Address to the Nation on the Challenger Disaster

Summary

On the morning of 28 January 1986 the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven of its crew. Among them was Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire high school teacher chosen as the first Teacher in Space, and because of her, millions of schoolchildren were watching in their classrooms. Reagan had been due to deliver the State of the Union address that evening. He postponed it and instead spoke for about four minutes from the Oval Office, in a text drafted by the speechwriter Peggy Noonan. The address has seven short paragraphs. Reagan explains why he has set aside his planned report and calls the day one for mourning and remembering. He recalls the three astronauts lost in the Apollo 1 fire nineteen years earlier, observes that no American had ever died in flight, and names the seven: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. He speaks first to the families, praising the crew's daring and their wish to serve, and calls them pioneers in a country grown used to wonders. Then he turns to the schoolchildren directly, in the most remembered passage: painful things happen, they are part of exploration and discovery, and the future belongs to the brave. He affirms the space program, points out that it is conducted openly in a free country, promises more shuttle flights and more teachers in space, and thanks the people of NASA. The close is an elegy. Reagan notes that on the same date in 1596 Sir Francis Drake died at sea off Panama, and says that the crew's dedication, like Drake's, was complete. The final sentence recalls the crew waving goodbye that morning and ends with two phrases from John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s sonnet High Flight: they slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God. The speech was widely praised at once and is often ranked among the finest presidential addresses of the century.

Top Lessons

• Speaking to the grieving

  Reagan addresses three audiences in turn: the nation, the families, and the schoolchildren, and he changes his words for each. To the families he admits that no one else can bear the full impact of their loss; to the children he offers a plain explanation suited to their age. Consolation, the speech shows, begins by knowing whom one is speaking to.

• Courage in exploration

  Reagan insists that the crew knew the dangers and overcame them, and that loss is part of the process of exploration and discovery. By linking the astronauts to Drake and the explorers of the oceans, he places them in a long line of people who risked their lives to extend human knowledge.

• Ending with hope

  The final sentence moves from the crew's last wave to an image of them touching the face of God. Reagan borrows a fighter pilot's poem to end a national tragedy with an affirmation that the crew's journey did not end in nothing, a consolation offered in religious language to a whole nation.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The address is an example of public consolation after a sudden, collectively witnessed death. Its passage to the schoolchildren, many of whom saw the breakup live in class, offers a simple, age-suited explanation of loss, and the Challenger accident was later the subject of studies of children's responses to a traumatic event seen on television. The speech is a reference point for how leaders address grief rather than a medical text.

• Paragraph 4

  Reagan's words to the schoolchildren who watched the launch, explaining that painful things happen as part of exploration.

• Paragraph 3

  The address to the families, acknowledging that others cannot bear the full impact of their loss.