January 26, 2026 • 49 mins
In this episode, with the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster coming up on it's 40th year anniversary, Greg, Jan and Chris S discuss their memories of this as children of the 80s who witnessed it happen in real time.. #80s #nostalgia #news
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The Pixel people. Pod, you ever tried that
astronaut ice cream? That's good.
Oh, hello, and welcome to the pixel people.
Pod as normal. It's Greg.
(00:22):
And say hello, Jan. Hello, Jan.
And say hello, Chris. Hello.
Yeah, we're glad you've tuned infor another episode.
Our numbers keep going up. You're apparently liking
something we're doing. I think it's probably.
Yeah, I still think it's. Or hating it and making fun of
it. I still think people really like
to hear movie and TV and music talk from the 80s.
(00:44):
So that's what we're going to be, as I said before,
concentrating mostly on. But I guess these would be like
special episodes we're doing now.
So this week's episode is on theSpace shuttle Challenger
disaster from 1986, which we're coming up on the 40th
anniversary of. And every child of the 80s
probably remembers where they were at when that happened. 40
years, 40 years. So before we get into that,
(01:07):
though, we have Jan's gnarly news.
Goodness with that news, Jan. Jan's gnarly news for January
26th and 1980 something. And actually, yeah, I know we
(01:29):
normally do 80s gnarly news, butI had to do a 1979.
What? That's all right.
Had to. OK, this is too good not to.
Talk about we are an 80s podcastis what I call us, but we've
changed from doing the basement from 80s we first we were like
75 to 90 because that's when we were really was growing up.
(01:50):
But now we're kind of like 70s and 80s.
So it counts Go. Ahead.
Well, January 26th, 1979, The Dukes of Hazzard first aired on
CBS. One of the greatest television
shows of our time. We loved it.
Chris, did you want to be a Dukeboy growing up?
I wanted to be the cousins when they replaced the Duke.
Yeah, OK. Really.
You wanted to? Be a knockoff.
(02:13):
Yeah, I want to be a knockoff. I remember, I remember when Coy
Vance and Chris, cousin Chris came in there.
Yeah, that's why you know that'sthe name.
That was like Black Friday. That was Black Friday for
children, teenage or teenage boys, kids.
Then when you tune in one day and Beau and Luke's gone, but
here comes these new cousins that are wearing their same
clothes and doing the exact samething is like, what's going on
(02:35):
here? Yeah, it was, you know, it was
the equivalent to Crystal Pepsi or New Coke, and it was so
great. Yeah.
The sad part about that too is 2019 I took my nephew Avery who
was that's what, 6 years ago, sohe would have been like 15 I
think I took him to Tennessee toHazard Fest.
They have a festival. They was they had that and
smoking and bandit stuff there and fall guy stuff is
(02:57):
everything, anything that was a fancy car or something in a
movie or TV from the 70s eighties was there and I can't
remember his name now. The guy that played coy, the
blonde and I could Byron Cherry,that's his name.
Byron Cherry. We met him, paid like 10 bucks
to get his autograph from picture with Avery.
He was the nicest guy in the world and he was having the most
fun there. And all the Duke fans was happy
(03:19):
to see him. And you know, it's like that's
been buried over the years. Now he's part of the, you know,
he's part of the family. So everybody was appreciating
everything. He was a cousin.
But back then, you know, that was before the Internet and, you
know, you, you didn't know what was going on.
Just one day these impostors were there.
But over the years, I've watchedthose back years ago when the
national network replayed them. I have the DVD set now.
(03:40):
But I watched those episodes andI was like, they're not as bad.
I mean, they're cheesy because you can tell they're just
through two other people in there with two different names
Say do what they did. But they weren't that bad.
That show no. It was entertaining.
That show is unfair. But I'll tell you one thing
about that show. I'm going to break the DV DS
that one day, one time, Jen, we're going to start watching.
We're going to watch that one episode a week.
Dukes had their catch up. On it just one.
(04:02):
I mean, yeah, we can do a couple, but when you get to like
the last two seasons, they were running out of script ideas.
And plus they destroyed so many cars that they started using
models for the jumps. And they were like, hey, we can
use this toy car for a jump, so let's make the jump like even
crazier. So they had to jump in like over
barns. Like just it was insane.
(04:23):
And then the scripts are so bad.There's one where I think it's
called little cousin is the nameof the episode where a a like 3
foot tall space alien comes and they sort of adopt him to have
to get back to space. I'll put a picture up.
It's bad. It's really bad.
It was the guy that played cousin it Felix, I think his
(04:43):
name, his weird last name, but yeah, it's bad.
What a. Strange episode.
Yeah, well. Just wait.
I'll throw a clip up tonight. It's bad.
And maybe a clip of Greg wearinghis Daisy Dukes.
I used to have, there's a picture and I've said this
before somewhere. I've got my mom's got it, and I
(05:04):
got to go up there and dig through them with me holding my
bass that I caught in the pond near my grandfather's house.
So with my uncle had it mounted for me with my bass hat on,
holding my Stretch Armstrong in my other arm, standing in front
of my Dukes of Hazzard poster onmy back of my dorm, my bedroom.
So hot. I was so adorable.
I was a cute kid. January 26th, 1981 Kim Wilde
(05:26):
released a Single Kids in America.
Where the kids in America? Everybody thinking.
I was just playing for my son-in-law earlier tonight.
We were talking about Prince, and I told me how talented he
was, and I said Prince wrote songs for tons of other people.
And I found us a playlist on Spotify for songs that Prince
wrote. And I was playing him up there
(05:47):
for him on the phone. And it's like Sheila E, the
Bengals. Sinead.
O'Connor Sinead O'Connor more staying the time he wrote songs
for Madonna for everybody, but Iwas playing like Chaka Khan.
He wrote that song. I feel for you.
Let me look at Chaka Khan. And he was like, what is this?
And I was like, come on, man, everybody need a song in the 80s
(06:07):
and he's a 90s kid, but he knew some of them, but he didn't get
that. And I was like everybody from
the 80s could sings, could not feel for you but Chaka Khan.
Sad news. On January 26th, 1983, Paul
William Bear Bryant passed away.Yeah, he was considered the the
gold standard of college head coaches and told, what's the
name? Saban, Chris.
One of the greatest of all Toms.Yeah, and one of the best known.
(06:31):
I mean, everybody knows that name.
Bear Bryant. Good old nickname to get you get
you far in life back then. He coached the University of
Alabama football team from 1958 to 1980.
And he's turning over to his grave knowing what college
football's turned into now, which is basically minor league
professional football. January 26th, 1983 The number
(06:52):
one song was Men. It works down under.
New song, I love that. Colin Ray No Colin Hay.
Which is that the? Country.
Just Colin Hay. Yeah, Yeah, I get those
confused. I was all excited that time,
that guy, he was coming to Newton down here and go see him
and it's the country guy, the wrong guy.
(07:12):
Here's how you remember. Hey, it's the Men At Work.
OK, Good job. Now you'll never forget it.
January 26th, 1985 Otherworld premiered on CBS.
Do either of y'all know that? One Otherworld.
There's probably a reason you don't know that it was American.
Yeah, it was not good. It was American science fiction
TV series that aired for 8 episodes.
(07:36):
Otherworld. That's a normal TV season and
streaming services now. Yeah, not back.
Then this is going back to the 70s now and I can't remember the
name of it. I think it's turn on is what
it's called. I was listening an old Gilbert
Gottfried podcast because he hadthe best podcast.
He had all these old Hollywood people on it and stuff.
And he had Chuck McCann who was one of the stars of the far out
space nuts we mentioned the other week they were talking
(07:56):
about. And Gilbert goes, you're on the
show turn on, which was known asthe show that lasted 1 episode
and got cancelled in the middle of it.
And he says, yeah, don't bring that up.
So I went and looked it up and the guy that created laugh in
created this show. And the gimmick was it was a
computer that would computer generate sketches and it would
act them out and you could neversee it for years.
(08:17):
And finally they they released like the 2 they recorded 2
episodes, only one like the first one aired.
They yanked it off there and there to be seen again.
And I watched some of it and I had to put that up too.
It's like early 70s, mid 70s. This was the craziest thing I've
ever seen in my life. And it lasted one, one episode
and they're like, you will neverplay this on TV again.
They yanked it off. It was way ahead of its time.
(08:39):
But, well, they did that sort of.
And what's that show with Drew Carey and those guys?
Was the impromptu show where they did?
Yeah. Whose line is it?
Different. Yeah, it's kind of the same
concept. But this, but this was the
computer spit it out, but they pre recorded the stuff.
You know, it was like, but it was really weird, man.
I'm telling you, I'll throw it up because I watched some and I
(08:59):
said, yeah, I wouldn't have watched this back then.
I don't know if I'd watch it now.
It's so weird. Tim Conway, I think, was the
host of it. Oh, I'd watch anything with Tim
Conway. Not this.
You wouldn't. I'm telling you.
I'll put it on there. You'll see.
January 26th, 1985. Hillbilly Jim made his in ring
debut against Terry Gibb on WWF Championship Wrestling.
(09:20):
The greatest athletes the world's ever known him.
Billy Jim. Chris, do you remember Hibbilly?
Jim. I do remember Hibbilly Jim.
There's I wasn't a big WWE guy, but I do remember.
Him I know because. It was WWF.
Yeah, back then, yeah. Oh yeah, sorry.
WWFI wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't either, but I
used to love wrestling. I would buy the wrestling mags
and pro. Wrestling N.W.A, right?
(09:40):
Here, Yeah, Pro Wrestling Illustrated.
I keep up with all these other, you know, Federation's through
Pro Wrestling Illustrated and you knew all the WWF wrestling
stuff and plus me and my best friend Eric, we would when they
got to be sharing, we got to VCR.
We would go down to MEK Market, down where Freddie Ford is and
Rent Tapes and we'd like, oh, there's WrestleMania because you
never saw that. You had to have pay per viewer
(10:02):
be there, you know, so we'd watch that.
And it's so wild to see those other wrestlers you never saw
here. Who did the Undertaker wrestle
for back in? The 80s.
Oh, he wrestled in the N.W.A fora couple of years, then he went
to the WWE/F. Then I don't know which one I
used to watch. You watched N.W.A, you couldn't
see WWF around here until late 80s and you're already dating
and out with your boyfriend. You weren't watching it.
(10:24):
You watched N.W.A. Everybody where we're at watched
N.W.A. Good to know.
And Hillbilly Jim hosts the showon Sirius now.
So the actual guy, he has a showon Sirius?
Yeah, I think it's on the OutlawCountry Channel.
Well, props to Hillbilly Jim. That's cool.
Yep. January 26th, 1986 was Super
Bowl 20. Does anybody know who it was?
Was it 86? 86.
(10:45):
I've been the Bears and who's the other?
One very good. The Bears against the Patriots.
Yeah, the Bears won. Yeah, went 15 and one for the
season and the most dominating defense ever.
That was a great team back then even, I mean, even I was a Bears
fan. You pulled for them, they were
that good. That was played in the Louisiana
Superdome. They were like the first team to
really get out there and you know, their names of their
(11:07):
players and stuff like as being like pop culture heroes.
Remember that, Chris? Yeah, they had that dumb Super
Bowl Shuffle. That was not dumb.
You take that back. It was, it was not dumb.
But and you had like Refrigerator Perry, they'd give
him the ball, let him score and Jim McMahon, the cool
quarterback and you know, WalterPayton, you knew all those guys
on that team. Do you have the Super Bowl
(11:28):
Shuffle in your audio library ofsongs on your phone?
Jan. I have it on Spotify.
Oh I see. Sad.
That's why Spotify needs to go away.
I'm just kidding. I would play it right now.
I don't. I could almost play it.
I doubt we'd get hit for a copyright on that, but I won't.
I won't attempt it. I'm already going to push it
with a couple sound clips in this episode today.
(11:50):
Hopefully CNN doesn't come afterme, but we'll see.
Well, you know what? You're getting famous.
Yeah, Yeah. Thanks for putting that error in
there. You got it.
Speaking of getting famous, go to our YouTube page and like and
subscribe pixel on every. I used to hate that we'd be
watching a video goes, hey, if you like a video, click
(12:10):
subscribe and like our video andleave a comment.
And I'm like, shut up. I'm not going to leave a comment
now. I'm not going to like it.
And now I'm like, hey, it's people, go, go for our YouTube
page. Wait till I leave a comment,
it's going to be awesome. Some guy left a comment today.
If you listen to our podcast. Thanks for the comment.
Yep, and I looked it up. He left a comment on.
We have a short of a clip from last week's podcast on Def
Leppard, which has done great numbers and you people must
(12:33):
really appreciate that album because it's that podcast is
booming. But I put a short up of like a
minute and a half clip from thatpodcast on YouTube and it's got
like up to almost 1500 views now.
But a guy commented on it. It was about, Chris, what you
said last week about the backward masking sort of weird
thing in the in the love bites. Almost Satanic.
Sounds. Yeah.
(12:54):
And Jen said it was actually Mount Lane saying bloody hell.
But the guy, some guy commented down and said I always heard it
was go to hell, Jehovah Jesus orsomething like that.
And I'm like what? Yeah, I always knew.
I'd always heard it was some Satan.
Yeah, and I'm like, but I didn't.
Know what it was at? First I thought if the guys
listen, I'm sorry to say this, but at first I was like this guy
crackpot what you're talking about, Jen said.
(13:15):
Got to reply to that comment so I went and looked it up and that
is what most people heard. Apparently that is what the big
thing it was like they were saying Jesus go to hell.
That's what they thought he was saying.
And you know, it was not satanic, but it was like, that's
what? And apparently people hear that.
And I listed today, and now thatI know, I can't even hear.
Bloody hell, I can't hear any ofthat.
Well, I haven't angelic mind, soI don't hear that.
(13:37):
By the way, one of the first songs that might be women on
that I watched a video today, it's women.
One of the first two or three songs on the album.
There's in the middle of the song.
There's backwards stuff in it too.
That's Gods of War played backwards.
They use their own music, playedit backwards in that song.
I'll. Have to listen because I've
never paid attention to anythingin that song.
Do. You hear that sound?
Middle section or whatever. Joe Elliott.
(13:57):
There was a sound of me running to listen to the album.
Joe Elliott, Phil Collin, we're playing.
They had the master tapes and had their 64 track board and was
muting different parts and played that thing on the video I
saw and said, yeah, that's God'saward.
Backwards. We just looped it backwards and
put it through. Pretty cool.
Next. January 26th, 1987 Diana Ross
(14:19):
hosted the 14th Annual American Music Awards.
Janet Jackson was nominated in nine categories and 1/2 of them.
Whitney Houston picked up five awards.
Lionel Richie won favorite soul R&B male, favorite pop rock
video, favorite soul R&B video male and pop rock male.
(14:43):
I think Lionel Richie has been named on his podcast more than
any other artist. He was huge.
You just didn't listen to him. Yeah.
I mean, I knew his hits, but I guess.
And Madonna's put. Him as a pixel peep, yeah.
Yeah, honorary. He we'll do every year we'll do
a pixel underground Hall of Fameand I guess he's the 1st to go
in it. There you go.
He's like the Truck Berry of thepodcast.
(15:04):
If he hadn't got that stupid American Idol and started making
a comeback, we got probably got him for the podcast.
But I think he's like bigger than ever now.
Yeah, Madonna's Papa Don't Preach won the award for
favorite female pop rock video. That was a good song.
Remember when, Chris, did you watch the award shows back in
the day? Yeah, I watched them.
It was like exciting because yougot to see all these artists,
(15:26):
you know, performing live or whatever they would have.
It was a cool. Thing they would have like live
rock music on it too. Besides, they'd have a pop,
they'd have a Rock, You know, maybe even have a country.
But that was fun time. Like somebody like me didn't
have MTV got to see some of these guys live and stuff.
And now it's like, I can't imagine watching those shows are
so God awful now. I don't you know, there's nobody
(15:47):
watching. There's nobody I listen to that
aren't any of those shows anymore.
And I tell you what, if you wantto see a rock guy anymore, you
have to watch like the Country Music Awards because Sammy
Hangar is on the Country Music Awards like the other year doing
the Toby Keith's tribute. So, you know, they put Sammy on
the country Awards, which is more rock than rock is now.
Country is almost. Square 1.
(16:08):
The show created by PBS, aired from January 26th, 1987 to
November 6th, 1992. It was a show that was intended
to address the math crisis amongAmerican school kids.
So did y'all. Watch that.
That would have been age 7. That was out of my range.
I was already in, you know, highschool then.
Who cares? I had a driver's license then.
(16:28):
Do you remember the show Square Peg?
Oh yeah, square pegs. Square pegs.
Square. That's what I remember.
Square Pegs is a great show so. Yep.
Yep. God, that's what happened.
That's yeah, We got to do a deepdive sometime on a forgotten
show. That would be a good.
One another, Yeah, he could do. Greatest American hero.
Yeah, Jam wants to do that. Jam's brought that up many
times. The.
(16:49):
Greatest song ever on a show. Yeah.
Believe it or not, don't. Get a suit?
No. All right, Andrew Lloyd Webber's
The Phantom of the Opera debutedon Broadway January 26th, 1988.
It had an unprecedented, unprecedented run until April
16th, 2023. It made it the longest running
(17:14):
Broadway musical in history. Cool.
Who wants to go see The Phantom of the Opera?
Oh I like the I want the Lonchini original movie.
I'm good after that. One of the most horrifying
scenes ever put in a movie is inthe original silent movie when
they pull on Chinese mask off and you see his face that people
were blacking out in the movie theaters back then when that
happened. And I can imagine that you
(17:35):
didn't have stuff done in your face like you do now and you see
that image of his face that he did his own makeup for his like
that's one of the creepy hundreds plus years later.
You still not topped that in my book anyway.
January 26th, 1988 David Lee Roth Skyscraper album was
released. A lot of people would say.
That was his solo career. Yeah.
(17:55):
A. Lot of people say that was the
start of the downhill slide of his career, but I like that
album. I had it on cassette.
I. Mean did that have gigolo?
On it, No, that was crazy from the heat.
That was before he left Van Halen.
This album followed Edelman smile.
Edelman Smile was, yeah, his first solo album after Van Halen
that had Yankee Rose and stuff with Shy Boys and stuff on it.
And then Skyscraper had Paradiseand Living in Paradise stuff on
(18:18):
it. That's a good song.
But he started putting keyboardsin it and Steve I and was like,
I'm not playing guitar on the keyboard band and left after the
album and that just started his downhill.
His next album was a little lateenough and it had a couple good
songs, but that was it after that.
He was in the bargain bins afterthat.
January 26th, 1989 the Broadway musical review Black and Blue
(18:40):
opened is celebrated the black culture.
I knew the Van Halen song Back in Black and Blue.
But not the same thing. Don't know that one.
It ran until January 20th, 1991 and it had 829 performances.
Pretty. Different.
Yeah. Well, that's cool.
I know it's on blue and black. I don't know Black and.
Blue. Not the same thing.
And there you have Jan's gnarly news.
(19:02):
Oh gnarly. OK, I'm going to do something
real fast. Hang on, it's time for errors
and. Corrections because Greg screwed
up again. OK, I didn't screw up, but I'm
going to point out something because me and Jam were talking
about this the other day on lastweek's podcast when she was
talking about what was the Michael Jackson song is off off
(19:23):
the wall. Not rock, No, what's the other
one? Don't stop too.
Good enough. Jen said it went to #1 and I'm
like you said that a couple weeks ago, like 2 weeks before
that you said it was #1 and and Chris, you said last week, I
wouldn't be shocked if every week you say about a Michael
Jackson going #1 Jam was right. It went to #1 on last last
Monday date, but what she said two weeks before that was it
(19:44):
also went to #1 two weeks beforethat.
It hit #1 on the R&B charts there.
Are different charts. Different charts it went #1 R&B
and two weeks later hit #1 on the overall Billboard singles
chart. So just in case somebody was
confused about that, I thought I'd throw it in.
I think you were the only one that was confused.
Well, I don't want to give you props that you weren't giving
out. Jan's the most trusted news
source there is now so. I don't want people thinking
(20:07):
you're giving out false information.
By the way, I can just go this in here.
Speaking of charts, I don't knowif anyone of you saw this today,
the eagles greatest hits volume one that had, you know, the one
that everybody has just got certified quadruple diamond.
Wow, 40. Million copies. 40 million
copies. Their volume to which has volume
(20:29):
one don't have Hotel California on it.
This is from like their first 3 records.
Volume 2 has Hotel California and all that stuff on it.
It has like 27,000,000 copies sold but it getting certified
makes it the number one top sellalbum of all time.
Which. Means thriller.
Yes, this is how it goes now. I read it today on Microsoft
(20:49):
news. Number one album of all time
selling is the Eagles greatest hits volume one.
Number two album of all time is Michael Jackson Thriller #3
album of all time is Eagles Greatest Hits Volume 2.
Where you go, Eagles? That is a lot of album song,
really. There's no need selling that
many records for them to be playing the sphere, lip syncing
the songs like they're doing now.
But you. See where they're building
(21:10):
another sphere? And yeah, yeah, near Washington
and that's one we can drive to. I'm good for that.
Yeah, that I'm going to go. It's going to be 6000 seats
compared to like 20, some thousand.
It's going to be a lot smaller, but it's still going to be this.
It's going to still be the same LED and everything.
Yeah, everything's going to staythe same except seating
capacity. Is it a mini sphere squared?
(21:34):
Say that three times fast. Mini sphere squared, Mini
squared. So before we get into this, I
can say this on the Space Shuttle Challenger, I'm going to
play a little bit of audio for you. 321 and lift off.
Lift off of the 25th Space Shuttle mission and it has
(21:54):
cleared the tower. Good role program confirmed
Challenger now heading down range.
(22:17):
Engines beginning throttling down now at 94%.
Normal throttles for most of theflight. 104% will throttle down
to 65% shortly. Engines at 65%.
Three engines running normally. Three good fuel cells, three
(22:37):
good AP US Velocity 22157 feet per second.
Altitude 4.3 nautical miles downrange distance 3 nautical
miles. Engines throttling up. 3 engines
now 104% Challenger Go and throttle up.
(22:58):
Throttle up. One minute 15 seconds.
Velocity 2900 feet per second Altitude 9 nautical miles.
Downrange distance 7 nautical miles.
(23:25):
Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation.
Obviously a major malfunction. We have no downlink.
So yeah, that's some somber audio there.
(23:48):
But as we all know, I knew all three of us.
Chris, you saw it live, right? I did.
Yeah, all three of us witnessed that live on television, along
with the majority of the 80s children, or at least the
majority ones that live within 100 mile radius of where we are
right now. Because we were out of school
that day because it was so cold.It was dangerously cold.
(24:11):
It was like 9° around here and pipes were freezing.
They didn't think they'd get theschools heated up.
The buses wouldn't start, so they canceled school.
So this is before we get into it, this has been something
that's me and Jen, I'll start arguing with their own because
I'd heard they've tried to startone of those Mandela Effects on
this where people really didn't see it explode because it wasn't
(24:31):
shown live on television. And I bought into that for a
while. But then I kept thinking, I know
I saw this live. I'm not crazy.
And Jen says I knew I saw a liveand I said, but everything I
read on it and these people saying, no, that's Mandela
Effect thing you didn't really see you think you did.
Well, it was partly right that one of the reasons they say you
didn't see it live. I said they'd become old hat.
(24:52):
So they quit airing the space all launches live, which they
did. But this 1CBS, NBC and ABC all
all three and CNN, which carrieda feed all day Long live.
We're showing it because it was the first teacher in space.
They even had schools that had CNN fed to the schools and had
live feed live feed in the classrooms, the kids to watch
(25:13):
the first teacher going to space.
So we did see it live and I, because I remember where I, I
was sitting, I was sitting on the couch in my house.
My grandfather come down, he lived in the end of our driveway
to watch me and my brother. I was in 8th grade, my brother
would have been fifth grade probably.
He could have got by, but he come down to hang out with us I
guess and we were watching it live.
On the morning of January 28th, 1986, off the coast of Cape
(25:34):
Canaveral, FL, the Space ShuttleChallenger disintegrated 46,000
feet above the Atlantic Ocean. All 7 crew members perished in
what was the first fatal in flight accident in the history
of the United States space program.
The Mission, designated STS 51 L, was supposed to be a
milestone. The crew was set to deploy a
communication satellite and study Halley's comment.
(25:55):
But they were also carrying Krista McAuliffe, a school
teacher who was meant to be the first civilian in space.
The tragedy wasn't a fluke, but a failure design.
On the morning of the launch, record low temperatures that
stiffen the rubber O-ring cells in the right solid rocket
booster. When those seals failed, hot
pressurized gas escaped burning through the attachment strut and
into the external fuel tank. While the breakup was
(26:15):
catastrophic, we now know the orbiter had no escape system.
Despite a massive 3 month recovery operation, the impact
with the ocean service at terminal velocity was simply
unsurvivable. The aftermath brought the Space
Shuttle program to a 32 month standstill.
President Ronald Reagan's investigator body, the Rogers
Commission, uncovered A soberingreality.
NASA's organizational culture was broken.
(26:36):
Engineers have warned of the O-ring defect as early as 1977.
Yet NASA and the manufacturer Morton Thiokol allowed the
flights to continue on that freezing January morning.
Management disregarded direct warnings about the temperature,
choosing launch over safety. I kind of wrote that out.
It's mostly in my words. That's good.
So I've been studying this all week.
(26:58):
I mean, I knew, I mean, who who hasn't known this for years and
followed it. But I really, I started an audio
book on it. One of the guys at Morton Thy
call, who Morton is, the Morton Salt people, by the way, the thy
call was their chemical part that also made military stuff
and they made the solid rocket boosters that were on the that
(27:19):
propelled the space shuttle. So I got to looking into it and
I guess I'd missed over the years that it was really, this
could have easily been prevented.
And I'll just try to explain it real fast in case you wondered
what people know what happened. First off, it didn't explode, by
the way, Everybody thinks that thing exploded.
It didn't. Yeah, it looked like it
(27:39):
exploded, but the spatial did not explode.
I don't know if anyone here has ever had their watch their
grandmother or mother or anybodycan vegetables.
Chris, you ever seen? I'm sure you did.
You talked about your parents and all the stuff they used to.
So when you're canning stuff, you put the the cap on the jar
and you screw the lid on it. You put it in a hot bath of
(28:00):
water. When the temperature rises, it
forces the air out and that cap has a little seal on it and
you're here like sucking ping like when it it seals.
You know what I'm talking about.Chris, it's a pop.
Yeah, it's a pop. That means that thing is sealed,
It's airtight. That's what allows you to
preserve stuff for many years. Well, reading up on this, look
at a bunch of stuff on it. The O rings they had in these
(28:22):
things were just sort of like, Iwouldn't say rubber, but they're
similar to rubber O rings. When the temperatures in that
gas and stuff would start to heat up, the gas starts to
expand and that was what propellant.
Well, the gas would start to come out and there was these two
holes and those things with the heat would pop that O-ring and
seal it to hold the gas in, keepthe pressure in, keep it from
(28:43):
leaking. They had a second one directly
underneath it that was a fail safe in case the first one
didn't seal. So it'd be like having two caps
on a. If the first one don't seal, the
second one will. But it really wasn't a fails.
Right. In 77, one of those engineers
told us, people said, you know, these things don't do good in
cold weather, and they might notseal if the temperature doesn't
(29:04):
come up. So probably best not to launch
these things on a cold day. And so reading up on it, the
engineers at Morton Thicol told NASA the night before they'd
already scrubbed the launch twice.
And this was the big thing. You know, people are starting to
tune out on the space shuttle thing on NASA.
They were like, it's old hat now, but they brought the
(29:24):
teacher in, like, you know, we're going to put the teacher
on here. So they're like, they already
had to scratch, scratch the launch twice and they were not
going to do it a third time. So those guys, the engineers
called the night before and said, you have to move this
launch. You have to postpone it.
It is going to be ungodly cold in Florida tomorrow.
The whole S which is ironic whenI mean Jam was talking before
this as we're recording this andnext week when this comes out we
(29:47):
will just come through the tail end at one of the largest cold
snaps in the South that we've had in years.
We're expecting a big ice storm here.
It's literally similar to what it was 40 years ago.
So those guys looked at things that it's going to be too cold.
And the guy said those things could fail.
And the NASA people are like, Nah, we, it's fine.
(30:08):
But they repeatedly all night long told him we are not going
to sign off on this because the,the engineers said we're not
going to sign off on this. And they had to sign off on it
because these things could fail.And it's, it's, I'm telling you
something bad could happen. And the NASA people basically
sort of threatened the, the headguys at Morton Thackaw like,
well, you know, we could always find someone else to build these
(30:29):
boosters and sort of strong armed them into basically the
management at Morton Thackaw said, we're going to override
our engineers. We're just it's fine time we
give you our blessing, launch it, it'll be fine.
And the NASA people said, OK, but we want you to give us that
in writing because they knew something could happen.
The NASA people did write it down.
You guys sign off and they faxedit to them so they had proof
(30:51):
that if something happened, theythought it could happen.
And sure enough, it did that, that gun thing, we watched it
live and it, it when it looked like it exploded, it didn't the,
the, the fuel rocket booster thing sort of exploded and sent
debris out, which it was such anexplosion of the debris, it
cracked the space shield into pieces.
(31:12):
And that's when the, the part that the astronauts in which
plummeted, you know, it was theywere alive.
I was reading they, they severalof them were proof that they
were alive when this happened. And probably we're alive on the
way down. So it was kind of reading up on
it was really somber. It kind of brought back a lot of
stuff because I remember just thinking, you know, back then,
(31:33):
are they at least going to find their bodies?
You know, is there anything left?
I hope they found as a kid. I remember that.
Like, I hope they found them when they announced they found
them like a month or two later. It was Chris.
What do you remember about that day when you were?
I mean, when you talk about it and bring up all that stuff, you
know, it becomes more clear, youknow, from that.
But I remember it's almost the same kind of memory I had when
(31:57):
911 happened, you know, just later in life, you know, that
kind of thing. You're sitting there and you're
just I, I don't know what the exact phrase is, but you're
hypnotized by what's going on onthe.
Screen. Yeah, you're like, what did I
just watch? Because you see that stuff in
movies and stuff and you like, you know, this is fake.
(32:17):
Like that's people blowing up, you know, whatever, whatever.
But when you see it and it's real life and it's not a
Hollywood set and things like that, you're just stunned.
And I mean, I was, I think, 14 at the time.
So 86, yeah. We were in 8th grade, 14.
Yeah. It's just amazing that you look
at that and you're just blown away by what you saw.
(32:42):
I mean there. Is that a pun intended or?
What, you know, well, Oh, no, no, I I didn't mean to say it
like that, but it really did. It kind of just took you aback
that you're like, what did I just.
So. I mean, I remember it was the
big deal because it was a teacher.
Yeah. You know, that was the thing.
It was like. Everybody was watching that
(33:02):
because it's like, hey, no more person getting to go up into
space, you know? Yeah, all the other people,
like, it was kind of like a front man in a rock group.
Like everybody else was just background.
This was the most important thing.
Yeah. So being in school was a
teacher. You're like, oh, this is cool.
And you watch it and you're just, you know, in disbelief.
I remember. I remember watching it and when
(33:24):
it happened, I can, I mean, I can vividly see this in my head.
You know, what is it core memories to say you have that
you stick with you. That's a core, total core
memory. And I can remember our living
room and where I was sitting there, my grandpa was sitting
and watching that. And I remember immediately
saying something just happened because I was a big fan of space
and the space program and all that stuff.
(33:45):
And I had, I built a model rocket back then.
You remember when kids our age of build model rockets back then
and launch them and stuff. I'd built one of the space
shuttle and I had it, you know, I just, I love the space
shuttle. It was the coolest thing.
I had postcards from NASA that somebody got me and I had, you
know, pictures of space. There was a, one of the
postcards I had that I had stuckin in my room forever was one of
(34:08):
the big Boeing jets. You know when he would fly it
back from Florida to to Texas orvice versa, they would put those
space shuttles on top of the Boeing jets.
Have you ever seen those pictures?
Like they piggyback. And.
It was so wild to see that that space shuttle that looks so
different than a normal plane and, and it looks like larger
than life. And you see it's really not as
(34:28):
big as you think, but you see iton the back of that plane.
And I had that that picture up in my room forever.
I was just a fan of this stuff. And immediately I knew
something's wrong. You know, you see that that
rocket booster start going awry,you know, and you're like,
something isn't right. And I remember just being like,
holy cow, Jen, what you. I do remember the excitement
around it, building up to it because it was a teacher.
(34:51):
I mean, it was, it was huge for us normal people.
I don't know if we would have had it on our TV's in the school
that day that at Blackburn, because I, I was trying to think
of you only had a couple of TV'sfor certain classrooms.
So what were you going to do? They were saying that schools
that, you know, had stuff, CNN have been fed into some of these
schools that had to be in big cities and stuff.
(35:13):
Yeah, we just put our phones outand watch it.
Yeah. So, I mean, we were like one of
the radio. Yeah.
As I said, we were all out of school because it was ungodly
cold. And that ends up that's what
took it down in Florida. And a cold day.
That's what we did all day. We sat there and watched that
over. Yeah, watched the coverage CNN
broke back in or CBS and then broke in and start covering.
(35:34):
That's all we did that day, all day long, was watch that.
And, and you look at the enormity of everything.
I went to the Kennedy Space Center in Port Canaveral two
years ago and just toward that whole thing and, and just
looking at like, you can't imagine the size of these little
people inside this massive, you know, controlling and, and it
(35:56):
puts in perspective all that stuff that people are inside
this thing. And when they go up and when it
exploded and you thought they disintegrated instantly or
that's what you would have heard.
And now you're an adult, You think, oh, I hope it, if I'm, if
I'm in that, I hope I'm instantly gone.
I don't want to suffer, you know, But you know, when you
hear that they may have been alive until the crash in the
(36:19):
ocean or whatever it it just that's got to be one of the most
painful, you know, unreal experiences of anybody's life.
As well as their families now having to hear that years later
that hey, they were probably alive for just a little bit.
One of the yeah, one of the things that I read was that the
(36:41):
first several launches of the space shuttle when it started,
they had like, I wouldn't call me ejector, but they had, well,
it kind of was ejector seats andstuff in the anything.
And they ended up taking them out because I got thinking how I
will never need something for something like this.
It was AI don't know if it's called ejector seat, but it was
something that would have helpedyou.
And I guess it had like a parachute or something in case
(37:02):
something did break apart like that that you could have
initiated. But they weren't in it.
They took them out after the first several launches.
Like I guess you got to cut downweight stuff.
So it's like, hey, we take thoseout.
So when I was saying about the mission, it was originally
scheduled for July of 85, but then it was delayed until
November and then to January when that's that.
So if that thing had happened inJuly or November, this probably
(37:25):
would not have happened. If it if it had launched, it
would have probably been fine. I was reading up on it and they
they were talking about whether,you know, they could have died
from that. I saw that the impact of the
Krug compartment with the ocean surfers is so violent that
evidence of damage occurring in the seconds which followed the
disintegration was masked. Their final conclusions were the
(37:47):
cause of death of the Challengerastronauts cannot be positively
determined. The forces to which the crew
were exposed during orbiter breakup were probably not
sufficient to cause death or serious injury.
And the crew possibly but not certainly lost consciousness in
the seconds following the breakup due to in flight loss of
pressure. But they fell for over 2 minutes
before they hit the water. So what they're saying is they
(38:07):
probably gain their consciousness back after about a
minute and knew what was happening.
The ones that you know, made it so that's as an adult, that was
even worse. You know, when you start hearing
about that and start read into it and find out that I don't
think I followed the Rogers Commission on this, then you
know, those hearings, I didn't have cable.
We didn't get to watch the C-SPAN or anything back then.
But yeah, it was wild. But I'll tell you some, Chris,
(38:29):
when you were in NASA, did you see the they had parts of the
space shuttle there? Did you get?
You remember seeing any of them?I don't remember 100% what all
because we went through it pretty.
I mean we went through it for the whole day.
So there's a lot of stuff, but. 20 years I've been there, but I
remember they did have a chunk of the the cockpit where they
were at, you know that they recovered it's on display there
(38:51):
and tell us what it was, but. I'm sure they did.
I just don't remember. But I mean, because you can't,
you can't get rid of that, that piece of history.
That's something that has to be,you know, remembered and
memorialized. So I'm sure it was there.
I just don't remember. Yeah, OK, I'll tell you some
trivia. I'm sure I've heard this before
(39:11):
years ago, but it had to refreshthis.
And if people's never heard this.
So Christa McAuliffe, the teacher, was selected for more
than 11,000 applicants to NASA'sTeacher Space Project.
Her backup in case she couldn't do it was a woman named Barbara
Morgan. And so she just happened to not
be on that flat because it went to Christa.
(39:32):
So right after this happened, they made a rule, they ended
that immediate like immediately,like we're not putting it as,
you know, civilians in here again.
But they did put a like a sort of a, an idea in there that you
can, they did want to put another teacher back in space,
but they were, they couldn't be just a teacher.
You pull out and give like minimal training.
(39:54):
You had to go through the entireastronaut training.
So Barbara Morgan, her backup, actually became a professional
astronaut in January 1998 and flew on Space Shuttle mission
STS 118 to the International Space Station on August 8th,
2007 aboard Endeavour, the orbiter that replaced
Challenger. Now, you know, that's kind of
(40:16):
cool, right? Here's what really shocks.
This is when you get like, this woman has a horseshoe surf
firmly up her rear, you know, you need to go rub her head for
good luck because this woman hasit.
She was initially scheduled to fly on STS 118 mission on space
Shuttle Columbia in November 2004.
During the disaster that destroyed Columbia in February
2003, she was aboard a training plane that was following the
(40:40):
shuttle as it prepared to land. So she was on a plane in the air
watching Columbia when it came in disintegrated in 2003.
She was supposed to fly on Columbia the next the next
launch. I mean, that woman had some
really good luck, you know, And I kept telling Jan today I said,
if it were me, when I'm go through all this and I finally
(41:01):
do it, like you're finally goingto get to go.
And then I'm up there watching the space I'm supposed to go on
disintegrate after that. And I thought that I've got
lucky twice. I'm not pushing it a third time.
But she did, you know, and she went up and went into space.
So, you know, that that's one ofthose little stories in it you
don't know about really unless you really look it up.
And I was like, that's amazing that she still went up into
(41:23):
space. She's got more guts than I have.
I would have never done it, not after all the close calls.
Jan would you still done that after?
There's no way. After watching the first one,
I'd be like, I'm out. I don't need to do that.
You know? Maybe it's not meant for a
teacher to be in space. I'm like, I'm done, you know?
There's just so much stuff. But at that point she had gone
through so much training. Was she still considered a
(41:44):
teacher or she she was considered an astronaut?
She was an astronaut. Then she had to do the full
astronaut training. So she was an astronaut by the
end. She wasn't just.
It was. That was one of the things that
really wowed me. But I, I have to throw this in
here too, another hero and all this stuff is the engineers at
Morton Theikal who had said, do not do this, do not do this.
(42:05):
One of them, the main one was Alan MacDonald.
He's the guy who wrote the book that I'm listening to in the
audio book at work. He's the main guy that told them
do not do this. And so when they had the the
Rogers Commission stuff, Morton Theikal was trying to push it
all on to NASA and NASA was trying to cover it up saying,
well, it's just an act of God. You know, he stood up.
He was still working for Morton Thakoff stood up at the Rogers
(42:29):
Commission and said, no, here's what really happened and told
what really happened and basically laid it all out at
great, you know, concern for hisjob.
And he was pretty sure he's going to get fired.
And I think Reagan and a bunch of them said something, nothing
better not happen to this guy because he's a hero.
You know, so he worked for theremaybe the next 10 plus years.
But I did read that he was sort of like demoted where he didn't
(42:51):
get any of that. He was like a big engineer that
they're like, Nah, we put him onsmaller jobs now.
He paid for for telling the truth.
And that guy, the hero man, because, you know, most people
just keep their mouth shut. He didn't have to come out and
say that, but he did. And guys like that, you know,
are true heroes. When you think about that, that
could have been swept on the rugbecause like, well, just, you
know, just blew up. It's what happens.
(43:11):
So but he didn't allow it. And, you know, props to that
guy, but I, it's just hard to believe it's been 40 years.
Like you say, Chris, that, you know, that core memory stuff
about big things that happened. That's one of them.
I remember, even though I was only like 8 years old, I
remember Reagan getting shot. That was such a big deal.
I see stuff. I watched Mad Men and they have
(43:33):
the whole thing in Mad Men whereKennedy gets assassinated, you
know, and it shows how people, and I've read that that's one of
the most accurate depictions of how people really were that day.
People just left work, you know,and they didn't know what to do.
And, and you see that then I remember Reagan getting shot and
wonder if he's going to die, youknow, And it's like freaking out
because the president, you know,and people still cared then
about even if it wasn't your guy, you cared, you know, I
(43:56):
don't think people would care that much now, no matter who's
in office. But there'll be half the people.
We've seen it. Half people would be happy, half
people be sad. Everybody was freaking out back
then. You.
Know when Jr. got shot, that wasa big thing.
It kind of was that took actually.
That's a core memory. His wife's.
Sister And then, you know, off topic a second, you know what
(44:17):
else opened or what happened pretty close to the same day 40
years ago. I'm taking a sip of water so
this not be nothing crazier. I'll do a spit take.
No, no, It's your. It's your favorite.
The Ding Dome at UNC opened on January 8th, 1986.
See. There you go.
I was just there last night. I was just there last week.
(44:37):
Yeah, I saw that you you trying to make the that you've beat
death, you're trying to make thelast years you have left now
drag out a long way, aren't you by going to miserable?
Stuff. Yeah.
I mean, that's it. I mean at least that gym has air
conditioning. Yeah, that's what I do.
I go to, you know, the most miserable places on earth.
So to make my days feel really long.
Yeah. Anyway. 8040 years ago like I'm
(44:59):
53 40 years ago just seems yeah crazy that we're talking about
something 40 years ago and we're.
Like we remember it. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, 40 years is a lot. You know, I still think I'm
young sometimes and then, and I am in the grand scheme of
things, we all are compared to our parents, other people.
But then again, you think like 40 years.
Well, let's all get together in 20 years and talk about this
(45:21):
again and see if we. I'll probably won't be alive,
but OK well. You, you beat that.
I'll be the one going now. You and Jans can keep this
podcast going when I'm going. So.
Oh, really? Yeah.
There won't be podcasts in 20 years.
There'll be some other crazy format or something.
Probably. But yeah, we're going to do more
of a like I say, we're keeping up.
We're kind of shifting more toward the reviews of movies and
(45:43):
albums and stuff like that. But we're going to do like every
second or third episode, it's going to be something historical
or we'll still throw episodes like this out.
There, and maybe we're Greg willremember to tell me what we're
doing each week. Yeah, because Jen thought this
episode today was the one on themovie Over the Top, the review
of Stallone's Over the Top, but that's next week.
(46:04):
So I have AI have a list and I I've got it.
I need to send it to you I guess.
That would be helpful. Yeah, I'll, I'll send all the
staff here copies of this so youcan put it up and keep track of
the dates. That's awesome.
You know what you you said in the earlier that we talk about
Reagan getting assassinated and all, you know, that happened in
March, March 30th of 1981, I think, or something like that.
(46:27):
So that's always on the day our podcast comes out.
It's a Monday. It's. 45 years, yeah.
Yeah, and Saturday. I think that's the one we're
going to be doing. That's a movie review, though,
so I hadn't decided what it might be.
Porky's. We must dare not come off of.
Them and play the play the videogame at the same time of
watching the movie. Yeah, I want to thank Michael
Hauser for reminding me that that's why we were out of
(46:48):
school, because the frigid cold,Janet kind of told.
Me even though your wife had told.
Me, I just said. You told me, you know, but I was
remembering you. Never believe me?
I do, but I kept remembering that Blackburn was out because
we had frozen pipes and something burst.
But it wasn't that. It was the the chance that it
could have had frozen pipes. It's just ironic that this was
all happened 40 years ago and we're having the exact same cold
(47:09):
spell that's going to hit all ofus here in the South again, 40
years. Later, if the school would just
leave a little bit of water running, it would be fine.
Yeah, go to all the bathrooms and put a drip in.
The sink and yeah, do that. Do that.
If they if they'd have done that, we never saw that live,
we'd have come home and they go,hey.
What's going on? Here and a lot of you people
need to thank Jan here because Jan stopped me from I was going
(47:32):
to mentioned about the jokes that our generation that's what
I was going to bring up our generation say what you will
about it. Well, we're a little tougher
than the generations now. Now, I'm not saying we were as
tough as our grandparents and you know, it went through World
War 2 and all that Vietnam on parents.
Great Depression. Yeah, but we could take some
tragedy and turn something out of it.
(47:53):
And I can remember within a weekof this happening, the jokes
that were out there then people had, I guess that's how we, you
know, dealt with it as kids was somebody come up with a joke and
I won't tell them, But if you Google space shuttle jokes,
you'll see them all. And if you're people our age,
you heard them all back then. Never heard a single space
shuttle. Joke, Chris.
You remember the jokes, right? We're not going to.
(48:15):
Let me tell you one right now. No, we're not.
Yeah, no, but you're. Yeah, See, maybe it's just guys.
Maybe. I think it was a guy thing.
It probably was a guy thing, but.
It's a normal person thing. Yeah, that's how you dealt with
it was. Maybe I just blocked them all
out. You probably blocked them out,
Jan, because you hung out with guys and you know you heard
them. We just dealt with stuff like
that with laughter. I still do.
(48:36):
We still do, yeah. So anyway, I guess I'll wrap
this one up. You know, I just felt it needed
to be told because 40 years and it was a Seminole moment in our
our youth and childhood. That's it.
Shine on the. Crew of the Space Shuttle
Challenger honored us for the manner in which they lived their
lives. We will never forget them, nor
(48:58):
the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for
their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of
Earth. To touch the face of God.
Thank you.
The Pixel people. Pod, you ever tried that
astronaut ice cream? That's good.
Oh, hello, and welcome to the pixel people.
Pod as normal. It's Greg.
(00:22):
And say hello, Jan. Hello, Jan.
And say hello, Chris. Hello.
Yeah, we're glad you've tuned infor another episode.
Our numbers keep going up. You're apparently liking
something we're doing. I think it's probably.
Yeah, I still think it's. Or hating it and making fun of
it. I still think people really like
to hear movie and TV and music talk from the 80s.
(00:44):
So that's what we're going to be, as I said before,
concentrating mostly on. But I guess these would be like
special episodes we're doing now.
So this week's episode is on theSpace shuttle Challenger
disaster from 1986, which we're coming up on the 40th
anniversary of. And every child of the 80s
probably remembers where they were at when that happened. 40
years, 40 years. So before we get into that,
(01:07):
though, we have Jan's gnarly news.
Goodness with that news, Jan. Jan's gnarly news for January
26th and 1980 something. And actually, yeah, I know we
(01:29):
normally do 80s gnarly news, butI had to do a 1979.
What? That's all right.
Had to. OK, this is too good not to.
Talk about we are an 80s podcastis what I call us, but we've
changed from doing the basement from 80s we first we were like
75 to 90 because that's when we were really was growing up.
(01:50):
But now we're kind of like 70s and 80s.
So it counts Go. Ahead.
Well, January 26th, 1979, The Dukes of Hazzard first aired on
CBS. One of the greatest television
shows of our time. We loved it.
Chris, did you want to be a Dukeboy growing up?
I wanted to be the cousins when they replaced the Duke.
Yeah, OK. Really.
You wanted to? Be a knockoff.
(02:13):
Yeah, I want to be a knockoff. I remember, I remember when Coy
Vance and Chris, cousin Chris came in there.
Yeah, that's why you know that'sthe name.
That was like Black Friday. That was Black Friday for
children, teenage or teenage boys, kids.
Then when you tune in one day and Beau and Luke's gone, but
here comes these new cousins that are wearing their same
clothes and doing the exact samething is like, what's going on
(02:35):
here? Yeah, it was, you know, it was
the equivalent to Crystal Pepsi or New Coke, and it was so
great. Yeah.
The sad part about that too is 2019 I took my nephew Avery who
was that's what, 6 years ago, sohe would have been like 15 I
think I took him to Tennessee toHazard Fest.
They have a festival. They was they had that and
smoking and bandit stuff there and fall guy stuff is
(02:57):
everything, anything that was a fancy car or something in a
movie or TV from the 70s eighties was there and I can't
remember his name now. The guy that played coy, the
blonde and I could Byron Cherry,that's his name.
Byron Cherry. We met him, paid like 10 bucks
to get his autograph from picture with Avery.
He was the nicest guy in the world and he was having the most
fun there. And all the Duke fans was happy
(03:19):
to see him. And you know, it's like that's
been buried over the years. Now he's part of the, you know,
he's part of the family. So everybody was appreciating
everything. He was a cousin.
But back then, you know, that was before the Internet and, you
know, you, you didn't know what was going on.
Just one day these impostors were there.
But over the years, I've watchedthose back years ago when the
national network replayed them. I have the DVD set now.
(03:40):
But I watched those episodes andI was like, they're not as bad.
I mean, they're cheesy because you can tell they're just
through two other people in there with two different names
Say do what they did. But they weren't that bad.
That show no. It was entertaining.
That show is unfair. But I'll tell you one thing
about that show. I'm going to break the DV DS
that one day, one time, Jen, we're going to start watching.
We're going to watch that one episode a week.
Dukes had their catch up. On it just one.
(04:02):
I mean, yeah, we can do a couple, but when you get to like
the last two seasons, they were running out of script ideas.
And plus they destroyed so many cars that they started using
models for the jumps. And they were like, hey, we can
use this toy car for a jump, so let's make the jump like even
crazier. So they had to jump in like over
barns. Like just it was insane.
(04:23):
And then the scripts are so bad.There's one where I think it's
called little cousin is the nameof the episode where a a like 3
foot tall space alien comes and they sort of adopt him to have
to get back to space. I'll put a picture up.
It's bad. It's really bad.
It was the guy that played cousin it Felix, I think his
(04:43):
name, his weird last name, but yeah, it's bad.
What a. Strange episode.
Yeah, well. Just wait.
I'll throw a clip up tonight. It's bad.
And maybe a clip of Greg wearinghis Daisy Dukes.
I used to have, there's a picture and I've said this
before somewhere. I've got my mom's got it, and I
(05:04):
got to go up there and dig through them with me holding my
bass that I caught in the pond near my grandfather's house.
So with my uncle had it mounted for me with my bass hat on,
holding my Stretch Armstrong in my other arm, standing in front
of my Dukes of Hazzard poster onmy back of my dorm, my bedroom.
So hot. I was so adorable.
I was a cute kid. January 26th, 1981 Kim Wilde
(05:26):
released a Single Kids in America.
Where the kids in America? Everybody thinking.
I was just playing for my son-in-law earlier tonight.
We were talking about Prince, and I told me how talented he
was, and I said Prince wrote songs for tons of other people.
And I found us a playlist on Spotify for songs that Prince
wrote. And I was playing him up there
(05:47):
for him on the phone. And it's like Sheila E, the
Bengals. Sinead.
O'Connor Sinead O'Connor more staying the time he wrote songs
for Madonna for everybody, but Iwas playing like Chaka Khan.
He wrote that song. I feel for you.
Let me look at Chaka Khan. And he was like, what is this?
And I was like, come on, man, everybody need a song in the 80s
(06:07):
and he's a 90s kid, but he knew some of them, but he didn't get
that. And I was like everybody from
the 80s could sings, could not feel for you but Chaka Khan.
Sad news. On January 26th, 1983, Paul
William Bear Bryant passed away.Yeah, he was considered the the
gold standard of college head coaches and told, what's the
name? Saban, Chris.
One of the greatest of all Toms.Yeah, and one of the best known.
(06:31):
I mean, everybody knows that name.
Bear Bryant. Good old nickname to get you get
you far in life back then. He coached the University of
Alabama football team from 1958 to 1980.
And he's turning over to his grave knowing what college
football's turned into now, which is basically minor league
professional football. January 26th, 1983 The number
(06:52):
one song was Men. It works down under.
New song, I love that. Colin Ray No Colin Hay.
Which is that the? Country.
Just Colin Hay. Yeah, Yeah, I get those
confused. I was all excited that time,
that guy, he was coming to Newton down here and go see him
and it's the country guy, the wrong guy.
(07:12):
Here's how you remember. Hey, it's the Men At Work.
OK, Good job. Now you'll never forget it.
January 26th, 1985 Otherworld premiered on CBS.
Do either of y'all know that? One Otherworld.
There's probably a reason you don't know that it was American.
Yeah, it was not good. It was American science fiction
TV series that aired for 8 episodes.
(07:36):
Otherworld. That's a normal TV season and
streaming services now. Yeah, not back.
Then this is going back to the 70s now and I can't remember the
name of it. I think it's turn on is what
it's called. I was listening an old Gilbert
Gottfried podcast because he hadthe best podcast.
He had all these old Hollywood people on it and stuff.
And he had Chuck McCann who was one of the stars of the far out
space nuts we mentioned the other week they were talking
(07:56):
about. And Gilbert goes, you're on the
show turn on, which was known asthe show that lasted 1 episode
and got cancelled in the middle of it.
And he says, yeah, don't bring that up.
So I went and looked it up and the guy that created laugh in
created this show. And the gimmick was it was a
computer that would computer generate sketches and it would
act them out and you could neversee it for years.
(08:17):
And finally they they released like the 2 they recorded 2
episodes, only one like the first one aired.
They yanked it off there and there to be seen again.
And I watched some of it and I had to put that up too.
It's like early 70s, mid 70s. This was the craziest thing I've
ever seen in my life. And it lasted one, one episode
and they're like, you will neverplay this on TV again.
They yanked it off. It was way ahead of its time.
(08:39):
But, well, they did that sort of.
And what's that show with Drew Carey and those guys?
Was the impromptu show where they did?
Yeah. Whose line is it?
Different. Yeah, it's kind of the same
concept. But this, but this was the
computer spit it out, but they pre recorded the stuff.
You know, it was like, but it was really weird, man.
I'm telling you, I'll throw it up because I watched some and I
(08:59):
said, yeah, I wouldn't have watched this back then.
I don't know if I'd watch it now.
It's so weird. Tim Conway, I think, was the
host of it. Oh, I'd watch anything with Tim
Conway. Not this.
You wouldn't. I'm telling you.
I'll put it on there. You'll see.
January 26th, 1985. Hillbilly Jim made his in ring
debut against Terry Gibb on WWF Championship Wrestling.
(09:20):
The greatest athletes the world's ever known him.
Billy Jim. Chris, do you remember Hibbilly?
Jim. I do remember Hibbilly Jim.
There's I wasn't a big WWE guy, but I do remember.
Him I know because. It was WWF.
Yeah, back then, yeah. Oh yeah, sorry.
WWFI wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't either, but I
used to love wrestling. I would buy the wrestling mags
and pro. Wrestling N.W.A, right?
(09:40):
Here, Yeah, Pro Wrestling Illustrated.
I keep up with all these other, you know, Federation's through
Pro Wrestling Illustrated and you knew all the WWF wrestling
stuff and plus me and my best friend Eric, we would when they
got to be sharing, we got to VCR.
We would go down to MEK Market, down where Freddie Ford is and
Rent Tapes and we'd like, oh, there's WrestleMania because you
never saw that. You had to have pay per viewer
(10:02):
be there, you know, so we'd watch that.
And it's so wild to see those other wrestlers you never saw
here. Who did the Undertaker wrestle
for back in? The 80s.
Oh, he wrestled in the N.W.A fora couple of years, then he went
to the WWE/F. Then I don't know which one I
used to watch. You watched N.W.A, you couldn't
see WWF around here until late 80s and you're already dating
and out with your boyfriend. You weren't watching it.
(10:24):
You watched N.W.A. Everybody where we're at watched
N.W.A. Good to know.
And Hillbilly Jim hosts the showon Sirius now.
So the actual guy, he has a showon Sirius?
Yeah, I think it's on the OutlawCountry Channel.
Well, props to Hillbilly Jim. That's cool.
Yep. January 26th, 1986 was Super
Bowl 20. Does anybody know who it was?
Was it 86? 86.
(10:45):
I've been the Bears and who's the other?
One very good. The Bears against the Patriots.
Yeah, the Bears won. Yeah, went 15 and one for the
season and the most dominating defense ever.
That was a great team back then even, I mean, even I was a Bears
fan. You pulled for them, they were
that good. That was played in the Louisiana
Superdome. They were like the first team to
really get out there and you know, their names of their
(11:07):
players and stuff like as being like pop culture heroes.
Remember that, Chris? Yeah, they had that dumb Super
Bowl Shuffle. That was not dumb.
You take that back. It was, it was not dumb.
But and you had like Refrigerator Perry, they'd give
him the ball, let him score and Jim McMahon, the cool
quarterback and you know, WalterPayton, you knew all those guys
on that team. Do you have the Super Bowl
(11:28):
Shuffle in your audio library ofsongs on your phone?
Jan. I have it on Spotify.
Oh I see. Sad.
That's why Spotify needs to go away.
I'm just kidding. I would play it right now.
I don't. I could almost play it.
I doubt we'd get hit for a copyright on that, but I won't.
I won't attempt it. I'm already going to push it
with a couple sound clips in this episode today.
(11:50):
Hopefully CNN doesn't come afterme, but we'll see.
Well, you know what? You're getting famous.
Yeah, Yeah. Thanks for putting that error in
there. You got it.
Speaking of getting famous, go to our YouTube page and like and
subscribe pixel on every. I used to hate that we'd be
watching a video goes, hey, if you like a video, click
(12:10):
subscribe and like our video andleave a comment.
And I'm like, shut up. I'm not going to leave a comment
now. I'm not going to like it.
And now I'm like, hey, it's people, go, go for our YouTube
page. Wait till I leave a comment,
it's going to be awesome. Some guy left a comment today.
If you listen to our podcast. Thanks for the comment.
Yep, and I looked it up. He left a comment on.
We have a short of a clip from last week's podcast on Def
Leppard, which has done great numbers and you people must
(12:33):
really appreciate that album because it's that podcast is
booming. But I put a short up of like a
minute and a half clip from thatpodcast on YouTube and it's got
like up to almost 1500 views now.
But a guy commented on it. It was about, Chris, what you
said last week about the backward masking sort of weird
thing in the in the love bites. Almost Satanic.
Sounds. Yeah.
(12:54):
And Jen said it was actually Mount Lane saying bloody hell.
But the guy, some guy commented down and said I always heard it
was go to hell, Jehovah Jesus orsomething like that.
And I'm like what? Yeah, I always knew.
I'd always heard it was some Satan.
Yeah, and I'm like, but I didn't.
Know what it was at? First I thought if the guys
listen, I'm sorry to say this, but at first I was like this guy
crackpot what you're talking about, Jen said.
(13:15):
Got to reply to that comment so I went and looked it up and that
is what most people heard. Apparently that is what the big
thing it was like they were saying Jesus go to hell.
That's what they thought he was saying.
And you know, it was not satanic, but it was like, that's
what? And apparently people hear that.
And I listed today, and now thatI know, I can't even hear.
Bloody hell, I can't hear any ofthat.
Well, I haven't angelic mind, soI don't hear that.
(13:37):
By the way, one of the first songs that might be women on
that I watched a video today, it's women.
One of the first two or three songs on the album.
There's in the middle of the song.
There's backwards stuff in it too.
That's Gods of War played backwards.
They use their own music, playedit backwards in that song.
I'll. Have to listen because I've
never paid attention to anythingin that song.
Do. You hear that sound?
Middle section or whatever. Joe Elliott.
(13:57):
There was a sound of me running to listen to the album.
Joe Elliott, Phil Collin, we're playing.
They had the master tapes and had their 64 track board and was
muting different parts and played that thing on the video I
saw and said, yeah, that's God'saward.
Backwards. We just looped it backwards and
put it through. Pretty cool.
Next. January 26th, 1987 Diana Ross
(14:19):
hosted the 14th Annual American Music Awards.
Janet Jackson was nominated in nine categories and 1/2 of them.
Whitney Houston picked up five awards.
Lionel Richie won favorite soul R&B male, favorite pop rock
video, favorite soul R&B video male and pop rock male.
(14:43):
I think Lionel Richie has been named on his podcast more than
any other artist. He was huge.
You just didn't listen to him. Yeah.
I mean, I knew his hits, but I guess.
And Madonna's put. Him as a pixel peep, yeah.
Yeah, honorary. He we'll do every year we'll do
a pixel underground Hall of Fameand I guess he's the 1st to go
in it. There you go.
He's like the Truck Berry of thepodcast.
(15:04):
If he hadn't got that stupid American Idol and started making
a comeback, we got probably got him for the podcast.
But I think he's like bigger than ever now.
Yeah, Madonna's Papa Don't Preach won the award for
favorite female pop rock video. That was a good song.
Remember when, Chris, did you watch the award shows back in
the day? Yeah, I watched them.
It was like exciting because yougot to see all these artists,
(15:26):
you know, performing live or whatever they would have.
It was a cool. Thing they would have like live
rock music on it too. Besides, they'd have a pop,
they'd have a Rock, You know, maybe even have a country.
But that was fun time. Like somebody like me didn't
have MTV got to see some of these guys live and stuff.
And now it's like, I can't imagine watching those shows are
so God awful now. I don't you know, there's nobody
(15:47):
watching. There's nobody I listen to that
aren't any of those shows anymore.
And I tell you what, if you wantto see a rock guy anymore, you
have to watch like the Country Music Awards because Sammy
Hangar is on the Country Music Awards like the other year doing
the Toby Keith's tribute. So, you know, they put Sammy on
the country Awards, which is more rock than rock is now.
Country is almost. Square 1.
(16:08):
The show created by PBS, aired from January 26th, 1987 to
November 6th, 1992. It was a show that was intended
to address the math crisis amongAmerican school kids.
So did y'all. Watch that.
That would have been age 7. That was out of my range.
I was already in, you know, highschool then.
Who cares? I had a driver's license then.
(16:28):
Do you remember the show Square Peg?
Oh yeah, square pegs. Square pegs.
Square. That's what I remember.
Square Pegs is a great show so. Yep.
Yep. God, that's what happened.
That's yeah, We got to do a deepdive sometime on a forgotten
show. That would be a good.
One another, Yeah, he could do. Greatest American hero.
Yeah, Jam wants to do that. Jam's brought that up many
times. The.
(16:49):
Greatest song ever on a show. Yeah.
Believe it or not, don't. Get a suit?
No. All right, Andrew Lloyd Webber's
The Phantom of the Opera debutedon Broadway January 26th, 1988.
It had an unprecedented, unprecedented run until April
16th, 2023. It made it the longest running
(17:14):
Broadway musical in history. Cool.
Who wants to go see The Phantom of the Opera?
Oh I like the I want the Lonchini original movie.
I'm good after that. One of the most horrifying
scenes ever put in a movie is inthe original silent movie when
they pull on Chinese mask off and you see his face that people
were blacking out in the movie theaters back then when that
happened. And I can imagine that you
(17:35):
didn't have stuff done in your face like you do now and you see
that image of his face that he did his own makeup for his like
that's one of the creepy hundreds plus years later.
You still not topped that in my book anyway.
January 26th, 1988 David Lee Roth Skyscraper album was
released. A lot of people would say.
That was his solo career. Yeah.
(17:55):
A. Lot of people say that was the
start of the downhill slide of his career, but I like that
album. I had it on cassette.
I. Mean did that have gigolo?
On it, No, that was crazy from the heat.
That was before he left Van Halen.
This album followed Edelman smile.
Edelman Smile was, yeah, his first solo album after Van Halen
that had Yankee Rose and stuff with Shy Boys and stuff on it.
And then Skyscraper had Paradiseand Living in Paradise stuff on
(18:18):
it. That's a good song.
But he started putting keyboardsin it and Steve I and was like,
I'm not playing guitar on the keyboard band and left after the
album and that just started his downhill.
His next album was a little lateenough and it had a couple good
songs, but that was it after that.
He was in the bargain bins afterthat.
January 26th, 1989 the Broadway musical review Black and Blue
(18:40):
opened is celebrated the black culture.
I knew the Van Halen song Back in Black and Blue.
But not the same thing. Don't know that one.
It ran until January 20th, 1991 and it had 829 performances.
Pretty. Different.
Yeah. Well, that's cool.
I know it's on blue and black. I don't know Black and.
Blue. Not the same thing.
And there you have Jan's gnarly news.
(19:02):
Oh gnarly. OK, I'm going to do something
real fast. Hang on, it's time for errors
and. Corrections because Greg screwed
up again. OK, I didn't screw up, but I'm
going to point out something because me and Jam were talking
about this the other day on lastweek's podcast when she was
talking about what was the Michael Jackson song is off off
(19:23):
the wall. Not rock, No, what's the other
one? Don't stop too.
Good enough. Jen said it went to #1 and I'm
like you said that a couple weeks ago, like 2 weeks before
that you said it was #1 and and Chris, you said last week, I
wouldn't be shocked if every week you say about a Michael
Jackson going #1 Jam was right. It went to #1 on last last
Monday date, but what she said two weeks before that was it
(19:44):
also went to #1 two weeks beforethat.
It hit #1 on the R&B charts there.
Are different charts. Different charts it went #1 R&B
and two weeks later hit #1 on the overall Billboard singles
chart. So just in case somebody was
confused about that, I thought I'd throw it in.
I think you were the only one that was confused.
Well, I don't want to give you props that you weren't giving
out. Jan's the most trusted news
source there is now so. I don't want people thinking
(20:07):
you're giving out false information.
By the way, I can just go this in here.
Speaking of charts, I don't knowif anyone of you saw this today,
the eagles greatest hits volume one that had, you know, the one
that everybody has just got certified quadruple diamond.
Wow, 40. Million copies. 40 million
copies. Their volume to which has volume
(20:29):
one don't have Hotel California on it.
This is from like their first 3 records.
Volume 2 has Hotel California and all that stuff on it.
It has like 27,000,000 copies sold but it getting certified
makes it the number one top sellalbum of all time.
Which. Means thriller.
Yes, this is how it goes now. I read it today on Microsoft
(20:49):
news. Number one album of all time
selling is the Eagles greatest hits volume one.
Number two album of all time is Michael Jackson Thriller #3
album of all time is Eagles Greatest Hits Volume 2.
Where you go, Eagles? That is a lot of album song,
really. There's no need selling that
many records for them to be playing the sphere, lip syncing
the songs like they're doing now.
But you. See where they're building
(21:10):
another sphere? And yeah, yeah, near Washington
and that's one we can drive to. I'm good for that.
Yeah, that I'm going to go. It's going to be 6000 seats
compared to like 20, some thousand.
It's going to be a lot smaller, but it's still going to be this.
It's going to still be the same LED and everything.
Yeah, everything's going to staythe same except seating
capacity. Is it a mini sphere squared?
(21:34):
Say that three times fast. Mini sphere squared, Mini
squared. So before we get into this, I
can say this on the Space Shuttle Challenger, I'm going to
play a little bit of audio for you. 321 and lift off.
Lift off of the 25th Space Shuttle mission and it has
(21:54):
cleared the tower. Good role program confirmed
Challenger now heading down range.
(22:17):
Engines beginning throttling down now at 94%.
Normal throttles for most of theflight. 104% will throttle down
to 65% shortly. Engines at 65%.
Three engines running normally. Three good fuel cells, three
(22:37):
good AP US Velocity 22157 feet per second.
Altitude 4.3 nautical miles downrange distance 3 nautical
miles. Engines throttling up. 3 engines
now 104% Challenger Go and throttle up.
(22:58):
Throttle up. One minute 15 seconds.
Velocity 2900 feet per second Altitude 9 nautical miles.
Downrange distance 7 nautical miles.
(23:25):
Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation.
Obviously a major malfunction. We have no downlink.
So yeah, that's some somber audio there.
(23:48):
But as we all know, I knew all three of us.
Chris, you saw it live, right? I did.
Yeah, all three of us witnessed that live on television, along
with the majority of the 80s children, or at least the
majority ones that live within 100 mile radius of where we are
right now. Because we were out of school
that day because it was so cold.It was dangerously cold.
(24:11):
It was like 9° around here and pipes were freezing.
They didn't think they'd get theschools heated up.
The buses wouldn't start, so they canceled school.
So this is before we get into it, this has been something
that's me and Jen, I'll start arguing with their own because
I'd heard they've tried to startone of those Mandela Effects on
this where people really didn't see it explode because it wasn't
(24:31):
shown live on television. And I bought into that for a
while. But then I kept thinking, I know
I saw this live. I'm not crazy.
And Jen says I knew I saw a liveand I said, but everything I
read on it and these people saying, no, that's Mandela
Effect thing you didn't really see you think you did.
Well, it was partly right that one of the reasons they say you
didn't see it live. I said they'd become old hat.
(24:52):
So they quit airing the space all launches live, which they
did. But this 1CBS, NBC and ABC all
all three and CNN, which carrieda feed all day Long live.
We're showing it because it was the first teacher in space.
They even had schools that had CNN fed to the schools and had
live feed live feed in the classrooms, the kids to watch
(25:13):
the first teacher going to space.
So we did see it live and I, because I remember where I, I
was sitting, I was sitting on the couch in my house.
My grandfather come down, he lived in the end of our driveway
to watch me and my brother. I was in 8th grade, my brother
would have been fifth grade probably.
He could have got by, but he come down to hang out with us I
guess and we were watching it live.
On the morning of January 28th, 1986, off the coast of Cape
(25:34):
Canaveral, FL, the Space ShuttleChallenger disintegrated 46,000
feet above the Atlantic Ocean. All 7 crew members perished in
what was the first fatal in flight accident in the history
of the United States space program.
The Mission, designated STS 51 L, was supposed to be a
milestone. The crew was set to deploy a
communication satellite and study Halley's comment.
(25:55):
But they were also carrying Krista McAuliffe, a school
teacher who was meant to be the first civilian in space.
The tragedy wasn't a fluke, but a failure design.
On the morning of the launch, record low temperatures that
stiffen the rubber O-ring cells in the right solid rocket
booster. When those seals failed, hot
pressurized gas escaped burning through the attachment strut and
into the external fuel tank. While the breakup was
(26:15):
catastrophic, we now know the orbiter had no escape system.
Despite a massive 3 month recovery operation, the impact
with the ocean service at terminal velocity was simply
unsurvivable. The aftermath brought the Space
Shuttle program to a 32 month standstill.
President Ronald Reagan's investigator body, the Rogers
Commission, uncovered A soberingreality.
NASA's organizational culture was broken.
(26:36):
Engineers have warned of the O-ring defect as early as 1977.
Yet NASA and the manufacturer Morton Thiokol allowed the
flights to continue on that freezing January morning.
Management disregarded direct warnings about the temperature,
choosing launch over safety. I kind of wrote that out.
It's mostly in my words. That's good.
So I've been studying this all week.
(26:58):
I mean, I knew, I mean, who who hasn't known this for years and
followed it. But I really, I started an audio
book on it. One of the guys at Morton Thy
call, who Morton is, the Morton Salt people, by the way, the thy
call was their chemical part that also made military stuff
and they made the solid rocket boosters that were on the that
(27:19):
propelled the space shuttle. So I got to looking into it and
I guess I'd missed over the years that it was really, this
could have easily been prevented.
And I'll just try to explain it real fast in case you wondered
what people know what happened. First off, it didn't explode, by
the way, Everybody thinks that thing exploded.
It didn't. Yeah, it looked like it
(27:39):
exploded, but the spatial did not explode.
I don't know if anyone here has ever had their watch their
grandmother or mother or anybodycan vegetables.
Chris, you ever seen? I'm sure you did.
You talked about your parents and all the stuff they used to.
So when you're canning stuff, you put the the cap on the jar
and you screw the lid on it. You put it in a hot bath of
(28:00):
water. When the temperature rises, it
forces the air out and that cap has a little seal on it and
you're here like sucking ping like when it it seals.
You know what I'm talking about.Chris, it's a pop.
Yeah, it's a pop. That means that thing is sealed,
It's airtight. That's what allows you to
preserve stuff for many years. Well, reading up on this, look
at a bunch of stuff on it. The O rings they had in these
(28:22):
things were just sort of like, Iwouldn't say rubber, but they're
similar to rubber O rings. When the temperatures in that
gas and stuff would start to heat up, the gas starts to
expand and that was what propellant.
Well, the gas would start to come out and there was these two
holes and those things with the heat would pop that O-ring and
seal it to hold the gas in, keepthe pressure in, keep it from
(28:43):
leaking. They had a second one directly
underneath it that was a fail safe in case the first one
didn't seal. So it'd be like having two caps
on a. If the first one don't seal, the
second one will. But it really wasn't a fails.
Right. In 77, one of those engineers
told us, people said, you know, these things don't do good in
cold weather, and they might notseal if the temperature doesn't
(29:04):
come up. So probably best not to launch
these things on a cold day. And so reading up on it, the
engineers at Morton Thicol told NASA the night before they'd
already scrubbed the launch twice.
And this was the big thing. You know, people are starting to
tune out on the space shuttle thing on NASA.
They were like, it's old hat now, but they brought the
(29:24):
teacher in, like, you know, we're going to put the teacher
on here. So they're like, they already
had to scratch, scratch the launch twice and they were not
going to do it a third time. So those guys, the engineers
called the night before and said, you have to move this
launch. You have to postpone it.
It is going to be ungodly cold in Florida tomorrow.
The whole S which is ironic whenI mean Jam was talking before
this as we're recording this andnext week when this comes out we
(29:47):
will just come through the tail end at one of the largest cold
snaps in the South that we've had in years.
We're expecting a big ice storm here.
It's literally similar to what it was 40 years ago.
So those guys looked at things that it's going to be too cold.
And the guy said those things could fail.
And the NASA people are like, Nah, we, it's fine.
(30:08):
But they repeatedly all night long told him we are not going
to sign off on this because the,the engineers said we're not
going to sign off on this. And they had to sign off on it
because these things could fail.And it's, it's, I'm telling you
something bad could happen. And the NASA people basically
sort of threatened the, the headguys at Morton Thackaw like,
well, you know, we could always find someone else to build these
(30:29):
boosters and sort of strong armed them into basically the
management at Morton Thackaw said, we're going to override
our engineers. We're just it's fine time we
give you our blessing, launch it, it'll be fine.
And the NASA people said, OK, but we want you to give us that
in writing because they knew something could happen.
The NASA people did write it down.
You guys sign off and they faxedit to them so they had proof
(30:51):
that if something happened, theythought it could happen.
And sure enough, it did that, that gun thing, we watched it
live and it, it when it looked like it exploded, it didn't the,
the, the fuel rocket booster thing sort of exploded and sent
debris out, which it was such anexplosion of the debris, it
cracked the space shield into pieces.
(31:12):
And that's when the, the part that the astronauts in which
plummeted, you know, it was theywere alive.
I was reading they, they severalof them were proof that they
were alive when this happened. And probably we're alive on the
way down. So it was kind of reading up on
it was really somber. It kind of brought back a lot of
stuff because I remember just thinking, you know, back then,
(31:33):
are they at least going to find their bodies?
You know, is there anything left?
I hope they found as a kid. I remember that.
Like, I hope they found them when they announced they found
them like a month or two later. It was Chris.
What do you remember about that day when you were?
I mean, when you talk about it and bring up all that stuff, you
know, it becomes more clear, youknow, from that.
But I remember it's almost the same kind of memory I had when
(31:57):
911 happened, you know, just later in life, you know, that
kind of thing. You're sitting there and you're
just I, I don't know what the exact phrase is, but you're
hypnotized by what's going on onthe.
Screen. Yeah, you're like, what did I
just watch? Because you see that stuff in
movies and stuff and you like, you know, this is fake.
(32:17):
Like that's people blowing up, you know, whatever, whatever.
But when you see it and it's real life and it's not a
Hollywood set and things like that, you're just stunned.
And I mean, I was, I think, 14 at the time.
So 86, yeah. We were in 8th grade, 14.
Yeah. It's just amazing that you look
at that and you're just blown away by what you saw.
(32:42):
I mean there. Is that a pun intended or?
What, you know, well, Oh, no, no, I I didn't mean to say it
like that, but it really did. It kind of just took you aback
that you're like, what did I just.
So. I mean, I remember it was the
big deal because it was a teacher.
Yeah. You know, that was the thing.
It was like. Everybody was watching that
(33:02):
because it's like, hey, no more person getting to go up into
space, you know? Yeah, all the other people,
like, it was kind of like a front man in a rock group.
Like everybody else was just background.
This was the most important thing.
Yeah. So being in school was a
teacher. You're like, oh, this is cool.
And you watch it and you're just, you know, in disbelief.
I remember. I remember watching it and when
(33:24):
it happened, I can, I mean, I can vividly see this in my head.
You know, what is it core memories to say you have that
you stick with you. That's a core, total core
memory. And I can remember our living
room and where I was sitting there, my grandpa was sitting
and watching that. And I remember immediately
saying something just happened because I was a big fan of space
and the space program and all that stuff.
(33:45):
And I had, I built a model rocket back then.
You remember when kids our age of build model rockets back then
and launch them and stuff. I'd built one of the space
shuttle and I had it, you know, I just, I love the space
shuttle. It was the coolest thing.
I had postcards from NASA that somebody got me and I had, you
know, pictures of space. There was a, one of the
postcards I had that I had stuckin in my room forever was one of
(34:08):
the big Boeing jets. You know when he would fly it
back from Florida to to Texas orvice versa, they would put those
space shuttles on top of the Boeing jets.
Have you ever seen those pictures?
Like they piggyback. And.
It was so wild to see that that space shuttle that looks so
different than a normal plane and, and it looks like larger
than life. And you see it's really not as
(34:28):
big as you think, but you see iton the back of that plane.
And I had that that picture up in my room forever.
I was just a fan of this stuff. And immediately I knew
something's wrong. You know, you see that that
rocket booster start going awry,you know, and you're like,
something isn't right. And I remember just being like,
holy cow, Jen, what you. I do remember the excitement
around it, building up to it because it was a teacher.
(34:51):
I mean, it was, it was huge for us normal people.
I don't know if we would have had it on our TV's in the school
that day that at Blackburn, because I, I was trying to think
of you only had a couple of TV'sfor certain classrooms.
So what were you going to do? They were saying that schools
that, you know, had stuff, CNN have been fed into some of these
schools that had to be in big cities and stuff.
(35:13):
Yeah, we just put our phones outand watch it.
Yeah. So, I mean, we were like one of
the radio. Yeah.
As I said, we were all out of school because it was ungodly
cold. And that ends up that's what
took it down in Florida. And a cold day.
That's what we did all day. We sat there and watched that
over. Yeah, watched the coverage CNN
broke back in or CBS and then broke in and start covering.
(35:34):
That's all we did that day, all day long, was watch that.
And, and you look at the enormity of everything.
I went to the Kennedy Space Center in Port Canaveral two
years ago and just toward that whole thing and, and just
looking at like, you can't imagine the size of these little
people inside this massive, you know, controlling and, and it
(35:56):
puts in perspective all that stuff that people are inside
this thing. And when they go up and when it
exploded and you thought they disintegrated instantly or
that's what you would have heard.
And now you're an adult, You think, oh, I hope it, if I'm, if
I'm in that, I hope I'm instantly gone.
I don't want to suffer, you know, But you know, when you
hear that they may have been alive until the crash in the
(36:19):
ocean or whatever it it just that's got to be one of the most
painful, you know, unreal experiences of anybody's life.
As well as their families now having to hear that years later
that hey, they were probably alive for just a little bit.
One of the yeah, one of the things that I read was that the
(36:41):
first several launches of the space shuttle when it started,
they had like, I wouldn't call me ejector, but they had, well,
it kind of was ejector seats andstuff in the anything.
And they ended up taking them out because I got thinking how I
will never need something for something like this.
It was AI don't know if it's called ejector seat, but it was
something that would have helpedyou.
And I guess it had like a parachute or something in case
(37:02):
something did break apart like that that you could have
initiated. But they weren't in it.
They took them out after the first several launches.
Like I guess you got to cut downweight stuff.
So it's like, hey, we take thoseout.
So when I was saying about the mission, it was originally
scheduled for July of 85, but then it was delayed until
November and then to January when that's that.
So if that thing had happened inJuly or November, this probably
(37:25):
would not have happened. If it if it had launched, it
would have probably been fine. I was reading up on it and they
they were talking about whether,you know, they could have died
from that. I saw that the impact of the
Krug compartment with the ocean surfers is so violent that
evidence of damage occurring in the seconds which followed the
disintegration was masked. Their final conclusions were the
(37:47):
cause of death of the Challengerastronauts cannot be positively
determined. The forces to which the crew
were exposed during orbiter breakup were probably not
sufficient to cause death or serious injury.
And the crew possibly but not certainly lost consciousness in
the seconds following the breakup due to in flight loss of
pressure. But they fell for over 2 minutes
before they hit the water. So what they're saying is they
(38:07):
probably gain their consciousness back after about a
minute and knew what was happening.
The ones that you know, made it so that's as an adult, that was
even worse. You know, when you start hearing
about that and start read into it and find out that I don't
think I followed the Rogers Commission on this, then you
know, those hearings, I didn't have cable.
We didn't get to watch the C-SPAN or anything back then.
But yeah, it was wild. But I'll tell you some, Chris,
(38:29):
when you were in NASA, did you see the they had parts of the
space shuttle there? Did you get?
You remember seeing any of them?I don't remember 100% what all
because we went through it pretty.
I mean we went through it for the whole day.
So there's a lot of stuff, but. 20 years I've been there, but I
remember they did have a chunk of the the cockpit where they
were at, you know that they recovered it's on display there
(38:51):
and tell us what it was, but. I'm sure they did.
I just don't remember. But I mean, because you can't,
you can't get rid of that, that piece of history.
That's something that has to be,you know, remembered and
memorialized. So I'm sure it was there.
I just don't remember. Yeah, OK, I'll tell you some
trivia. I'm sure I've heard this before
(39:11):
years ago, but it had to refreshthis.
And if people's never heard this.
So Christa McAuliffe, the teacher, was selected for more
than 11,000 applicants to NASA'sTeacher Space Project.
Her backup in case she couldn't do it was a woman named Barbara
Morgan. And so she just happened to not
be on that flat because it went to Christa.
(39:32):
So right after this happened, they made a rule, they ended
that immediate like immediately,like we're not putting it as,
you know, civilians in here again.
But they did put a like a sort of a, an idea in there that you
can, they did want to put another teacher back in space,
but they were, they couldn't be just a teacher.
You pull out and give like minimal training.
(39:54):
You had to go through the entireastronaut training.
So Barbara Morgan, her backup, actually became a professional
astronaut in January 1998 and flew on Space Shuttle mission
STS 118 to the International Space Station on August 8th,
2007 aboard Endeavour, the orbiter that replaced
Challenger. Now, you know, that's kind of
(40:16):
cool, right? Here's what really shocks.
This is when you get like, this woman has a horseshoe surf
firmly up her rear, you know, you need to go rub her head for
good luck because this woman hasit.
She was initially scheduled to fly on STS 118 mission on space
Shuttle Columbia in November 2004.
During the disaster that destroyed Columbia in February
2003, she was aboard a training plane that was following the
(40:40):
shuttle as it prepared to land. So she was on a plane in the air
watching Columbia when it came in disintegrated in 2003.
She was supposed to fly on Columbia the next the next
launch. I mean, that woman had some
really good luck, you know, And I kept telling Jan today I said,
if it were me, when I'm go through all this and I finally
(41:01):
do it, like you're finally goingto get to go.
And then I'm up there watching the space I'm supposed to go on
disintegrate after that. And I thought that I've got
lucky twice. I'm not pushing it a third time.
But she did, you know, and she went up and went into space.
So, you know, that that's one ofthose little stories in it you
don't know about really unless you really look it up.
And I was like, that's amazing that she still went up into
(41:23):
space. She's got more guts than I have.
I would have never done it, not after all the close calls.
Jan would you still done that after?
There's no way. After watching the first one,
I'd be like, I'm out. I don't need to do that.
You know? Maybe it's not meant for a
teacher to be in space. I'm like, I'm done, you know?
There's just so much stuff. But at that point she had gone
through so much training. Was she still considered a
(41:44):
teacher or she she was considered an astronaut?
She was an astronaut. Then she had to do the full
astronaut training. So she was an astronaut by the
end. She wasn't just.
It was. That was one of the things that
really wowed me. But I, I have to throw this in
here too, another hero and all this stuff is the engineers at
Morton Theikal who had said, do not do this, do not do this.
(42:05):
One of them, the main one was Alan MacDonald.
He's the guy who wrote the book that I'm listening to in the
audio book at work. He's the main guy that told them
do not do this. And so when they had the the
Rogers Commission stuff, Morton Theikal was trying to push it
all on to NASA and NASA was trying to cover it up saying,
well, it's just an act of God. You know, he stood up.
He was still working for Morton Thakoff stood up at the Rogers
(42:29):
Commission and said, no, here's what really happened and told
what really happened and basically laid it all out at
great, you know, concern for hisjob.
And he was pretty sure he's going to get fired.
And I think Reagan and a bunch of them said something, nothing
better not happen to this guy because he's a hero.
You know, so he worked for theremaybe the next 10 plus years.
But I did read that he was sort of like demoted where he didn't
(42:51):
get any of that. He was like a big engineer that
they're like, Nah, we put him onsmaller jobs now.
He paid for for telling the truth.
And that guy, the hero man, because, you know, most people
just keep their mouth shut. He didn't have to come out and
say that, but he did. And guys like that, you know,
are true heroes. When you think about that, that
could have been swept on the rugbecause like, well, just, you
know, just blew up. It's what happens.
(43:11):
So but he didn't allow it. And, you know, props to that
guy, but I, it's just hard to believe it's been 40 years.
Like you say, Chris, that, you know, that core memory stuff
about big things that happened. That's one of them.
I remember, even though I was only like 8 years old, I
remember Reagan getting shot. That was such a big deal.
I see stuff. I watched Mad Men and they have
(43:33):
the whole thing in Mad Men whereKennedy gets assassinated, you
know, and it shows how people, and I've read that that's one of
the most accurate depictions of how people really were that day.
People just left work, you know,and they didn't know what to do.
And, and you see that then I remember Reagan getting shot and
wonder if he's going to die, youknow, And it's like freaking out
because the president, you know,and people still cared then
about even if it wasn't your guy, you cared, you know, I
(43:56):
don't think people would care that much now, no matter who's
in office. But there'll be half the people.
We've seen it. Half people would be happy, half
people be sad. Everybody was freaking out back
then. You.
Know when Jr. got shot, that wasa big thing.
It kind of was that took actually.
That's a core memory. His wife's.
Sister And then, you know, off topic a second, you know what
(44:17):
else opened or what happened pretty close to the same day 40
years ago. I'm taking a sip of water so
this not be nothing crazier. I'll do a spit take.
No, no, It's your. It's your favorite.
The Ding Dome at UNC opened on January 8th, 1986.
See. There you go.
I was just there last night. I was just there last week.
(44:37):
Yeah, I saw that you you trying to make the that you've beat
death, you're trying to make thelast years you have left now
drag out a long way, aren't you by going to miserable?
Stuff. Yeah.
I mean, that's it. I mean at least that gym has air
conditioning. Yeah, that's what I do.
I go to, you know, the most miserable places on earth.
So to make my days feel really long.
Yeah. Anyway. 8040 years ago like I'm
(44:59):
53 40 years ago just seems yeah crazy that we're talking about
something 40 years ago and we're.
Like we remember it. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, 40 years is a lot. You know, I still think I'm
young sometimes and then, and I am in the grand scheme of
things, we all are compared to our parents, other people.
But then again, you think like 40 years.
Well, let's all get together in 20 years and talk about this
(45:21):
again and see if we. I'll probably won't be alive,
but OK well. You, you beat that.
I'll be the one going now. You and Jans can keep this
podcast going when I'm going. So.
Oh, really? Yeah.
There won't be podcasts in 20 years.
There'll be some other crazy format or something.
Probably. But yeah, we're going to do more
of a like I say, we're keeping up.
We're kind of shifting more toward the reviews of movies and
(45:43):
albums and stuff like that. But we're going to do like every
second or third episode, it's going to be something historical
or we'll still throw episodes like this out.
There, and maybe we're Greg willremember to tell me what we're
doing each week. Yeah, because Jen thought this
episode today was the one on themovie Over the Top, the review
of Stallone's Over the Top, but that's next week.
(46:04):
So I have AI have a list and I I've got it.
I need to send it to you I guess.
That would be helpful. Yeah, I'll, I'll send all the
staff here copies of this so youcan put it up and keep track of
the dates. That's awesome.
You know what you you said in the earlier that we talk about
Reagan getting assassinated and all, you know, that happened in
March, March 30th of 1981, I think, or something like that.
(46:27):
So that's always on the day our podcast comes out.
It's a Monday. It's. 45 years, yeah.
Yeah, and Saturday. I think that's the one we're
going to be doing. That's a movie review, though,
so I hadn't decided what it might be.
Porky's. We must dare not come off of.
Them and play the play the videogame at the same time of
watching the movie. Yeah, I want to thank Michael
Hauser for reminding me that that's why we were out of
(46:48):
school, because the frigid cold,Janet kind of told.
Me even though your wife had told.
Me, I just said. You told me, you know, but I was
remembering you. Never believe me?
I do, but I kept remembering that Blackburn was out because
we had frozen pipes and something burst.
But it wasn't that. It was the the chance that it
could have had frozen pipes. It's just ironic that this was
all happened 40 years ago and we're having the exact same cold
(47:09):
spell that's going to hit all ofus here in the South again, 40
years. Later, if the school would just
leave a little bit of water running, it would be fine.
Yeah, go to all the bathrooms and put a drip in.
The sink and yeah, do that. Do that.
If they if they'd have done that, we never saw that live,
we'd have come home and they go,hey.
What's going on? Here and a lot of you people
need to thank Jan here because Jan stopped me from I was going
(47:32):
to mentioned about the jokes that our generation that's what
I was going to bring up our generation say what you will
about it. Well, we're a little tougher
than the generations now. Now, I'm not saying we were as
tough as our grandparents and you know, it went through World
War 2 and all that Vietnam on parents.
Great Depression. Yeah, but we could take some
tragedy and turn something out of it.
(47:53):
And I can remember within a weekof this happening, the jokes
that were out there then people had, I guess that's how we, you
know, dealt with it as kids was somebody come up with a joke and
I won't tell them, But if you Google space shuttle jokes,
you'll see them all. And if you're people our age,
you heard them all back then. Never heard a single space
shuttle. Joke, Chris.
You remember the jokes, right? We're not going to.
(48:15):
Let me tell you one right now. No, we're not.
Yeah, no, but you're. Yeah, See, maybe it's just guys.
Maybe. I think it was a guy thing.
It probably was a guy thing, but.
It's a normal person thing. Yeah, that's how you dealt with
it was. Maybe I just blocked them all
out. You probably blocked them out,
Jan, because you hung out with guys and you know you heard
them. We just dealt with stuff like
that with laughter. I still do.
(48:36):
We still do, yeah. So anyway, I guess I'll wrap
this one up. You know, I just felt it needed
to be told because 40 years and it was a Seminole moment in our
our youth and childhood. That's it.
Shine on the. Crew of the Space Shuttle
Challenger honored us for the manner in which they lived their
lives. We will never forget them, nor
(48:58):
the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for
their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of
Earth. To touch the face of God.
Thank you.
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