Voyage Into History
Chapter Two: The Crew

By William Harwood

"When you find something you really like to do and you're willing to risk the consequences of that, you really probably ought to go do it." - Challenger commander Francis "Dick" Scobee

Challenger's seven-member crew, more than any other shuttle crew, symbolized the American ideal of equal opportunity and promise: five men and two women; a Jew, a Buddhist and a black; test pilots, scientists and a teacher. Truly, a representative shuttle crew with a wide blend of talents, skills, dreams and ambition.

Francis "Dick" Scobee, commander
Dick Scobee, 46, was everyman's shuttle commander, a former airplane mechanic who went to night school for his education and later made it from the enlisted ranks to Air Force test pilot status before joining NASA's astronaut corps. Scobee's first shuttle flight came in April 1984 when he served as co-pilot aboard Challenger for the most spectacular shuttle mission to that point: the capture, repair and release of the Solar Max sun-watching satellite.

Scobee was born to fly. He said his fascination with airplanes began during his childhood in Auburn, Wash.

"Ever since I was a little kid, I had been enamored of airplanes and that's why I ended up working on them," he once said. "They generally fascinated the heck out of me and I'd never done any flying. I used to go out to the airport and watch them fly. I still like airplanes and I still go to airports and do that."

Scobee got his first hands-on experience in the military. Lacking self-discipline, desire and money for a college education, Scobee worked briefly for the Boeing Co. in Seattle before joining the Air Force in 1957 where he worked as an engine mechanic on propeller-driven airplanes.

"I decided if I were going to get anywhere in life, I probably ought to start going to school," Scobee said.

He attended night school in San Antonio, Tex., and later graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in aerospace engineering. He completed officers candidate school and then talked his way into pilot's school.

"Since I came out of a maintenance slot as an enlisted man, they were going to send me back to maintenance (as an officer) ... but Vietnam was ginning up good and they needed pilots," Scobee said. "I asked if there were any chance of going to pilot training and they said yes, because they needed pilots."

Scobee flew a combat tour in Vietnam and became an Air Force test pilot, where he experimented with the Boeing 747, the X-24B and other transonic aircraft, the F-111 and the C-5. The next step was to fly in space.

"Along came the astronaut program and I signed up for it," Scobee said. "When you find something you really like to do and you're willing to risk the consequences of that, you really probably ought to go do it."

NASA hired Scobee in 1978. He found it ironic that he, a former mechanic, made his first flight on the first space repair mission aboard the shuttle.

"We can demand a Ph.D. from people now because of the exclusivity of the program, but we don't need somebody with a Ph.D. to do the job," Scobee said.

Even in his spare time, Scobee's activities focused on flying. He and three other astronauts shared ownership of an orange and black open cockpit biplane for acrobatic flying.

"It's fun. I enjoy the freedom of it. There's a serenity to getting up there by yourself."

MICHAEL SMITH, pilot
Naval aviator Michael Smith, 40, was one of the most experienced pilots in the astronaut corps, logging more than 4,300 hours in 28 types of aircraft, and serving as Challenger's co-pilot January 1986.

Smith, born in Beaufort, N.C., earned a bachelor of science degree from the Naval Academy in 1967 and a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1968. Married to the former Jane Jarrell and the father of three children, Smith held the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross, three Air Medals and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star.

After earning his master's degree, Smith completed jet training in 1969 and was assigned to the advanced jet training command where he served as an instructor from May 1969 through March 1971. During the next two years, he flew A-6 Intruders and completed a Vietnam cruise assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. In 1974, Smith worked on cruise missile guidance systems at the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate at Patuxent River, Md., and went on to serve as a Navy test pilot instructor. Before joining the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as an astronaut in 1980, Smith completed two tours of duty in the Mediterranean Sea aboard the carrier USS Saratoga.

Before his assignment as co-pilot of the shuttle Challenger, Smith served in a variety of capacities including work in the shuttle avionics laboratory and a stint as technical assistant to the flight operations director.

JUDITH RESNIK, mission specialist
Astronaut Judith Resnik, 36, was looking for a way to broaden her career as an electrical engineer when she learned NASA was looking for trained scientists - including women - to fly on the shuttle. The Akron, Ohio, native once said she knew she was qualified for the job, but did not think she had a good chance of landing it. As it turned out, Resnik was among the first female astronauts selected by NASA in 1978. And by being named to fly on the maiden flight of the shuttle Discovery in August-September 1984, she became America's second woman to fly in orbit after astronaut Sally Ride charted the course.

But Resnik always downplayed the distinction.

"I think the major significance of my being on this flight is not so much that I'm the second woman," she said, "but that I am the 40th or 45th, or whatever the number is, American astronaut to go on the space shuttle in a period of a couple of years and how far we've come in a few years."

Resnik, who enjoyed being called by her initials, "J.R.", said her second mission was no different from the first in terms of training and preparation.

"Every mission that anybody gets is very demanding, challenging and exciting and my main attention has been on learning the things that I need to learn for the mission, and so it has been as challenging to me as my previous mission was, even though I'm doing completely different things," she said before launch.

Although McAuliffe's presence on the crew added to the significance of the mission, Resnik, who had a reputation as a no-nonsense engineer, had little to say about the historical impact of the flight.

"I tend to get more wrapped up in my own small role as an engineer and scientist and sometimes, probably wrongly, don't look at the historic significance of things," she said. "I think that the role of the spaceflight participant is probably going to increase as time goes on. We still have to carry out our primary missions and the participants are watching our primary missions and hopefully some contributions on their own to what we can do in space and bringing it back to the people."

Resnik said she never hesitated to pursue an engineering career despite the few number of women in the field.

"I was always good in math and science and I liked it. Maybe I liked it because I was good in it. As I went through high school, I liked that better than the arts, so I decided to be a math major," she recalled.

She later changed her degree plan to engineering to give her more flexibility. After graduation from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1970, she joined RCA, where she worked as a design engineer on phased-array radar control systems, and provided engineering support for NASA sounding-rocket and telemetry-systems programs. In 1974, Resnik joined the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., as a biomedical engineer and staff fellow, doing research on the physiology of visual systems. "You could see where engineering principles could be applied to other types of problems, to the human system. You could analyze the system not as a doctor would or a scientist, but as an engineer," she said.

In 1977, Resnik received her doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland. She had taken a job as a systems engineer in product development with the Xerox Corp. in 1978 when she learned she was accepted to the astronaut corps.

RONALD McNAIR - mission specialist
When Ronald E. McNair, 35, became an astronaut in 1978, NASA also gained a scholar, a musician, a boxer and a karate expert. One of five crew members assigned to the shuttle Challenger for the 10th space shuttle flight, which took off Feb. 3, 1984, McNair also was the second black American astronaut to fly in space. His major task on that flight was to operate the ship's mechanical arm with a spacewalking astronaut riding at the end in a sort of space cherry picker.

For his second flight, McNair's responsibility was the launch of the Spartan-Halley science platform to study Halley's comet as it hurtled toward the sun. The gregarious McNair said he owed his versatility to his parents, who taught him the fun of learning.

"My parents were not pushers. They never told us to do anything, but somehow they created an atmosphere, an environment where it was thing to do," he said. "My two brothers and myself went through college without anyone telling us to go to school one day, but it was fun to do."

McNair was born Oct. 12, 1950 in Lake City, S.C., where his mother taught elementary school and his father worked as an auto body repairman. As a black in a small Southern town in the '50s and '60s, McNair learned quickly not to let racial discrimination impede his goals.

"It means trying a little harder, fighting a little harder to get what you perhaps deserve. It means building up a tolerance and not being discouraged by some of the obstacles that get put in front of you," he said.

McNair received a bachelor of science degree in physics from North Carolina AT&T State University in 1971, where he graduated magna cum laude, and a doctorate in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976. At various times in his academic career, he was named a Presidential Scholar, a Ford Foundation Fellow, a National Fellowship Fund Fellow and winner of the Omega Psi Phi Scholar of the Year Award.

McNair was an expert in laser physics and conducted pioneering research in the development of chemical and high-pressure CO2 laser systems. He studied at E'cole D'ete Theorique de Physique in France and worked as a staff physicist with Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, Calif., before being selected for the astronaut corps in 1978.

"The fantasy of space was always there," he once said. "Any kid who grew up in that era wanted to fly around in those Gemini capsules and walk around the moon and all these activities. But I would have to say that was more fantasy than reality," McNair recalled.

McNair said he seriously considered a job with the space program only after NASA sought scientists to fly on the shuttle. McNair's wife, the former Cheryl Moore of Jamaica, N.Y., works at the Johnson Space Center training flight controllers to operate computer consoles in mission control. But there was more to McNair's life than just being an astronaut. The fourth-degree black belt in karate taught the sport at a Baptist church in Houston during the week. He played saxophone in an 18-piece swing band made up of space center employees and occasionally jammed with jazz groups during open sets at various nightclubs in Houston. He said his saxophone even accompanied him into orbit on his first space flight.

ELLISON ONIZUKA - mission specialist
Onizuka, an Air Force major, turned his elementary school dream of being a space explorer into reality, becoming an experienced flight test engineer who went on to fly aboard the space shuttle Discovery in America's first manned military space flight. Born June 24, 1946, in Kealakekua, Kona, Hawaii, Onizuka, 39, was selected as an astronaut in 1978 and was a crew member aboard Discovery almost exactly one year before Challenger's last flight. But it was long before that he thought about being a space explorer.

Onizuka, a Buddhist, said he developed an interest in aircraft and aviation "pretty early" and by his later years in elementary school he already was being inspired by the Mercury space flight program that began America's manned space effort in 1959. Five years later he enrolled at the University of Colorado to study aerospace engineering. In an interview before his last flight, Onizuka said his primary job during the first day in space would be to deploy "one of the largest communications satellites ever" - the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite designed for use by the shuttle and other spacecraft. Onizuka also trained to operate an experiment to study Halley's comet. "They tell me I'll have one of the best views around," he said.

Even at 39, Onizuka said he hoped to keep participating in NASA's shuttle program.

"There's no cut-off age for astronauts," he said. "I enjoy what I'm doing right now and hope to continue as long as I can contribute to the program."

His January 1985 flight aboard Discovery was the first fully classified American manned space flight. The shuttle's payload was thought to be a sophisticated satellite designed to eavesdrop on Soviet communications. The blacked-out flight ended Jan. 27, 1985, at the Kennedy Space Center. Onizuka then was assigned to a flight scheduled for launch in November 1986. The mission later evolved into Challenger's 51-L flight. He said there were few differences in training for military missions as opposed to open civilian flights.

"The basic orbiter shuttle training was the same. Once we enter the area of payload and mission operations, there were some differences but I can tell you today that we did have an Inertial Upper Stage (rocket) on our mission in January this past year so I'm very familiar with the IUS, very comfortable with it."

An IUS was on board Challenger to boost the TDRS into the proper orbit. Asked how his life changed after flying in space, Onizuka was nonchalant.

"I didn't have any spiritual revelations or anything like that. It was a busy time, things were busy the whole mission, we landed, went into debriefings, etc. and the pace continued. I'd certainly like to have a little more time to look back at the Earth and study some of the geologic features to do a little bit more window viewing because our first mission was also very busy."

Onizuka earned bachelor and master's degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado in June and December 1969. After receiving his commission at the University of Colorado in 1970 through the school's ROTC program, Onizuka entered active duty with the Air Force. Serving as an aerospace flight test engineer with the Sacramento Air Logistics Center at McClellan Air Force Base, Calif., he participated in a variety of flight test programs for front-line jet aircraft. He was married to the former Lorna Leiko Yoshida of Pahale, Hawaii, and the couple had two children.

"I spend a lot of my off time trying to get caught up at the house but I also do make time to do the things I enjoy doing like fishing, hunting. During the summer I did a lot of fishing and I certainly like to get outdoors. I spend a lot of time with my daughters who are very active in soccer."

As for his kids' reaction to his job, Onizuka said: "It's dad's job, but they get excited when we get right in close to the mission itself and then when the mission is up, they're certainly very excited about it. But to them, it's something they grew up with. We talk about risks and all of that."

GREGORY JARVIS - payload specialist
Gregory Jarvis, a civilian engineer with Hughes Aircraft Co., had been scheduled for two previous shuttle missions but was bumped when NASA assigned Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, to those crews. Jarvis, 41, then was assigned to the crew of Challenger to conduct six days of orbital experiments in fluid dynamics to figure out better ways to build satellite fuel systems. Born Aug. 24, 1944, in Detroit, Jarvis described himself as a "workaholic" before the launch and said he eagerly awaited his chance to fly in space.

"When you watch them work through the malfunctions they work through you get very comfortable that they know what they're doing. One time when we were in the motion base simulator, not on this mission but before, the lights went out for the visual for the landing. It was not a malfunction, it was just something happened. The commander called down and said, 'Aren't the lights out?' And they said, 'I think so, we'll get back to you on that.' The conversation went on for about two or three minutes and it turns out that they had mistakenly turned the lights out on the visuals. The thing you didn't realize was he made a perfect landing without any lights. You get very comfortable that for any contingency they know what to do so I feel very very comfortable. I'm excited but not nervous."

Jarvis had been scheduled to fly aboard the shuttle Columbia in December 1985 but he was bumped to Challenger's Jan. flight when NASA assigned Nelson to Columbia's crew as a congressional observer. Earlier, he had been assigned to the crew of Challenger for an April 1985 flight but Garn replaced him, becoming the first lawmaker to fly in space. But Jarvis was philosophical about the delays.

"You take a look at the people who I'm teamed with, four have flown and one has not. When they flew they had been waiting since 1978. so they had to wait six or seven years, so I feel very fortunate that I've been able to go within a year."

Jarvis graduated from State University of New York in 1967 with a degree in electrical engineering. Two years later he earned a master's degree in the same field from Northeastern University in Boston. Married to the former Marcia Jarboe and the father of three children, Jarvis worked for Raytheon while studying for his master's degree and was heavily involved in circuit design on the SAM-D missile. In July 1969 he entered active service with the Air Force and was assigned to the Space Division at El Segundo, Calif., specializing in advanced tactical communications satellites. After his discharge with rank of captain, Jarvis joined Hughes Aircraft Co.'s Space and Communications Group where he worked on a variety of sophisticated satellite designs.

"I'm now a professional traveler between Los Angeles and Houston. I'm an avid squash player, it's an outlet for me. I'm a bicycle rider, I like that, and I like to run and jog. When the winter season comes I like to go to the mountains and do cross country skiing so we're outdoors people. I'm pretty much a workaholic so I don't find much time to do many other things. I take one course a semester at the local community college just to keep my brain active. I enjoy playing the classical guitar if I can get a chance to sit down and plunk away at it."

SHARON CHRISTA McCAULIFFE - payload specialist
In interviews with the astronauts before launch it was obvious they welcomed McAuliffe, 37, to the crew. In NASA jargon, McAuliffe and Jarvis were "payload specialists," meaning they were on the shuttle for a one-time-only flight to carry out experiments or perform other mission-specific tasks. Most NASA astronauts have viewed payload specialists as a necessary evil, people who must be endured for the good of the program. After all, they are not astronauts, members of the fraternity whose job it is to fly rocketships and probe the final frontier. They are scientists or politicians or foreign dignitaries and as such have a tendency to get in the way of the working shuttle fliers. Even so, McAuliffe was genuinely welcomed by the crew of 51-L, especially by Scobee, a former airplane mechanic turned astronaut whose wife, June, is a college instructor.

"My perception is the real significance of it, and especially a teacher, is that it will get people in this country, especially the young people, expecting to fly in space," Scobee said in an interview. "That's the best thing that can happen to our program. The short term gain is a publicity gain. The long term gain is getting expectations of the young people in this country to the point where they expect to fly in space, they expect to go there, they expect this country to pursue a program that allows it to be in space permanently to work and live there, to explore the planets and do that kind of thing."

McAuliffe clearly knew her place and the astronauts appreciated it.

"It's always refreshing to have somebody like that on board that's really dedicated and enjoys doing what they're doing but, also she goes into the training with a good positive attitude and stays out of the way when she needs to stay out of the way, she gets involved when she needs to get involved and she does basically all the right things and so does Greg Jarvis," Scobee said. "Both of them from our standpoint are good payload specialists. They came on board with a good open mind, they're accommodating to our system, we try to be accommodating to theirs and its a nice tradeoff."

Thrust into instant fame, McAuliffe viewed here flight aboard Challenger as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address history's largest classroom. A high school teacher at Concord High School in Concord, N.H., McAuliffe was selected from more than 11,000 applicants to become the first private citizen to fly on NASA's space shuttle, a project endorsed by President Reagan, who announced the Teacher in Space Program in July 1984.

When she and nine other finalists were announced in Washington in July 1985, McAuliffe said she wanted to "bring back the wonder of it all" and convey that sense of wonder to her students.

"I see this as an extraordinary opportunity and a wonderful year out of what I would normally have been doing, but I think it's just going to enhance the teaching that I do, get the students more excited about their future, which is important," she said.

Married and the mother of two children, McAuliffe began training for the mission in September 1985 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Despite constant interruptions for interviews and personal appearances, she kept her lively sense of humor and gung-ho enthusiasm for the chance to fly in space.

"I haven't had an awful lot of (free) time," she said in an interview. "The only thing I can truly say I have not missed this year is averaging grades, which I hate to do."

McAuliffe experienced brief moments of weightlessness in a NASA cargo plane and danced through the sky in a sleek T-38 jet trainer to give her experience in high performance aircraft. She worked through a stack of training manuals and learned the intricacies of life in orbit from cooking her dinner to using the shuttle's high-tech million-dollar toilet.

"They didn't expect you to be a technician, they certainly didn't expect you to fix anything or throw any switches," she said. "They just wanted to make sure you felt comfortable and that you were self sufficient aboard the flight."

As for the impact of the mission on her life, McAuliffe was typically down to Earth.

"I have a pretty realistic view of who I am and what my limitations are and what my goals and values are in life so even though this is an extraordinary year, and I'm sure that traveling in space is going to give me a different perspective on things, I think I'm still going to be able to teach in Concord," she said. "Kids are never going to be that impressed that I won't be able to teach or that impressed that I won't be able to learn."

During Challenger's flight, which NASA took great pains to publicize, McAuliffe planned to film various demonstrations and conduct two 15-minute "lessons" from orbit for broadcast by the Public Broadcasting System to school rooms around the nation.

"I think it's going to be very exciting for kids to be able to turn on the TV and see the teacher teaching from space," she said at a crew news conference. "I'm hoping that this is going to elevate the teaching profession in the eyes of the public and of those potential teachers out there and hopefully one of the maybe secondary objectives of this is students are going to be looking at me and perhaps thinking of going into teaching as professions."

Born in Boston, Mass., McAuliffe held a master's degree in education from Bowie State College in Bowie, Md. She held a variety of teaching assignments, all in junior high and high school, and was a member of the National Council of Social Studies and other education organizations. As for free time, McAuliffe had little, if any, once her training began. One of her few trips back to Concord in the fall was interrupted by a quick flight to Washington and dinner with President Reagan.

While she walked into the Teacher in Space program with her eyes open, she said being away from her family was difficult and that she missed hugging her kids at night and asking how the day had gone.

"Probably one of the hardest things that's happened to me this year in trying to just get adjusted is that I'm no longer in school, I'm a student again and that is a big change," she said. "But also being so far away from my family, and this is a year's commitment, that's probably one of the hardest adjustments I've had to make."