Ronald Reagan Challenger Disaster Summary

President Reagan’s Challenger Disaster Speech Analysis This speech was made by our 40th President Ronald Reagan on January twenty-eighth, nineteen hundred eighty-six . Originally slated to be the State of the Union Address, President Reagan instead addressed the tragedy of the Challenger Space Shuttle that exploded mid-flight earlier that day. The seven-member crew perished in the explosion including Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space. In the twenty-five years of the United States space program’s history, this was the second time a space shuttle’s crew had been killed. The previous incident being nineteen years earlier, involving a cockpit fire in the Apollo I Shuttle cockpit killing all three the of the crew members aboard.

In President Reagan’s speech, he made it a point to address the school children of America who were watching during class due to the importance of the first teacher to enter space. President Reagan tried to explain to the children about the costs of exploration and pioneering new frontiers. He told the audience that expanding man’s horizons and the future does not belong to the fainthearted but to those who show bravery. President Reagan promised that we, the people of the Unites States, would continue to follow the Challenger crew into the future.
To begin his speech, he shared his and First Lady Nancy’s pain with the people of the United States as well as the families of the crew members. He praised the courage of the crew members and their dedication to their jobs. He stated that this was a tragic loss that our nation would mourn, but we as people could not fully understand the impact upon the families who lost loved