about today, the challenger.
I like the challenger, challenger.
Yeah, underdog, I like writing that into the name.
Yeah.
And now all of the,
took me a sec to get it, I was like,
oh, there's gonna be like,
going, let's call ourselves the best ever, or the champ. I was like, huh? Others would be like, go and let's call ourselves
the best ever, or the champ.
The victory.
Yeah.
The challenger, like that.
I love that.
The call to the underdog.
Yeah.
Let's have a crack.
Let's see how this goes.
Let's 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 Festival, 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 4, 1983.
Hmm, a good year.
Fuck.
You do it so much better. That was so good. That was so good.
Oh my god. That felt so natural. I even nearly moved on before I remember hang on exactly
Yes, I've all and Matt did a whole build up. He's a bit
I'm like he lifted out of his chair like he was going for a mark
Yeah, I'm killed a often tried but fail too many up something they did have all year who's down?
Who's roving?
Stay down in case it spells
Who's roving? Stay down.
One of you stay down in case it spills.
Anyway.
They're all jumping.
That's...
Every player, even if they're 50 meters away
from the ball, that jump.
That was pretty close.
Hey, 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.
All right, next time.
Okay.
Okay.
Now, do you think anyone actually gave a shit
about the shuttles?
Yes.
No.
By the mid-19.
Maybe.
By the mid-19, the American general public had really lost interest in this.
No, no, my answer is no.
Do I win?
We could call next month, Shuttlecocktober.
That's good.
We do all episodes about badminton. Four of the big Badminton champs.
Oh, I'm going to aim what? I'm going to eat your top three Badminton players.
Great. How do I choose? Greg Dixon sounds like a Badminton player. He would eat
being there for sure. Simon, Badminton Connell. That is a a that is about as niche as you'll ever get he was a
He was a journeyman footballer in the 90s called Simon Minton Connell
Oh boy, can you add to that out please and leave that in it all it's nice. I will be turning the volume up on that
It's so it stands out. In fact, could you just replay it a few times?
If anyone listening understood that please tweet me me and say, I'm okay.
Otherwise, I may not go on.
Do guys in do go on.
Oh, I see.
I think I'll switch.
Well, I made a reference like that last week in our 150th episode in front of a
Ripple bunch 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 in W.O.
And I said, I remember them from the wrestling in the 1990s.
No, I reckon I reckon there was one percent of the crowd who got that
three people.
Yeah, thank you.
So many of the three people.
They didn't laugh, but they got it.
Yeah, they went very good.
Yeah, they did that, that sort of exhale laugh.
Like a, no, that's too much.
They got a heart.
It's 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 public had lost interest in space.
And this actually is, this plot line is mirrored on the episode of The Simpsons TV.
You recognize this. They decided that they would recapture the interest of the nation by sending the first private citizen into space.
I remember on the Simpsons when they put Barney and Homer battled out and there, Homer goes into space.
Oh, I remember. Because Barney has a non-alcoholic pee at begins.
I remember home eating chips in space, yes.
Oh, it's a blue danian beautiful, beautiful scene.
So to capture the attention of the general public, they decided to launch the teacher in
space space space project. Yep.
Just doesn't really like teachers are getting from that. Oh,
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 was like, I come from
a family of teachers. We too as hardwired. Me too. Yeah. I got a lot of. Look at us all.
We shunned the teaching profession and instead started podcast.
I mean in a way, are we not tooting right now?
Tooting.
Yeah, two times. Two times.
Sun.
Two times.
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.
On the do I. TISP. Oh, don't like that. TISP. TISP was, it's a NASA program announced by
President Ronald Reagan in 1984. So, started by Nixon, went to Gerald Ford, now he's
Ronald Reagan. So, the president's really handballing this to him.
So, is he ever called Ronald Reagan? Not that I've heard, but I like it.
No, why not? Ron Ray? I like it. Simla, but not as good.
I like, I like both. What about Ronald Reagan not as good. I like both.
What about Ronald Reagan?
Well, he referred to as that.
Several times.
Ah, socked in, man!
A win!
So, uh, Rory, Ron Ray.
Not playing favourites.
Announce the TISP in 1984.
And it was designed to inspire students,
honor teachers and spur interest in
mathematics, science, and space exploration.
The project would carry teachers into space as payload specialists, which is fancy to
have for non-astronauts of billions.
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 is the payload.
Right.
Do the shuttles have trunks?
Well, they got a bit that opens up.
They got a little boot?
It's quite a big boot.
That is cute.
Cute boot.
I had to fit a rug in my tiny car the other day,
and it fit.
A rug.
Yeah.
That is a story in a heart.
Quite a long rug, thanks very much.
Yeah.
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, humble.
Were you calling it your payload?
Obviously.
Because they say dropping payload always sort of meant like a bomb.
But it means just whatever you're holding.
Other meant poop.
Drop your payload.
Gotta go drop a payload.
Who's yelling at you?
Matt hates it.
Who's the only people to drop their payload?
Matt, that you've seen in the cinemas.
I watched the recent mission impossible.
They use the term payload in a film, not just somebody saying that in a cinema.
Yes.
As they walk in the eating popcorn.
So I dropped my payload on the weekend.
Matt, he's dropping.
He's very rude.
He always eavesdrops.
Anyway, he drops Eve.
The plan of the test was that these non-astronaut civilians
would go on to space, they'll return to their classrooms
to share their experience with their students,
inspiring the nation.
NASA ordered 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 press release.
Barely written.
Rory, what are you doing?
So just a normal, everyday person.
With extreme gifts.
Yeah. Yeah.
Extreme.
So like...
He's like, can we put extreme in red?
That's too hard to do.
Make that bold and size 14.
That's a color flyer.
Nothing it should be.
Whatever you say, Mr. President.
God, it'd be good to be the president.
Imagine.
A lot of pressure.
That would be real fun.
So I don't like the Oval Office,
because I hate Oval's. It's kind't like the oval office, because I hate ovals.
It's kind of like a circle that fucked up.
Give me a circle office.
Yeah, I reckon my main as president, you'll be out of change.
You can redecorate anything you like.
Mmm, who is do that?
You're all powerful, I believe.
That's true.
But I don't think Australians can be.
Ah, that'd be right.
Sorry.
Fuck. It is brutal to that would be right. Sorry.
Sorry.
It is brutal to find out this way.
Yeah.
If I can be honest.
Can I be, can I be, can I be the president of this podcast?
And Snack Captain at the same time.
I'm so sorry in the constitution, it says, no, jesses.
What, that's so specific.
I know.
What are the chances?
There's only three of us.
Yeah. And my name's Jess,'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!
No, I'm so sorry.
Oh, this is such a devastating day.
Yeah.
But.
Oh, wow.
I can't be the president.
Yeah, if you also, I mean, you helped write the constitution.
You really should have put your name on it.
You know I was hungry when we were doing that.
I wasn't paying attention.
No, there was no snack jug back then.
Yeah, snacks.
All right, Dave Carriol, and I'm just going to sit here and be depressed for a bit.
So the search was on defined an ordinary, but gifted person.
More than 40,000 applications were mailed to interested teachers
Well 11,000 teachers sent completed applications to NASA
So 29,000 of them said yeah, give me the pamphlet and then never bothered filling
Yeah space
I'm just gonna go down to Florida instead. I don't know that I would fill it out. I'd be too scared
I feel it out. I want to go to space.
That's in that kind of scenario, I'll fill it out.
If they ask me, I'll think about it then.
Right, because you can always pull out later.
Well.
Not you've committed now, you're going to space.
Yeah, even though they've got hundreds of people that want to go, they somehow picked
the person that's like, please don't make me go, please.
Sounds like they're starting 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.
These applicants were notified of their selections and were
garnered together for further selection processes before they were whittled down to ten grand
finalists. These were then trained for a time at NASA, and in 1985, NASA selected
Krista McCallough to be the first teacher in space. Krista. A backup teacher, Barbara Morgan,
was also chosen. Okay. So they must like to home it to her bunny.
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, Christopher Couliffe 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, unreliable.
Yeah.
Take that P-E-T-V.
Overpricing smelly, yeah.
Yeah, it's stupid.
What waving at the drivers of other.
Oh no, I love that.
Shuttle, super power.
Oh, I love when kids wave.
It's so cute.
No, I like it when the bus drivers wave to each other.
So cute.
No, that's what you thought you were making
talking about the passengers.
What about when-
I can't remember.
Talk about the passengers.
When people on motorbikes wave to each other,
that's good.
There's a little nod.
A little nod?
It's fun.
I drive the same vehicle as you do.
Like, boop, hello.
We should do that more often, Eric.
There should be more solidarity between-
Yeah.
I wave at every car I see.
It's very tiring. Really get away.
Most people look at you like,
is there something on my face?
Many accidents.
Yeah, I'm gone, 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 snacks,
so I guess Matt's going to drive.
Snack captain, driver and waving captain.
Hello!
Hello!
You can be driving captain, do you like that?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Captain of course.
Could I be driving for us, captain?
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
June your voice, 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... Yeah. I don NFL player or like Madonna or something.
Send 80s Donald Trump up there.
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 Mark and Tyler agree with them so far
that they got a present day person.
But I would have just gone for someone
with a little more razzle and or dazzle.
How about this?
Darryl Strawberry.
Oh.
From that episode of The Simpsons.
Yeah.
Jesus. Baseballer. Yeah. That note, Jesus was my suggestion. Oh, Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
I reckon that would have got a lot of past. That would have got the press
in our ass, for sure. Jesus is second coming and the first going to space.
He's obviously he's gone before, but this is first time 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.
Great.
Christa 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 Terence 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.
Well, based, like, physically. Yeah, yeah, like wide shoots.
And I was a psychiatrist. That's what I look for.
To a stable, infectious big personality sounds like a nightmare on a shuttle.
And on a palette! Oh, God, she's back.
Pretend we're not here. Oh God, she's back.
But then we're not here.
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 what a, you know, actual NASA training.
She also went on many television shows
to talk about the mission,
turning it to somewhat of a national celebrity.
Her backup, Barbara Morgan was also trained.
Barbara Morgan didn't do as much PR.
Yeah, well, we're talking like Barbara Morgan.
Rob Bob.
That is a real meat and two veg kind of not even three veg.
More like Barbara,
Balkan.
Am I right?
Barbara.
Oh, tell me. Blah. We! Tell me, blah, blah.
We're going to talk about Barbara later.
Oh my goodness.
No, don't beat yourself up.
It's actually...
I enjoyed it, though.
And I was really fun, I remember that maybe she was...
She doesn't explode, does she?
It's a good ending for Barbara.
Don't worry about Barbara.
Barbara is coming back in a big way. Don't worry about that, Barbara. Blabra.
Blabra is coming back in a big way.
But let me get to that later.
Then I stand by Blabra Balkan.
Right now, we're talking about Christa McCallough, the number one draft pick, not number two.
Number one banana.
She was.
McCallough's plan duties included basic science experiments in the fields of...
...permord...
...permording and trading. One tariff here just like pouring different liquids into a beaker
The instructors behind her like got a clip what are they just nodding even though that every other NASA person is like the smarter scientists on the planet
Yeah, she's doing the most she's there doing like she's built a fake volcano
Yeah, and they're going
Whoa, whoa, she's like I will somehow put this egg inside
this bottle using only a candle. Whoa, whoa, there's no flames on bottom. Oh, 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, on the, on the
shuttle. They give it, yeah, they swap out the egg for powdered egg. And like, the fly
might, 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.
Is this your card?
Oh, she's magic.
That's magic.
That is not math.
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 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 so much.
I love it, see, when we have ideas on this podcast, we have a couple of other people with a spit ball with.
And like, cock, cock, well,
what's my call?
No, I wasn't calling her cock.
So I think he'd misremembered her name.
I was like, geez, I really misremembered this one.
Cock tober.
Cock tober fest.
Yeah, like that's a bad idea.
We're here to say that's a bad idea.
I would never print that on a pamphlet
Again, okay, I learned the lesson. Let's not forget 10,000 it let me know if you want one
I mean I came up with a pretty good logo
What is it Dave? It's our writers. It's really our writer
For 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.
Start.
So basically, 80s, yeah.
My call was to join six highly trained astronauts aboard the Challenger.
They were.
What?
What do you love?
She's doing magic tricks and they're all like the smartest people in the world.
It's so 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 here.
I just remembered something funny that I heard the other day.
I know, you're remembering Arthur 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 aboard the Challenger are well as well as Chris and McCollough.
They were Francis Dick are scoby dick are so dick are scoby dick are scoby dick are scoby
Okay, he was dig ask a bee
It's beautiful.
That's the he's the commander leading the mission a bit of respect captain dick commander dick
Captain dick was 46 years old had been to space once before.
A bit of experience. Michael J. Smith. Very boring. Michael Smith is already taken.
It's Michael Smith taken. Okay, J. That's taken, probably. He was a pilot on his launch debut.
He was 40 years old. It's got the same initials as me. I like them. H initial. Better than the last.
Am. Oh, that's a hot start. What do you got? J. Oh, that is very good. Bring it home.
Can you? Oh my God, please. Yes. Yes. I spell things backwards.
Next up we had Ronald McCair, Mission McNair, sorry, Mission Specialist.
I was going to say that's the best,
but it's the second best.
McNair.
To make care.
McNair.
What a legend.
McNair.
McNair, very good.
Very good.
A headbandist based once before 35 years old,
before the mission, he had worked with composer
Jean Michael Jarrah. Do you know him? The French composer. I'm probably saying that very wrong. to space once before 35 years old. Before the mission, he had 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, Ronde Vou. It was intended that he would record his
saxophone solo on board the challenger, which would have made Nick Nair's solo the first
original piece of music to ever be recorded in space. Can you play an instrument in space?
of music to ever be recorded in space. Wow.
Can you play an instrument in space?
Yes.
Wow.
Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
Imagine if you sucked.
What's that, Dave?
A terrible saxophone solo.
Wow.
What's a good one sound like?
That was like a banjo.
I think a good one sound like this.
Bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap,
I knew you were going to do that too.
I really, because my first option was, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap,
I knew you were going to do that too. I really, because my first option was, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap,-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N Oh
I'm sorry
Look at his mouth while he does
It's straight
You see he's the housewife That sounds a bit like Mr. Bean having a heart attack.
Yes, into a sex attack.
He needs to help.
Tequila.
Oh, we've also got Ellison on a Zooka.
Another crack in that.
Mission Specialist, 39 years old,
had been to space on the Discovery Shuttle.
It's a bit more experienced.
It seems like you have to be sort of middle-agedish
to get into space.
Is that, I guess it's the kind of thing you've got to study for a long time.
Yes, but most of the people have either been in the Air Force and studied science, usually
both.
Right.
And yes, 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 they're all 36 to 46.
All the experience and everything, obviously,
it 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 life time.
Yeah, totally.
I say middle age, but it's pretty middle age.
Yeah, so most are in their 30s
and then the more experienced,
like the commander's 40s, he's the oldest, but I suppose the most experienced.
For some reason, 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 sick or for 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 camps a little bit?
Have you heard of that?
There's something in America called space camp.
I don't want to do this but I like it.
I want to go.
What's your favorite planet?
Satin's the obvious one.
It's got the big ring.
Uranus is the classic.
Can you make me feel like an idiot
because Saturn's my favorite?
No, Saturn's amazing.
That's a 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, now I'm a Saturn girl myself.
I reckon if, I reckon in the end,
I know it's a bit vanilla, but I'm gonna say Earth.
Newer was coming.
Newer was coming. Neil was coming.
His favorite ice cream vanilla.
Favorite planet.
French vanilla.
I like everything where France is.
Yeah, he's 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.
Food. French Anything French French France Food
Probably French
Here we go. There we go. Pun king all right warming up. Oh, we go French French for haters all right
Literation well improvised. People love that.
I knew that it 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 off.
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.
Are these...
Oh, that's... Stop! Stop, he's thrusting into the mic.
Can you hear that?
I'm gonna 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 in our live show last weekend.
I was told to stop, so...
Not in public, Dave.
Come on, Dave.
Did you thrust?
God, I don't remember much of that show.
No.
Think I blocked 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 get sort of popped in my eye.
Yeah, you did the French dog, didn't you?
Yeah, the downward French dog.
Yeah.
Oolala.
Rump.
As a French saying, rump.
We had one of our great listeners from Sydney,
Dehan Bali is a yoga master.
A yogi.
A yogi.
And hey, I spoke to him after the show
and he said your form was pretty good.
Myself.
Yeah.
No, thanks, Dehan.
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 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 in T-Oga,
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...
Yeah.
...since you brought it up.
Yeah.
Since I asked, did anyone compliment me after the show?
Anyway, two solid rocker bursts, 71% of the thrust.
The long-await tubes, the tubes are reusable and break off and are intended to land at 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, all right.
Can't stop when stop.
Until I fall into the ocean, get collected.
I get scooped up and I'll start the thruster game.
They thrusted off your chair there.
Worth it.
In the middle of all of this is the external fuel tank.
Orange and 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 meters long, so it's huge and holds 1.6 million pounds, or
719,000 kilograms of propellant, with a total volume of about 526,000 gallons or 2 million
liters of fuel.
That feels too many.
Only the last one there was around number two, Jess.
I like two million liters.
I like how we finished there, because there was a lot of awkward you again just numbers in between thank you
Our 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's for it burns 4,000 liters of fuel every second a family sized I have what would yeah
Thanks for putting in our terms that we all understand in the
affluent East. Yeah sorry. It's more like um 50 uh butlers pantries for the fuel.
Together. What about people who don't have any of these fancy things? Oh okay it's something like
people who don't have any of these fancy things. Oh, okay.
It's something like probably a hundred thousand
backyard swimming pools.
I know.
Something that I grow up in my house.
100 debts and cars from the 1970s.
Yes.
Fuel tanks burn every second.
280 Bs.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
That's 121.
Oh, okay. yeah, great.
I also understand that.
Did you have one of those growing up? No.
No, we were a Falcon family.
Oh, should have said that.
Big Mazda family in my house.
XC, 1978.
Ford Falcon, built Ford Tuff.
Have you probably had on to that probably with money now?
I am so like I found out relatively recently my dad took it to his school.
He's a teacher as a 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 to him, he's retiring,
maybe 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 help.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Anyway, I'm gonna find another,
I'll find a similar car to that one day.
Wanna get the time?
We just for like the years thought it was just sitting there?
Yeah, I really.
Never mentioning it.
And it was gonna be in tip top shape
because all those students had worked on it.
Awesome mechanics from your tent.
My dad is not sentimental at all.
Good to know.
But what a mustache on him.
Yeah, great, mate.
Oh, man.
I was thinking about your dad the other day.
Don't know why.
Don't remember the context now. Just just remember, I was Oh, man. I was thinking about your dad the other day. I don't know why. Don't remember the context now.
Just just remember, I was like, that mustache.
Bloody great.
Anyway, Dave, do go on.
It's bloody good stuff, mate.
It really is.
You did say at the start of this,
this is the long report.
I'm sorry that we're doing it really.
I'm just accidentally closed my document.
Can you tell I'm still in here?
Oh, okay.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Matt thrust again.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I'm okay Matt thrust again
The studio is falling apart they can't handle your sexual
Magnetism turn the thrust boost to up to 71%
All right, I found my place just a few more facts because it is it's one of the coolest things
Ever built the engines have a combined output of 37 million horsepower
Which is ridiculous
Heaps how many horses are there in the world? Dave, which is quickly.
I'd say in the billions.
And how many?
Thirty-seven million are killed to power this machine.
Wow.
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.
Killin' so many horses.
Sounds like even more than the Australian racing industry.
Or similar man probably, 37 billion.
Can we get the suit first?
Allegedly.
There we go, saved it.
To achieve all, but the shuttle must accelerate from zero
to a speed of almost 29,000 kilometers per hour.
No, too far. Or 18,000 kilometers 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 a measurement
that I could remember from my childhood?
Okay, it's kind of like throwing Voltron really fast.
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.
And each stair, it doubles in speed.
Wow, another bottom.
Hey, hey, it's Saturday's party.
Ha ha ha ha.
Darryl's in.
Darryl's in.
Darryl, Darryl, Molly is red.
The whole gang.
Wow.
Even little bit wild.
Oh.
Oh.
Hello. He played the sax!
He sure did.
Did he?
He played the shit out of that sax.
Hell yeah.
He was the best thing in that show.
I reckon.
Jerkin?
Willba here.
Alright, that's two out of the three things I've explained.
Finally, so you know, there's the rocket boosts, 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
wherever. 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,
it doesn't come down on a parachute like the Apollo mission, and crash into the ocean,
it's actually got a 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 kilometers 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.
I like those odds.
The challenger had a good history and was considered the most reliable of all of the shuttles at the time.
Since day viewing two and a half years earlier, it had flown 40% of all the shuttle missions.
40%!
So it was like there, you know, they go to shuttle.
Yeah, they go to shuttle. Yeah, their number. Oh, no. This flight, which is called SDS
51L was challenges 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
Huh, I mean they're done that on this flight
The challenges mission was to deploy
a data relay satellite and a satellite to examine the approaching heli's comet. The other main
focus of the mission was to get Christa McCall of into space where she would of course conduct
a 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, zero of MTV.
Other, you know, the TV should, hey, hey, it's out of day.
The assumptions they boot.
You're looking to us to help. we would not alive in the 80s.
Right sorry Dave.
Sorry.
Jack's.
He's younger than me.
Dave?
Where 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.
Well, come at me, ladies.
What's it going to do?
What's it going to do?
Uh, Gordon Gecko ever heard of him?
No.
There's a lot of money around back then.
Musicians, you know, what could make a real big living back then?
Think about that.
The internet hadn't ruined the careers of musicians. Dave.
Do you go on? Okay. That seems to be pretty jaded by the industry that he never even tried to be.
All right, so finally, ready to take off. 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, and because there was 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.
Forkast for January 28, however predicted an unusually cold morning, with temperatures
close to minus one degrees Celsius, or 30 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the absolute minimum
temperature permitted for launch. Oh, don't which is the absolute minimum temperature permitted for launch.
Oh, thank God, the absolute minimum.
The shuttle was in fact never certified to operate in temperatures that low,
and the next coldest condition that 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 centimeters,
or three inches thick. Whoa.
And again, no shuttle had ever launched
in such freezing conditions.
I mean, I gotta say, before I go on, I'm not a scientist.
Thank you for clarifying, yep.
Because what I'm gonna say, it's gonna 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 pull dry.
I didn't understand a word of that.
So scientific.
But actually, it was very clever.
Yes.
It was like a scientist.
Yeah, huh?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, it wasn't a scientist like Matt here.
Sorry, I believe.
We'll 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 shoes on our side.
Tell me what rings aren't O-shaped.
Okay. Sorry to chuck sounds back in your face there, but...
Wow.
Yeah.
Satin.
That's so much better than my comment of, mmm, onion rings.
I call them our rings. I don't, but I'm going to now.
They're not. Onion rings. Oh, I do too.
Oh, let's get them.
Yeah.
Let's get them.
Jump cut those baiting up onion rings.
Cough that onion ring.
And then all high-fiving
Whoo We sure showed them and then we all feel a bit remorseful as we're like aiding him we're weeping
Sorry, sorry
Greg
Greg and Gary in the boys
Jeff Gerald.
Gareth. Guys, it's 2018. Okay. Our new rings can be girls. Oh, J-Jarrelina. Thank you. J-Jarrelina. What was that name?
J-Jarrelina. J-Jarrelina. Oh, cyclist at J-Jarrelina, real name.
So close. Oh, nearly. How's the name of Spirrelina? One of those. One of those beautiful names. 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 considered about the O-rings and the solid rocket boosts.
They're the big ones with a 71% thrust on either side of the big boys, the bad boys,
the reusable things.
Don't make me get up.
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.
This episode is brought to you by Progressive.
Most of you aren't just listening right now.
You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising. But what if you could be saving money by switching to Progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now. You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising.
But what if you could be saving money by switching to Progressive?
Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average, and auto customers qualify
for an average of 7 discounts.
Multitask right now.
Quote today at Progressive.com.
Progressive casualty and trans company and affiliates, National Average 12 Month savings
of $744 by New Customer Surveyed,
who saved with progressive between June 2022 and May 2023.
Potential savings will vary. This count's not available in all safe and situations.
Are you working way too hard for way too little?
There's never been a better time to consider a career in IT.
You could enjoy a recession-resistant career and a rewarding field,
with plenty of growth opportunities and often flexible
work environments.
Go to mycomputercareer.edu and take the free career evaluation.
You could start your new career in months, not years.
Take classes online or on campus, and financial aid is available to qualified students, including
the GI Bill.
Now is the time.
Mycomputercareer.edu Marijuana cigarettes am I right blaze it for 20 somewhere am I right blaze it let's
go to the moon baby let's get jazz you were supposed to join. Well, that's cool. Yeah, you know. It's not cool, kids.
I just love that sink in.
It really makes you think about how uncool marijuana is.
Marijuana cigarettes.
Oh, never touch a marijuana leafylyan.
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
In a big book
Big book. That's what you future is Dave. You know in a big book
big book. That's why you're future is time. You're nerd in a big book. Why is it good is a nose on a body big book? You know what he's like. Oh, oh, Shakespearean. Oh, oh,
oh, chapter two. Oh, it's pretty plain for myself that it matters through chapter one.
Matt as a high school bully is brutal. I know. Oh, chapter two. What are you reading there, point Dexter?
Shake spear.
Can you explain it to me?
We've got a test tomorrow.
Yeah, it's you, you're the, you're the jock, Matt.
Yeah, such a, such a sporty man.
Thank you.
Wait.
Wait.
Is that a compliment?
I don't know what I'd be.
And I'd be the, oh, I know.
I'd be the drama captain.
No, I know you were. I'm be and I'd be the oh I know I'd be the drama captain No, I know you're pretty girls funny friend
Come it come a relief. Yeah, what is this in in in a movie of
Life in the movie of life. Can you introduce me to your friend?
Dave Dave's the sleaze bag. Yeah, no Dave's the nerdy thing sees cool. He's the what was the American par go?
Stiffler. No, oh, yes, I know who he's cool. He's the, what was the American par-go? Stiffler?
No.
Oh, and yes, I know who's over there.
Fuck, what was his name?
Red-headed guy.
Yeah, I'm trying to think.
Yeah.
Going back in time to change the life of one lucky lady.
Yeah, it's like Spindler or something like that.
I was also thinking of in 10 things I hate about you.
Oh, I...
The guy in the AV club or something.
Anyway, fuck, something right.
Or in Khan Hardly, wait, the guy who's in Buffy.
These are all great references.
Or in Buffy, the guy who kind of reminds me of Chad the Bing.
Oh, yeah, are you talking about, yes, that guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Could I be any more confused right now?
You don't even get that reference.
Dave, please.
Do you go on?
I wanna talk about O-rings, dammit.
Fine.
You're making me hungry.
So these reasonable long tunes
that made up a four sections
that were put together on launch site
and held together by joints, I'm trying to say.
They- Oh my God.
That's where it all went wrong. The joints are sealed
by a pair of compressed rubber O-rings. At ignition, the rocket fires up and 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 they're like, 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.
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 Thier Col, 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.
Robo Bojolay. Stated their concerns about the effect of low temperatures on the
system.
Robo Jolay. Stated their concerns about the effect of low temperatures on the resilience
of the rubber O-rings. And they recommended a launch post-ponement.
They said it's too cold tomorrow, let's cancel it.
I'm going to agree with them as a scientist.
Roburgile.
Roburgile argued that they did not have enough doubt of 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. Rob Bojolay 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. Bojolay 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 been 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.
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 colder day, he started freaking
out.
And he went to his bosses and said, we've got to stop this.
Oh my God.
This 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 he'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 ThioColder...
So RoBo was in the no slash no go on the O rings?
That is so good.
I love it.
I say this often, because it keeps happening.
It's just like one thing after another.
But I've never
been proud of you. I'm waiting for a real roast there.
Was that a takedown? No, it was like that was praise.
That was great. That was so good. Matt, that was so good.
I'm going to be playing that at your funeral. Matt, can I just say you?
Matt, Matt. Matt, so cool. That was so great.
I'm in bullied by the nerds.
I'm praising you.
And the nerds, hot friends friend.
I'm not friends with a hot girl.
I know her.
A quaintant.
From primary school.
Yeah, our mums were friends.
Yeah.
High 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. What? But you got a harder goal.
I could have cut it out. Oh, okay. It's a horror flick. Got it. Oh, sure.
So, they're having the ghost-lash-nogo teleconference.
If Thiacol didn't give the go-ahead, the shuttle couldn't take off.
So, all the subcontractors have to say, yes, it's safe.
So Thiacol recommended to postpone, but NASA heavily questioned their recommendation.
They told the manager of Thiacol that their data was inconclusive and that they shouldn't
be bringing this up the night before a launch.
According to Bojolet, Lawrence Maloy, who was head of NASA's Rocket Boosters, a division,
said, my God, ThioCole, when 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 Owing Neely burning through?
There's nothing had happened since 1985
from that memo.
Right.
So the four managers of Thiacol put the teleconference
and hold and reconsidered their position.
When Thiacol looked like they were changing their minds,
Bojolet claims that he made a lastage attempt
to make them cancel the launch.
He was literally screaming at them,
not to ignore the photo of the discoveries shadowed O-ring.
Despite this, all four of Thichal's managers agreed
to give their...
That were bullied into it by the censors, 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 100,000
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.
Makonahei. Parker.
Georgie. Deschanel.
Parker
Georgie Deschanel
Etc Whose Parker Sarah Jessica
She made in something good no
Right
We're all learning something I thought I did I clearly didn't so
NASA got the all clear go ahead
Takeoff was scheduled for 9.38 a.m. Is that knowing Jess? Nope. So, NASA, got the Orchleader go ahead.
Takeoff was scheduled for 9.38am.
Is that annoying, Jess?
Oh, what the fuck is wrong with you?
It would have been someone to do with weather or something, right?
9.30!
9.30am.
9.45am I'm okay with.
10 o'clock, fine.
9.30am, fuck you.
I also read that the astronauts got a 617 AM way back home.
Oh, get fucked.
Because everything's like down to the minute
in the second with these people.
Oh, I say that.
The East people.
But 938 was delayed due to concerns about ice
that had accumulated in the launch pad
that I talked about.
Ice equals over one meter long,
hung off the bottom of the shuttle.
And this caused considerable concern for the launch team.
Yeah, no shit.
There's like legit, static types of ice shuttle. And this caused considerable concern for the launch team. Yeah, no shit. There's like legit, sterlic types of ice hanging.
938.
That is infuriating.
That's the concerning thing.
Oh, yuck!
Just there were 19 icicles hanging off.
Oh, you fucking...
Even, you know what, even 940, I'm okay with.
That's fine. 22. 1210 minutes. It's 20 to40. I'm okay with that's fine
10 minute it's one of the 10 that feels good
20 is fine. This is not gonna 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 eight o'clock at eight o'clock at eight o'clock at eight
three and there's seven of them they were in there seats in the challenger at eight thirty six a.m.
No one cares at eight.36am. Oh no one cares! At 8.44am, 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 11.15am? They had an ice inspection team.
Yeah, those people's job.
Eat!
11.15am.
The ice inspection was complete.
IIT.
Eat! Anyway, that's my contribution. I'm going to go. 1115, the ice inspection was complete. IIT.
Anyway, that's my contribution.
At 1115 AM, pretty good.
Thank you.
The round of that up.
Yes.
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 challenge had began at 11.38am.
And 1 1,000th of a second.
Oh, honestly.
11.38, 1 1,000th.
1 1,000th.
It's high to say.
1 1,000th.
So they're ready to go.
Very easy to say.
Everyone's watching on.
Finally, go time.
The crew can't go down and the shuttle lifted off
to cheers of everyone watching on.
Thousands of people.
Except one person in the front row.
Their arms crossed. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Oh, within seconds, Challenger was traveling at over 1,500 kilometers per hour.
Engineers on the ground, including Roger Bogele, 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.
Yes.
So, it better 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 been the most vocal written books about and stuff
Robo Jolay
Robo Jolay, 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 kilometer mark
A severe crosswind slammed into the shuttle causing it to shake
At 58 seconds into the launch the shuttle encountered another sidewind and was shaken for a second
But then it seemed a 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 emission control was completely stunned.
In an instant, they had lost all contact with the spacecraft. Their data from over 2000
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.
But he said...
Which is inappropriate.
No, he said he was crying and he was sob sat.
Oh.
Oh, wow.
Because he probably still feels somewhat,
he should, he probably feels like he could have
said something more or...
Yeah, or actually...
He'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.
Absolutely.
He tried.
It's not amazing.
They're like, no, we're going 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 that hopefully more importantly the lives
Yeah, exactly better mean what why what's this schedule?
Why is it so important this is gonna be slightly embarrassing if we delay this again for a few months
Big PR exercise and they want this to the irony is that they want this to go well so badly
Yeah, they risk they you know
When again safety instructions and it went even worse than I mean there's no such thing as bad publicity, you know true
I didn't consider that. Mm-hmm. Any publicity is good publicity on the ground watching on where of course the families of the people
Oh, they they don't know what exactly is happening because so high up in the sky
But they can just tell that something's going horribly wrong.
On the ground and on the live TV broadcast, people could see the two rocket boosts that remained intact,
careering wildly, of course.
So, we'll probably link to an image of this.
So, it looks like it's quite a famous photo.
A big main explosion in the middle and two trails are smoked from these rockets.
They've just split off and they've 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 spied and fell to earth and started to land in the Atlantic Ocean and everyone
on the ground was just praying that the orbiter 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 kilometers,
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 is actually far greater than almost any
other automobile aircraft or train accident
ever.
Sadly, the crew didn't stand a chance.
Sorry, but they didn't.
Ah, so like they did.
Ah, 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 they, it was not a quick and easy debate.
Well, there's debate over that.
The horrible part, it's not exactly known how they died.
Oh.
Whether it was during the explosion
or when they hit the water.
Whether the crew members remained conscious long enough
a long after their breakup is unknown.
And largely depends on whether the attached 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 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... That's pretty awful. 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.
Two, it's a long time, 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 a 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, just office in the White House.
So it was big, big news around the world, but especially in America. Three days later,
our memorial service was held
in 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 I could start collecting the material.
Sonar divers remotely operated submersibles and mants submersibles were all used during the search, which covered an area of
486 square nautical miles, which is over 1,500 square kilometers, and took plates at water
depths between 70 feet and 1,200 feet, or 21 meters and 370 meters deep.
The crew compartment wasn't found until six weeks later on March 7th, and it was buried
in a hundred feet of water. After six weeks of being in the ocean, the bodies were referred
to as, quote, remains,
not bodies. Navy pathologist performed all topses 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.
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
under Florida shores for many years, including in 1996, 11 years after the incident,
when two large pieces of the shuttle were found at Coco Beach.
Well, Coco Beach sounds nice, but the rest...
What did?
...not the rest.
The rest not so much.
All the recovered debris from the challenge was ultimately buried in a former Missile
Silew 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 Rodgers Commission
named after its chairman, William P. Rodgers,
had the five month investigation
also when the commission was Neil Armstrong.
Really?
Willy P.
Well, why any?
Good question.
And Matt's back.
Hello Matthew.
The commission worked over five months.
As I said in the report, they found that
due to the freezing temperatures,
the O-ring in the right rockets 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, robogele was correct?
Almost exactly what roboge was.
Why?
The cold robo had become stiff, failing to fully
seal the joint just as Robo Jelae 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 so 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 escape 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 blowtorch, 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
away, 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 he's complained
had never been passed on to the right people, which is...
It sounds like the PR department was running the show.
Yeah, yeah, they're like, no, no, no, we're going to take off. People love the shit. Yeah. That's a go.
Vanessa. Yeah, it's a go at the cane and one of those old straw hats. Some sort of step
right up. Go. Yeah.
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 challenge accident was not poor communication or underlying procedures that 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 felt to act decisively to solve the increasingly serious abnormalities
in the solid rocket booster joints.
So they were 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 Robogele had predicted.
Remember, he thought of the o-ring 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's over.
Yeah, so 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 take off and found that on the
take off, 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 theor is that if the wind hadn't knocked it
and that the seal was maintained for just 60 more seconds,
the rockets would have it detached this plant
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.
No, no, a lot of ways it is anyway. It's a minute. It's basically, it's nearly double the time that it a long time. Yeah, that is a minute, 60 seconds. In a lot of ways it is anyway.
It's a minute.
It's basically, it's nearly double the time
that it was already there.
So like I said, it is long.
But it's likely to have been a combination
of many things going badly at the same time,
just like in general.
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
boosted so much that the aluminium, aluminium, all the rubber sealing the joints was knocked out of the joints and crosswind and bad luck that the weather knocked the solid rocket boost is so much that the aluminium or the rubber sealing the joints was knocked out of the way.
What if they just got later in the 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 learnt 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?
I'm probably not spectators, but possibly ground crew.
Right.
I don't know. I imagine that they probably make people get
far away.
They're too far away, I think.
Just because it is.
But it could be, you're talking about a huge explosion
from so much fuel.
So too 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 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, what'd it mean insane?
In the long run, NASA redesigned the solid rocket booster joints that implemented new rules
regarding launches in cold weather and built a new system for the crew to escape from
the shuttle during a send.
There was another thing people criticized.
They had no escape.
Once they're in the air, there was no way, really,
to come back down safely.
Yeah, like what would they do now?
Like, ejecto seat.
Yeah, like parachute.
People did say ejecto seat, but I read that that actually
would have been quite dangerous, because you have to have
a small explosion for an ejecto 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 a small explosion for injector seed to go off. 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.
Mm.
Because they were going up straight up.
Right.
So even if they had, you know, this escaped tube
or whatever it was, it still wouldn't
have helped them. You know, it's sometimes, and this is probably the other end of the mission,
a successful mission. So you say the tube coming down with the big parachute. Am I imagining
that? Oh, yeah, yeah. So they, 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 said the thought of these things.
They should have got us in.
We could have, we could have spitballed.
So 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 with the other.
Krista, Krista McCall of you.
Oh, man.
And sadly, her school was watching on.
Oh, no, which sadly, her school was watching on. Oh, no.
Which would have been so horrific.
Oh, so many great names.
I think 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,
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 in 2003 when the
space shuttle Columbia broke up upon reentry. 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? I don't know.
No. 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 take off the piece of foam had a
Smack, I do you think they remember that smashed a tile or a little tile?
Yes, and people had said we should be worried about that, but they thought it would hold
But then it didn't hold and they I think fortunately for them they would die very quickly
I just there was a little neck and that credit, so much friction that...
Yeah, the whole thing disintegrated.
Oh, all right.
I do remember that.
Well, you was that, sorry?
2003.
Right, yeah.
Yeah.
Approximately 17% of Americans witnessed the launch live because of the presence of payload
specialist, Christopher Calliff, 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 the latest spreads even faster.
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 at 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 Christa's classroom, technology that
relatively few people had at the time or on CNN, which not
everyone has. But a natural geographic interviewed a lot of
people and they everyone remembers watching it live because
they've seen all the replays. Yes, pretty much instantaneously.
But yeah, every January, NASA pauses to remember the last
crew, the last crew of the Challenger,
and other crews lost in pursuing space on a NASA day of remembrance.
Challenger's explosion changed the space shuttle program in several ways.
Plants 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. Wasn't Kevin Rudd. Kevin07.
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 McCall of SPACUP. 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.
12 years after McCall of the deaths,
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, I know, she did it.
And that's... She's not so ball-gun after all. Not, not. Been a bit rough on her, really? for 12 days. Wow. Go Blabra. Go Blabra. I know.
She didn't.
She's not so ball-gun after all.
Not.
Been a bit rough on her, really?
No, Blabra.
See, it's a great ending for Blabra.
Blabra.
NASA stated that she wasn't a teacher that went into space, but rather a proper astronaut
that used to be a teacher.
Wow.
Nice.
So, she's got the life experience.
There's a lot of articles that 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
Can you imagine sitting there knowing what had happened to the last episode about take off you would oh and
Nearly exactly the same shuttle. I would not do that at all.
I would, well, it will depend on what it is, because I'd be like, in a couple of years
later, I'd be like, there'd be no safe attempt to go.
They would be so anal about everything now.
True.
But then after 2003, I'd be like, oh, maybe they don't go as well.
Yeah, which was.
So when Blabra went, both the disasters had happened.
Yeah, so you'd be like,
oh, surely now, after these two incidents.
I don't like flying.
I love to fly.
So I'm not going to space.
I also know, I'd 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 set,
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 on a space
and like 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 our two NASA twins recently,
one had been to space longer than the other one.
And their genetic makeup had physically changed.
Yeah, it's not fascinating.
Yeah. I think when they say, when you come back from space,
you're a taller for a while until because you're used to the gravity up there,
but then very quickly, you compress back down, like you spine and everything
expands when you're less gravity pulling you down. think it's you know within the way to the world
you're back. Oh blood the bloody rat race. Yeah and you said earth is your favorite planet.
So it's super. Change my mind. The moon is now my favorite planet. The 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, so much in that.
That was fascinating.
I think that is really fascinating.
Like just a study of humans
and how they deal with stress and pressure and...
Anything of NASA, you're like, well, they're that organization that's been more time,
you know, with safety and all that kind of stuff.
You would have just thought they'd be, you have not going, we need to make this happen
tomorrow. People are watching.
Point zero, zero, one percent chance. You think that they'd be like, no, 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,
what 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. Blah-bra.
I'd like to call it Barbara if I may.
Barbara Morgan.
Barbara Morgan, yes.
I'm
blah blah, Morgan.
Thank you.
Official.
I know full astronaut, yeah.
She, but so she'd be thinking how that could have been.
Maybe then was a top 10.
So there were eight others.
Or everyone else in that list, I imagine.
Just begun. Oh my God.
And it all did a bit of training,
bit of being able to do the 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 really got to, 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 Barbara.
Me too, that's why I go to a cool nickname.
Matt, do you hate me?
No, no.
In fact, I would say I love you, Jessbot Perkins.
One of the best in the biz. That's cute.
Wow.
Big clingy.
LAUGHTER
Davy, this report was very great as always.
Very great.
Very great.
And I'm...
On the scale of greatness.
Very great is... I think that's...
Second highest?
Yeah.
Code red.
Just before code.
Brown.
Yeah, code brown, what'm not a shit myself.
So bad.
That's so good.
And then you got code red and brown, which is when you're
shit and blood.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I see a hospital immediately. Call the police.
Because you're shit and blood.
But there's a segment on our show after the report that we love to do.
It's called fact.
That's right. And this segment is of course brought to you by our and pretty much the whole show
is 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 right that reporter watched a lot of stuff.
That's too many hours today.
There's lots of, I mean, if you're interested,
I'll put all the sources below.
There 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 release just for our Patreon subscribers. You can vote on topics. For example, this one episodes every single month. We release 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 quite a question, Matt.
You're going to find this funny, Jess,
but I would eight to ten hours would be low for me.
How long it takes to run a report.
Anyway.
What are you, how many hours you reckon you're putting in?
I'd say, I'd say probably on average about 15.
Oh, actually, I know that I think about it.
But it's a bit sad that it marbles
to get what marbles and things, it's 10 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 to it.
Too much, too much time.
And then people say, it's just Wikipedia and you just start crying.
Yeah, I know that people do describe that, sometimes as comedy Wikipedia or something.
Yeah, I'll go, that's so heartbreaking.
I think what they mean is Wikipedia is like a resource that is people,
whatever. In cyclopedia comedy, I'd be happy with that.
Thanks, Quotal 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 challenge disaster.
He joded.
He.
He is.
Okay, not my best.
No.
I disagree.
So Joe got to give a fact-quadal question, but he also gets to give himself a title and
some people who have dipped in for their second fact-quadal 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 the vice president of Malaki and
shenanigans. Oh, and in brackets, in brackets, we all know Bob is the president of that division.
Jesus, so he's your two IC. He's of portfolios. Yeah, look, I'm a pretty busy lady.
Snacks and Malaki. Yeah, I can do it all. And he has chosen a question. And I probably should have given you
some warning about it.
I'll let you think what you're gonna say, a question.
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
the guest on the show, who would each of you choose?
Any person.
Any person. And they say don't meet your heroes, they don't they? They do say that. Yeah, that's tricky, isn't it?
Because immediately I thought Paul Kelly, but then I thought, oh god,
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 she'd tell Joe Smith,
who might not be aware of how great Paul Kelly is.
Who Paul Kelly is in work.
Paul Kelly is an Australian musical icon.
And a gravy expert.
He is a gravy expert.
My favorite.
When his iconic song is called How to Make Gravy.
My favorite musician ever.
But I think I'd be too intimidated to talk to him.
Like I'd just be seeing him like,
oh, I love you.
You know?
Right.
I already feel that with you guys,
but I contain it.
I think it's a good act or?
I think he'd be great, Paul Kelly.
I think that's a great one.
I don't know.
He's, I think he seems really funny.
If he was coming in, he wanted to be here.
Oh yeah, if he wanted to be here, yes.
Well, just, I reckon if you go for Paul Kelly wanting to be here. Yes. Then that's a great suggestion. Wonderful. What about you,
David D. Do you think? David Dush. Okay, David Duk, like Daisy Duk. Oh, that's actually
pretty. Or a D for W. David D. David Dubs.
Anyway, just answer the fucking question.
I probably have like a pre,
I'd be great to have a previous report topic.
Yeah.
It's be like,
don't 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 a lot of it, dude.
Sorry.
Oh, true, true, true.
You didn't say anyone, right?
Yeah.
Er, any person, yeah.
Yeah.
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.
Oh, the Simpsons reference for those.
Oh, there's so many today.
Yeah, too many.
Yes.
Yeah, probably someone like William Shakespeare from history, I'd say.
Because it's just me.
I'd thank him for inventing my name.
Right.
I'd say, hi, I'm Jessica and he'd go, ah, what a mind.
Oh, that's what a mind. I'd say, fun fact'm Jessica and he'd go, ah, what a mind. Oh, that's one of
one. I'd say fun fact, Will, they shorten it to Jess. Oh, very good.
Bit more informal.
It's a bit...
And it'd be like, 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 an effr- You know? And then give him a little hair ruffle.
Yeah.
Like an wreck ruffle.
He's a little hair ruffle, you know?
You're very skinny leg.
You're skinny leg.
You're a little skinny leg.
I'm a gay man.
I want to say, I think I guess I would have to say,
Darryl Bulldog.
Okay, I'm, I'm going to hang up.
I'm going up, guess.
Going up, blank here.
Yeah.
Saints player.
Yes. In the year. have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess.
I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess. I'm going to have a guess.
Yes. that. Yeah, that would be clean. Telling how it was back then. 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 Premorship Cup.
The only time a saint's player ever held up the Premorship Cup wearing a collar would
jump.
Oh, no.
Wow, I do know that.
That is awful.
Yeah, so I'd love to.
Yeah, I wonder if he 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 pet on the back.
Pet on the back and a big old smooch on the cheek.
Say, oh thank you!
And sometimes a little pet on the bum if we've had a couple of white warts.
Oh okay.
Which we have.
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 one.
I just get hitting everybody with the back of my head,
like, stop it.
Oh.
Did you know any mums?
I don't do any work.
I had May shock you.
I reckon my daggy dancing and my regular dancing
are pretty similar.
Very similar, yes.
I was dancing as well, I was saying. I was dancing and my regular dancing are pretty similar very similar. Yes. I was dancing
I was dancing and talking about being a mom. Oh
Cookie I'm gonna be the best
Daggy mom ever not a very good parent, but a great daggy mom
Gonna burst the shit out of those kids anyway, and we also we we know me do a game as well. What are we thinking?
Oh, no, can we name their shuttles? Yes those kids anyway. And we also, we'd normally do a game as well. Yeah, what are we thinking?
Oh no. Can we name their shuttles?
Yes, great one day.
Challenger Enterprise.
Yeah, at length.
That's what it's, they're gonna be buzzwords.
All right, cool.
So what are they traveling on?
Can I kick off?
Please do.
By thanking from Hoffman Estates in Illinois, I believe,
I'll in the US. Yeah, I think this is all-time great names. This is like this would be top right up the top. Alright, hit us with it.
Nathaniel Gingrich. Oh shit. Oh, that is great. Yes. Holy moly. Gingrich.
That's a...
I like that.
It's a belt of a name.
And then Nathaniel would be traveling on the...
Raptor.
The Raptor!
I like it.
So that sounds pretty good, isn't it?
The space shuttle Raptor?
Yeah.
Even though the Raptors are a Canadian team from Vancouver.
Not far from Chicago.
Not too far, or I...
I don't know if Illinois I should say, sorry.
Very close.
I'm not sure where Hoffman's dates is exactly,
but it's not far from Jurassic Park.
From the top of Illinois.
And I'd also thank you Nathaniel Gingrich.
Oh, the captain of the Raptor.
So good.
Oh, captain as well, wow.
Oh, captain.
Captain Gingrich, reporting for Judy.
Oh, that sounds good. Captain Gingrich. Holy Oh, yeah. Captain King Rich, reporting for Judy. Oh, that sounds good.
Captain King Rich.
Holy shit. Yes.
Sounds really good.
I believe in, oh, 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 McAuliffe.
That's exactly the same spelling.
Christopher McAuliffe. Now, Christa Mcallough. That's exactly the same spelling.
Christopher McCallough.
Now, Christa McCallough, the...
Really?
The teacher that was on board the challenge.
And this is Christopher.
Oh!
Oh, my goodness.
If it...
She's a relative of yours.
Holy moly.
Yeah.
So, a hero's relative here from Snohomish in Washington.
Christopher,
but could Washington be the shuttle name?
Oh, like George.
What about George?
Yeah, that better, sorry,
especially at the end of the day.
Especially at the end of the day.
Yeah, better than Washington.
Here, hey there, Georgeyboy. Flying through Hey there, Georgie boy.
Flying through the sky.
So fancy free.
Another Simpsons.
Hey there, blue boy.
But also the Seekers, a wonderful Australian band.
Amazing that they got reference on the Simpsons.
Was it that original song?
Amazing. Christopher M. McCall.
Wow, thank you.
Sorry for calling him McCall life.
Just looking at Snow Homage, not very far from Seattle,
which we hope to get to one day,
and the Patreon is pairing us closer and closer.
Yeah, we want to get some of those toss salads and scrambled eggs.
Well, maybe I hear the call in.
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 a team
effort. I would like to thank from, am I saying this right?
Eleminate.
I've never heard of that in Victoria, right here in Australia.
I'm sorry.
Big supporters of comedy in Victoria, from OCR, FM, Community Radio Station, Lowell Radio.
Lowell Radio.
All right, I'm out of Colax.
I'm wondering if Ella Minnet is Colax Suburb, potentially.
That's, is that Jof?
That is Jof.
Jof.
I appreciate all your support too.
And Tyson.
Yes. Oh, yes. and Tiason. Yes.
Thank you very much.
Maybe it's a law radio to
support Melbourne and Victorian
comedy.
Law radio, those dudes, what shuttle
are they flying on? Laughter.
Chuckle.
Chuckle.
God, you are on fire today.
Space shuttle chuckle. Yeah, it's a chuckle the chuckle hot
Chuckle hot. I love it. It's got teaky torches for some reason. Oh
Legend no bad ideas
That could be a bad idea. Okay, they're not lit. Just yeah, okay fake
Okay, they got like cellophane in them
Looks like like that a lot. Yeah, they're your onboard. Oh, that is awesome.
Thanks so much to the law radio.
And you can check out our law radio's interviews with comedians.
Each week, they played two hours of comedy song 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 law radio, like they support us.
Thank you very much.
At some point, I was the record holder for most interviewed.
Oh, well done.
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 as two.
No, yes.
I did it.
Well, they had to dial you back up.
Yeah.
Matt, you still there?
After the song, that's a fresh IV.
That's that's that starts again, baby.
You have to start, you know, I had a planned interview,
start again. Anyway, we've already asked, but how'd you get
into comedy?
I know we covered this.
I'll take this one.
I'd also like to thank from Lonsesta in Tasmania.
Tasie.
No, I definitely recognize this name.
So maybe we get a bit of a correspondence from Hannah
Scholar.
Hannah Scholar, some Lonnie.
Great.
Oh.
I've got it.
What is it?
The shuttle.
It's called Scholar.
The Space Shuttle Scholar, or like that.
Yeah.
You know, because it's all about discovery and learning.
Yeah, that actually goes on 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.
Yep, the flying Apple.
Picture it, someone's just throwing an Apple
through the sky.
Huh?
Are they smarter or are they pifted?
Pifted.
Yeah, you're only throwing Apple, you're pifted Apple.
Pifted 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 to someone,
tagged their friend and said, like,
lol, they fly to the other side of the world before they come to Tazmania.
Oh, sorry Tazzi.
If you were like us, I was in Tazzi.
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
her grandpa, 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, we're like mosh to the flame.
Yeah, exactly.
We're like sheep to the flame.
Yeah.
Lame.
So a lot of pressure there, Hannah, but please organize your island of people to this and to the flame. Yeah. Lamb. So a lot of pressure to the henna, but please organize your island of people to listen to
our podcast.
Heaps of you, Hannah.
And if you are, if you're looking for comedy in Lonsesson, there's a monthly room there
called Fresh Comedy, which is so good, they get biggest accent in Australia down there.
So go there.
And get some lulls.
And tell them 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 Fishburne.
Ooh.
Blake's a great name.
Fishburne is great.
Yeah.
How about the Morpheus?
Yeah.
Lawrence Fishburne.
Yes, very good. Right, actor. I mean, Morpheus, the spatial the Morpheus? Yeah. Lawrence. Yes. Very good.
Very 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 space ship now.
The space shuttle Red Pill. No, no, the space shuttle. The space shuttle, the Red Pill.
I love it. Which one's the good one, which one's the bear 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 think from Lengringe, what's GA?
Georgia?
Georgia?
I think it is Georgia.
Is it in the US of A?
US of A, yes that's correct. Good Georgia, I'm on. GA. It's Georgia. Georgia think it is. Is it in the US of A? US of A, yes, that's correct.
Good, Georgia on my mind. G-A. 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 name.
That's great.
Oh, every name again tonight.
Yeah, killing it.
Oh, killer.
Absolutely.
Rory Hicks.
Rory Hicks. Oson, the Bosen Blues. Oh, the Bosen. The Absolutely. Rory Hicks. Rory Hicks.
Oh, the Bowson Blues. Oh, the Bowson. The Space Shuttle Bowson Blues.
Yeah. That's a hit. That's a hit.
That's a hit. Higgs Bowson Blues is an accave song.
Oh, right. I thought you were... Which is the Higgs Bowson.
But the Bowson Blues take the Bowson Blues pill.
Space Shuttle Bowson Blues pill. Spacetal Bosen Blues pill.
I mean, I know I said no bad ideas, but oh.
Yeah, let's give him some better than that.
I think they hit there that was the, um, the Bosen.
The Bosen.
Spacetal Bosen, because that's a scientific word, so they'd probably bloody love that.
Yeah, but it was all about accelerating things into each other.
Yeah, they probably wouldn't like that.
Right.
Well, I mean, we accelerate it into the sky. Yeah, they probably wouldn't like that. Right?
Well, I mean, we accelerate it into the sky.
What about the bad seed?
Nick.
I don't know that calling anything bad.
The good seed.
Good seed.
Space Shuttle, good seed.
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 the rock.
In the rock. The rock.
There we go. Call it the rock.
Space Shuttle the Rock. Yeah, the rock.
He's got a picture of Dwayne, the rock gentleman.
And it's the people's elbow.
The people's elbow. Oh my God, stop!
Let's call it the people's elbow.
Oh!
It's in the shape of Dwayne Johnson's elbow,
just flying through the sky.
And it lands down unlike Sean Michael's head.
Nothing could possibly go wrong this time.
That's funny.
I'll enjoy that, Rory.
Rory, thanks to everyone that supports the show Patreon.
You can do so at anytime, patreon.com.
So let's do go on pod. Or you can get in contact with us all, the links are on our website, And thanks to everyone that supports the show on Patreon. You can do so at any time. Patreon.com.
So let's do go on pod.
Or you can get in contact with us all the links around our website, including tickets to
shows and all the like.
Do go on pod.com is that place.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, we're at Do go on pod.
And YouTube.
We're talking about putting up some more content up there, including recently released another
live episode from the Melbourne Comedy Festival that we filmed.
Yes.
So there's at least four videoed love episodes up there now going back to the
Loch Ness Monster.
Yeah, we think Mason, that one.
And then also episodes from this year as well.
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,
at this comments, long 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 and 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.
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.
There's also a podcast out from the people
to bring you to go on called Primates.
And it's a podcast
podcast about I think it's a podcast about primates and popular culture and we are Justin
and Dave have been on a few episodes each I've been on every single episode so if I
saw it a brag. It's the same with this show mate. It is true, I'm a real hog. Get off the mark.
It's funny every week, it's such a fun show.
It sounds so dumb, but I think it's a really good show.
So if you 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.
Well, 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.
I've gone through a bunch of stuff.
Jess has been on episode about 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
a plot of the eights.
And also an episode about Congo.
We had both for God.
And 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 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.
The movie was a tough watch.
And actually, that'll 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.
In cuties, hanging out.
Absolutely. Oh, I think we're gonna sign off for another week,
but yeah, check out all our stuff online.
Drop us a line, doogawonpod.gmo.com.
Well, suggest a topic, that's another thing.
You can do it, doogawonpod.com.
There's a little tab.
You click there, you tell us why it's great.
We're looking to do it, and then we make it an episode.
That's how the cycle of life goes.
Hakuuna Metata. You say Hakuuna Metata. You say Hakuna Metata. I say Hakuna Metata.
Oh, time to go.
Alright, thanks so much for listening guys. Next week was another fresh episode, but until
then, also thank you and goodbye.
Later. Hakuna Metata.
That doesn't touch. I'm a bit of a... Oh. I... I guess I'm tired.
Salmon, bad mint and conno.
This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network.
Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates.
I mean, if you won't, it's up to you.
This episode is brought to you by Progressive.
Most of you aren't just listening right now.
You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising.
But what if you could be saving money by switching to Progressive?
Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average, and auto customers qualify
for an average of 7 discounts.
Multitask right now.
Quote today at Progressive.com.
Progressive casualty and trans company and affiliates, National Average 12 Month savings
of $744 by new customer surveyed, who saved with progressive between June 2022 and May 2023.
Potential savings will vary.
Discount is not available in all safe and situations.
Hey Dave, you're ready.
Since we found it bomb us, we've always said our socks, underwear, and t-shirts are super soft.
Any new ideas? Maybe sublimely soft. Or disgustingly cozy. Wait, what?
I got it. Bombas. Observedly comfortable essentials for yourself and everyone on your list.
And for those facing homelessness. Because one purchase equals one donated.
Wow, did we just write an ad? Yes. Bombas. Big comfort for everyone.
Go to bombas.com slash a cast and use code acast for 20% off your first purchase.