The footage in the second video above was only uncovered a few days ago - the guy who filmed it donated it to the Space Exploration Archive shortly before his death - and they themselves have released it in the run up to the anniversary of the disaster.

I know its kind of macabre, but I’m fascinated by the two videos considered together.

One is horrifying because of its detached professionalism; that long, awful silence after “Go with throttle up” that leads to the almost comically procedural “”Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation.” I think its the helpless inevitability of it; we do this thing, we do that thing, we do another thing - a thing we’ve done a thousand times before - and then, from nowhere and for no reason, disaster.

The other video’s folksy dismay horrifies me equally though. ”That’s trouble of some kind, George.” he says, all Bedford Falls about it; unaware that history is happening around him.

This just happens to have been on my mind recently - and there’s an unpleasant aspect of voyeurism to all of it, so to make up for it, I thought I’d draw your attention to the speech that Ronald Reagan made in the aftermath of the disaster that is possibly unfamiliar to most of us here in the UK. It’s a great example of a beautifully and sensitively written piece of oratory from a man not remember (by history, at least), for that kind of thing.

The speech brilliantly references a beautiful but still relatively obscure poem, High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr. which I’ve reproduced below. The last line, for my money, still has the stopping power of a punch to the solar plexus.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air… .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.