Challenger

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, or a new country.
- Anaïs Nin, 1903 - 1977

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.
- Christa McAuliffe, 1948 - 1986

We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.
- Ida R. Wylie

Adventure isn't hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life: facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and, in the process, discovering our own unique potential.
- John Amatt

If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.
- Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, 1926 - 1967

Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhiliration of victory.
- George S. Patton, 1885 - 1945

About: Challenger - Space Shuttle Mission 51-L lifted off from Pad B at Cape Canaveral at 11:38 am Eastern on 28 Jan in 1986. It was the 25th Shuttle launch, the 10th for Challenger (OV-099). Challenger had made 987 orbits of the earth and spent 69 days in space in her first nine flights. On board were Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ellison S. Onizuka, Ronald E. McNair, Gregory B. Jarvis, and Sharon Christa McAuliffe. The mission ended in a fireball 46,000 feet above the Atlantic, 73 seconds into the flight. Christa McAuliffe, the schoolteacher who trained and joined the mission as Payload Specialist 2, had as her motto, "Reach for the Stars." So should we all.