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krpalmerScraping together thoughts to post to this journal is a constant hill to climb; justifying my Netflix subscription by finding things on it to watch is also constant even if it might be less of a slope (although I almost never turn on my cable these days but put its higher cost out of my mind). A while ago, though, I did get pointed to a short documentary series on the streaming service about the final launch of space shuttle Challenger. It’s a subject that stings with me given my age, but I thought I could take a chance on it.
So far as unexpected jolts go, though, there might have been one in seeing J.J. Abrams and his “Bad Robot” production company credited. For all of the exceedingly mixed reactions I wound up developing towards his takes on Star Trek and Star Wars, though, this look back at the past at least seemed more thoughtful in the end to me; too, of course, there can be a difference between “writer-director” and “executive producer.” I did wonder whether there’s more “videotape from the 1980s” than “film from the 1960s” even as I faced how “blowing standard definition videotape up to widescreen” could make it look that much worse, but things like a young Jerry Seinfeld joking about “how to make space shuttle launches more exciting again” did add some variety.
The seven members of the final crew were all developed over three episodes along with other people. I did wonder how this narrative would present Richard Feynman given earlier enthusiasms towards his entire life, but he did seem to be “part of a larger whole” here. There wasn’t any comment about some emergency oxygen supplies having been found activated, much less the insinuations spun out from that by anti-official sources everyone in the crew compartment was conscious all the way down to the water. Once I’d finished the documentary (which got to the higher point of “return to flight,” but had to acknowledge Columbia’s own fate in some final text), though, I did turn to my copy of Diane Vaughan’s The Challenger Launch Decision, which I’d found in a used book store a while ago. Written a decade after the event (and somewhat academic in tone), it sought to work more detail into the familiar narrative even as it wondered if warning presentations could have been more effectively shaped (which just reminds me of accusations about Powerpoint slides about Columbia).
So far as unexpected jolts go, though, there might have been one in seeing J.J. Abrams and his “Bad Robot” production company credited. For all of the exceedingly mixed reactions I wound up developing towards his takes on Star Trek and Star Wars, though, this look back at the past at least seemed more thoughtful in the end to me; too, of course, there can be a difference between “writer-director” and “executive producer.” I did wonder whether there’s more “videotape from the 1980s” than “film from the 1960s” even as I faced how “blowing standard definition videotape up to widescreen” could make it look that much worse, but things like a young Jerry Seinfeld joking about “how to make space shuttle launches more exciting again” did add some variety.
The seven members of the final crew were all developed over three episodes along with other people. I did wonder how this narrative would present Richard Feynman given earlier enthusiasms towards his entire life, but he did seem to be “part of a larger whole” here. There wasn’t any comment about some emergency oxygen supplies having been found activated, much less the insinuations spun out from that by anti-official sources everyone in the crew compartment was conscious all the way down to the water. Once I’d finished the documentary (which got to the higher point of “return to flight,” but had to acknowledge Columbia’s own fate in some final text), though, I did turn to my copy of Diane Vaughan’s The Challenger Launch Decision, which I’d found in a used book store a while ago. Written a decade after the event (and somewhat academic in tone), it sought to work more detail into the familiar narrative even as it wondered if warning presentations could have been more effectively shaped (which just reminds me of accusations about Powerpoint slides about Columbia).