Everyone I know who worked in the space program during that time felt a measure of guilt. Even many of the news outlets felt that if only they had done their jobs better they would have ferreted out the problems and might have prevented the accident.

So many lives were changed. People, of course, are the most important. The crew was made up of seven talented and accomplished individuals who never got to make their continuing contributions to the world.

Jon McBride, an astronaut who was training with his crew to command the next space shuttle flight, was diverted to NASA Headquarters as the Deputy Administrator for Congressional Relations. He probably would have gone on to command a number of other flights if not for the accident. Instead, he helped NASA secure continued federal funding, even though Congress had chipped away at the budget, so that the program could continue and we could build the amazingly capable laboratory known as the International Space Station.

Bob Crippen, who piloted the very first Space Shuttle and three more pioneering flights, was also diverted from his love of flying. He was scheduled to command the first launch of a Space Shuttle from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California later that year. That flight and all subsequent shuttle launches from the West Coast were cancelled.

Instead, Crippen played an important role in the accident investigation. Next, he went to NASA Headquarters to manage the shuttle program, served as Director of the Kennedy Space Center, and, after eventually retired from NASA to serve as President of Thiokol Propulsion Company—the company that built the solid rocket boosters for shuttle. Today, Thiokol, under the ATK banner, is building the solid motors that will take us beyond the moon and outward to Mars using the lessons from Challenger.

Carrying Department of Defense (DoD) payloads was one of the key components in making the Space Shuttle Program cost-effective. But after the Challenger accident, the DoD stopped flying its satellites and experiments on the Space Shuttle and went back to using ELVs—expendable (unmanned) launch vehicles—to this day.

After 133 successful flights, and two failures—including Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003), the Space Shuttle Program formally ended in 2011. Today, progress is being made on a new, large rocket vehicle known as SLS (Space Launch System.) It is larger and more powerful than the Saturn V rockets that took us to the moon. Much of the infrastructure is in place at the Kennedy Space Center, and the crew module is being manufactured there as well.

Space is an unforgiving place to live and work. The Challenger and later the Columbia accident shook everyone in NASA to the core, but it didn’t shake their confidence in the future. I believe if you had surveyed the thousands of people who worked for NASA back in the early 1980s, 99 percent of them would have told you we would be sending people to Mars by the year 2000. The other one percent might have guessed closer to 2017.

After the accidents, the dates may have changed; but step-by-step we are getting ever closer to that goal. Mars will be followed by places we have not yet dreamed of. In the meantime, NASA will continue doing the research in science that will advance our understanding of our world and universe—making it a better place for all of us.

That’s what humans do.

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