Welcome to Litsy!

This was an emotional read for me! I was in 4th grade in Florida when it happened. My class stepped outside to watch so I saw the explosion live in the sky. And in hindsight there were so many reasons to not launch that day 😔 The story was well told by the author.

By the time the design was complete...engineers... still believed they were employing a tried-and-tested joint for their new rocket: they had avoided any potentially dangerous innovation. But this was a convenient delusion.... in creating a man-rated, fail-safe joint they had also modified it so extensively that what they produced was, in effect, a quite new and experimental design.

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Cue the ominous soundtrack...

"Why are you interrupting my bird watching?"

Current library reads with one I just completed (The Mighty Red).

Day 11 of #12Booksof2024 is my favorite nonfiction read of the year

@Andrew65

A re-read for me, but perfectly timed for when it‘s cold and the wind is howling. This is the book that started my love affair with high altitude climbing stories and it still holds up almost 30 years after publication.

Overall I liked this historical fiction from the point of view of a girl who stows away on the Titanic, but there were a few issues for me as a reader. Hazel sneaks onto the ship and then makes herself way too visible, including spending time in the first class areas. She asks specific questions that provide lots of clear information about the flaws/mistakes that led to the catastrophe, and of course it all works out well for her in the end.

....the exercises [water survival drills] were conducted under the gaze of dozens of reporters and cameramen...

By now, each of the women understood that the novelty of being America's first female astronauts made them a focus of attention, but their patience was already fraying....

when, as she was being winched aloft by a helicopter, a photographer asked Sally Ride to make a "happy face" for the cameras, she simply yelled, "No!"

CHALLENGER is riveting. Wrenching. Heartbreaking. And brilliant.

Me: I know everything about Chernobyl now. I'm like an expert.

16yo: Tell me the names of all the people who were involved.

Me: ...Um...Russian names...a lot of them...