This time, it was 2020's Challenger: The Final Flight:
No, this has nothing to do with what happened with Elon Musk’s rocket yesterday… OK, that is inaccurate. I won’t get into that or how Ol’ Elon had a pretty miserable Thursday. Instead, in terms of exploring outer space and bringing man back to the moon, the Starship rocket blowing up is unfortunate. It also was a sad reminder of what happened with the Challenger shuttle on January 28, 1986. When I was a real little kid, outer space was fascinating to me; it was a blessing then that unlike many children on that day, it was not shown in my school that day so that tragedy was not shown live to me as a toddler.
This is a 4 part documentary on Netflix about 3 hours in length total where we the viewer get a history lesson on how NASA started the Space Shuttle program and at the same time the pool of astronauts morphed from “a bunch of white guys” to people far more diverse. Several dozen were selected to be trained at once and deployed through the 80’s. What ultimately caused the Challenger to explode was an issue known for years and that is the key subplot. The O-rings in the rocket boosters were an issue that was warned about many times so a catastrophe was inevitable.
The documentary was not the easiest watch; various family members of the late astronauts were interviewed along with the whistle-blowers whose cries fell on deaf ears. What was most fascinating to me was seeing the aftermath, with the commission hearings that finally revealed the truth to the public. It was put together rather well-one of the executive producers was J.J. Abrams-and was always the right tone as we saw all the interviews mixed in w/ all the stock footage. Early on as we got to know the astronauts there were some needle-drops, usually obvious ones. Then as it got serious, that ceased and the focus was on all the drama.
As sad as the subject matter was, getting to hear/see all those faces and educate the viewer on a preventable incident fascinated me. The fact that NASA was responsible for another appalling incident which should never have happened-the poor Space Shuttle Columbia-and it just makes me shake my head.
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