Comments by "Bo McGillacutty" (@Mrbfgray) on "Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster: Major Malfunction | Retro Report | The New York Times" video.

Doc Possum It's not about the cost of fuel it's the compounding effect of adding ANY additional weight as that requires more weight of fuel which requires more weight of fuel.... The price of fuel is small compared to total launch costs and if you were to add safety devices for every contingency there would be NO payload at all.
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M. Redleg More than evidence. It should have been expected as you can see it carry on it's same trajectory, even the boosters only got pushed off track apparently completely intact. It wasn't an "explosion" in like a firecracker, it was a fast burn up that took a couple of seconds. Yes it's safe to assume all on board were alive, some of them conscious until impact with the water.
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Molly Baker Hard to believe 'they had no clue', rockets were always extremely risky biz and they should have been well aware of that.
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It didn't effect me so profoundly perhaps because I was well aware of the potential for failure, it had almost blown up at least a couple time prior. Part of the problem was NASA began to buy their own propaganda as they pretended the risk was similar to an airliner which was always laughable, even the name "Shuttle" was intended to convey safe and routine which rocket launches NEVER were.
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valkor73 They probably didn't know how to react, also that was not beyond memory the '60's and early 1970's when our rockets 'always blew up'.
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@dozzer009 Yes much of the wreckage was recovered and 'reassembled'. NASA put on a 3 yr circus pretending to not know exactly what happened when there were almost fistfights the night before launch between M.T. engineers (rocket booster mfg) and others, over exactly this issue. AND they had footage from an F-16 cam plane at 60,000 ft that showed exactly what happened Drag out the farce, misleading naïve gullible reporters long enough that the public loses interest. Everyone involved knew they'd almost blown it up previously due to cold launches that weren't even that cold. NASA bean counters in charge thought that if they could fool the public they could fool nature. Doesn't work like that.
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@jozefmak984 Curious that spectators are excluded within 3 miles of rocket and then expect launch to be safe or something
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"What!?!" "The vehicle has exploded!" "Don't say that!" Sorry folks, that's what rockets DO, they blow up frequently, they always had that's why you are miles away from the launch site. Did you think it was safe or something?
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