It is January 28, 1986, the day of the long awaited liftoff of the challenger. Ten years ago NASA unveiled the world's first reusable aircraft, the space shuttle. Five years ago the shuttle flights started with Columbia on its 54 hour endeavor manned craft. Three years ago the first untethered moon walk ever occurred. All three gigantic monuments that were recording breaking unlike anything else witnessed. All three set the stage for future ventures. All three rolled the pavement for this, the second space shuttle with a twist, one of the members was a regular citizen, a teacher from a small town in New Hampshire to teach kids about space aboard her trip. So with the entire country watching the crew waved and boarded the spacecraft. Adults, teens, kids gleeful about the broad world, all saw in awe as the space shuttle rose in the sky, out of the atmosphere... and disintegrated.
The mission was delayed for six days due to weather and technical problems with the morning of the launch being unusually cold. The engineers warned their superiors that there were some things that could prove to be dangerous due to the circumstances such as the rubber O-rings sealing the rocket boosters which were vulnerable to failure at low temperatures. But as always in these types of situations the warnings were ignored. As challenger lifted off the astronauts, NASA, and all who watched stared in the disbelief as the space craft burst into a fog of smoke and fire, and within a few moments the entire spacecraft fell apart and dove into the ocean, killing the whole crew, traumatizing the entire U.S. and pushing NASA's shuttle program off a cliff of cascading failures.
The cause of all this? Well the shuttle exploded because the external fuel tank burst. The fuel tank burst because the right rocket booster came undone and ruptured it. The rocket booster came undone because gasses leaked out of them burning a hole into the fuel tank and the piece that held the boosters in place. The gas leaked because the seal around the O-ring failed. Why did that fail? By now you should be able to piece it all together, the O-ring seal wasn't able to withstand the cold temperatures of the day, which the engineers had already complained about. Because of the O-ring failure the entire nation was thrown into turmoil. How big was the O-ring? Not even half an inch.
My birthday is in the beginning of the school year, at a time where everyone is getting stuff organized, figuring out their classes, and starting homework after a long break. So when it was my birthday I didn't expect anyone to remember as there was no indication for it. I chose to wear casual clothes, I didn't write my birthday on any social media, nothing at all to remind anyone that it was my birthday. But when I walked into school some person who I recognized a bit from middle school but apart from than that I hadn't talked to at all wished me happy birthday just brightened my day. The fact that they remember that thing that I could only have mentioned once came to them to wish me.
That was when the fact struck me, small things really do matter. Whether it is a small sealant that could have prevented a national catastrophe or someone remembering your birthday they can make a monumental difference. Small matches create huge forest fires, small words make huge actions, and small things make huge differences.
I would always keep this in mind in everything I did since my childhood, in essays I would pay attention to the fonts and what message they would give, in sports when I played football and learning how to tackle and catch properly I would pay heed to even the angle of where everything faced, and when talking to friends telling a story or something I would always keep the word choice in the back of my mind. This started early in my childhood from something implanted into my brain even back then because someone put it in there. Not a friend, not my teachers, not even my parents. On Winnie the Pooh, one of the shows that I adored as a child Winnie said something that changed my perception forever,"Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in our hearts."
The small things, from a screw, to a birthday wish, to a match really do.
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