Added comments about the Challenger Lost Lessons Project:

 

Unfortunately, most of the pictures included in text of the paper are rather fuzzy compared to what most expect with today’s digital photography.  Using software capture techniques, this paper’s photos were gleaned from video scenes of Christa and her team practicing the six lost lessons.  Even after applying “touch-up” sharpening algorithms, the quality was less than good.  However, were it not for the existence of these videos among Johnson Space Center ’s video archives, this work could not have been accomplished.                    

 

At this writing, no sketches or drafted drawings of any of the apparatus employed to practice the lost lessons have been uncovered.  All analysis of the science, technology, and spacecraft engineering devoted to the planned STS-51L lessons comes from Mayfield’s paper, the videos, a few existing archival photos and the author’s interpretation of audio comments accompanying the videoed exercises.  Also, as a practicing spacecraft electrical engineer for more than forty years with NASA, the author has drawn from his background with similar space borne scientific experiments and engineering projects to assist in understanding the trials and potential pitfalls of the six lost lessons. 

 

In some cases, one wonders if the actual performance of portions of these exercises would have been successful on orbit. Indeed, they are altogether innovative and, at times, complex in choreography, especially in a zero-g environment.   Watching the zero-g trials performed by Christa, Barbara and Bob in NASA’s KC-135 speaks to how very demanding they might have been.  But that is what CHALLENGER was about, the challenge of “touching the future” by a teacher named Christa McAuliffe. ]

                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                            Jerry Woodfill, Editor

 

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For added information or copies of the project, contact the project editor Jerry Woodfill, at ER7, NASA JSC, Houston , TX 77058 .  Phone: 281-483-6331,  E-mail: jared.woodfill-1@nasa.gov

 

The project is a work of the Automation, Robotics, and Simulation Division of the NASA Johnson Space Center , Houston , Texas . As part of the Space Educators’ Handbook, its ID identifier  is OMB/NASA Report #S677.