Ronald Reagan Shuttle Challenger Disaster Address When Ronald Regan addressed the United States only hours after the Shuttle Challenger disaster you could tell that he was mourning the loss of the seven heroes. “But even before the smoke cleared 30 years ago today, one man just as shocked as everyone else by the tragedy — President Ronald Reagan — had the unenviable job of explaining it to the country. On a day, no less, that he was to be the center of a ritual marked on every commander in chief’s calendar since the Woodrow Wilson administration: the State of the Union address.” (Moyer, 2016) Ronald Regan was originally supposed to report on the State of the Union but due to the incident that happened earlier that morning Reagan decided against it. In Reagan’s address he states that himself and Nancy’s hearts are heavy after they watched the Challenger space shuttle accident. He then goes on to reflect back on the only other space accident that happened nineteen years ago, almost to the day. In that accident we lost three astronauts on the …show more content…
Reagan takes a moment out of this speech to address the school children of America stating, “[To those] who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle 's takeoff. I know it 's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It 's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It 's all part of taking a chance and expanding man 's horizons. The future doesn 't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we 'll continue to follow them.” I feel that in this part of his speech he wanted to ensure that school children knew that those seven heroes died while helping our country bush boundaries. He wanted to make sure that just because of this accident space explorations would till be possible and young children would grow up wanting to be an astronaut rather than being afraid of what might