From the archives: Christopher Hitchens on the Challenger shuttle disaster

It is 25 years, to the day, since the Challenger shuttle tragically disintegrated over Cape Canaveral. Here is the deeply poignant piece that Christopher Hitchens wrote for The Spectator at the time:

The Shuttle Disaster, Christopher Hitchens, The Spectator 1 Feb 1986

Cape Canaveral was the scene of so many non-lethal disasters in the early Sixties that it gratefully accepted a change of name to Cape Kennedy – even though the very change itself involved a memorial to a trauma. Few now remember the process by which the launching pad of the space programme reverted quietly to its earlier and (until Tuesday morning) more placid title. But nobody who saw the flame fill the screen and then dissolve into anarchic debris will ever forget Canaveral. It will rival that other famous moment, always prefaced with the words, ‘I’ll always remember what I was doing when I heard….’