RACHAEL JOY
NASA engineer Roland Norris onboard his sailboat Captiva docked in Merritt Island, Fla., Thursday, Jan. 13, 2021, where he wrote a book about his career. He says the chapter about the Challenger astronauts was the hardest to write. It took him seven years to finish his nearly 200 page memoir “My Path to a Career in Aerospace and an Out of This World Job with NASA.” (Rachael Joy/Florida Today via AP)
MELBOURNE, Fla. When engineer Roland Norris set out to write down the stories of his career spanning 40 years at NASA, he had one regret.
“I wish I’d kept a journal or made notes. Instead I wrote it all from memory,” Norris told FLORIDA TODAY.
The 1980s were an unforgettably unique era. The music, the fashion, the sports rivalries, the movies and television shows all defined the decade.
However, for every good thing the 80s brought, there were twice as many unfortunate disasters that came too.
On Jan. 28, 1986, the Challenger space shuttle exploded only 73 seconds after its launch.
On board were astronauts Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Michael Smith, Francis (Dick) Scobee, Ronald McNair and most notably, school teacher Christa McAuliffe. They were all killed when the shuttle broke apart in midair over the Atlantic Ocean, turning a historic event into a national nightmare.
Florida Today
When engineer Roland Norris set out to write down the stories of his career spanning 40 years at NASA, he had one regret.
“I wish I’d kept a journal or made notes. Instead I wrote it all from memory,” Norris told FLORIDA TODAY.
He discovered quickly that he needed a quiet place to roam the corners of his mind and he found it in the cabin of his sailboat Captiva.
“I wrote almost all of it right there,” he said pointing to a cozy spot surrounded by his collection of videos about the various space programs.
It took him seven years to finish his nearly 200 page memoir “My Path to a Career in Aerospace and an Out of This World Job with NASA.”
Challenger disaster, explosion of the U.S. space shuttle orbiter
Challenger, shortly after its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 28, 1986, which claimed the lives of seven astronauts.
U.S. space shuttle
Challenger just seconds after its explosive destruction on January 28, 1986. The accident, which occurred a little more than a minute after liftoff, killed the orbiter s seven-person crew, including the first teacher to be launched into space.
NASA
The primary goal of shuttle mission 51-L was to launch the second Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-B). It also carried the Spartan Halley spacecraft, a small satellite that was to be released by