TOW #3 - Article: President Reagan Challenger Explosion

On January 28^th 1986, the Challenger space shuttle was launched. 73 seconds into what would end up being it’s tenth and last mission the shuttle broke apart killing all seven crew members on board. Later that day, President Ronald Reagan made a televised speech to address the tragedy during what was supposed to be his State of Union Address.

            Reagan’s delivering the speech was to acknowledge the tragedy that occurred. He didn’t want to provide an explanation for the failure of the shuttle, mainly because the reason behind the explosion wasn’t found yet, but also because he knew it wouldn’t help the situation. The launch was, like Reagan’s speech, televised to the whole country. This meant that schoolchildren watched seven people get killed in an explosion. In his speech Reagan wanted to point out to the country that yes a terrible thing occurred today, but this terrible thing wasn’t going to stop us from continuing our journey towards the future. He wanted his speech to give the country hope that together they could overcome this tragedy and become a stronger nation because of it.

            Reagan achieved his purpose by continuously mentioning throughout the speech that the country’s research and discovery of space wasn’t ending due to the failure of the shuttle. He kept saying in his speech how as a country we were just beginning to learn about the universe and that this shuttle launch was helping us get one step closer to entering parts that we haven’t seen yet.

            The primary audience of the speech was the whole country. This audience is shown whenever Reagan uses ‘we’ to include every single person in the country to not single any one group of people out. Then Reagan’s secondary audience is the schoolchildren who had to witness the explosion and death of seven people. In the speech Reagan dedicated a whole mini paragraph to the schoolchildren of America. He does this because usually children have to be explained things differently than adults, mainly because they have a hard time comprehending ideas of death and tragedy.