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Nasa was in talks with Sesame Street Producers to have Caroll Spinney be aboard the challenger and film segments as his famous character, Big Bird. The plan was thrown out because the suit wouldn't be able to fit inside the shuttle and Spinney was replaced by McAuliffe. I think that would be an interesting part of the page. MrCboY1997 (talk) 14:53, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you've got reliable sources for that, you're welcome to add it. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 17:25, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It has been a bit of time since I was working on this article, but I remember not being able to find reliable sources for the Big Bird anecdote, but read about it in forum posts and the like. That being said, I don't think it was a 1-for-1 swap between Big Bird and McAuliffe; I think the idea was that NASA planned to do more outreach using citizen-astronauts, starting with Teacher in Space, but plans were scrapped after the Challenger Disaster. This story wouldn't merit an entire paragraph/subsection. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 19:50, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Having done a bit of research after this came up, looks like the initial plan was indeed more citizen-astronauts - there were fairly solid plans for at least one reporter that I could find. Big Bird, however, seems to have gotten no further than "hey, this would be neat". I found reference to NASA contacting the producers asking if they thought this would be neat too, and they seem to have agreed, but there's nothing beyond that. I wouldn't call it "in talks," certainly. If we added a reference to this to the article, I'd suggest merely saying that NASA had expressed interest in having Big Bird fly on a shuttle mission - but to be honest, I don't think it belongs on the page that's specifically about the catastrophic launch. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 15:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If there was a "black box", or Flight recorder, such as those found on commercial airplanes, it should be mentioned in the article. Flight recorders have been "a mandatory requirement in commercial aircraft in the United States since 1967", says the Wikipedia article. You would think that the cabin of this space shuttle would have one. If there were none, I think that is a notable "missing link" in the whole story. Was there one? Were there two, as is now required for commercial planes? Was there none, and would not this lack of one be a major part of the discussion after the disaster? If there had been one, or two, then what happened after the cabin separated, until it fell to the ocean, and why is the recording of this – or lack thereof – not brought up—by anyone, or mentioned in the article? (I searched for the phrase "flight recorder", and the phrase "black box" and found none in the article.)
Anyone heard or read anything about this?
It should be in the article with citation or reference.
To the best of my knowledge, no, it did not have a "black box." Shuttles were equipped with a form of flight data system, but it wasn't ever intended for recovery after a disaster, so it lacked the same type of redundancies that a black box would have. Rather, it was more of a telemetry box transmitting all the flight characteristics to NASA on the ground, so there was little value to having it actually record anything. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 13:10, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There was a
cockpit voice recorder which is mentioned when the article states that the last transmission from the crew was Scobee saying they would throttle up, followed by mention of a recording of Smith saying "Uh-oh." Regarding what we think of as a "black box," it did not have one, as telemetry was constantly sent to the ground station. However, some telemetry was stored internally and not transmitted, as was the case during the investigation following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 01:24, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
level-5 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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