![]() There’s no new information about how and why the catastrophe occurred unlike some of the sensational subjects that have become fodder for Netflix nonfiction, the Challenger’s destruction is a mostly solved mystery. The Final Flight tells the alternately inspiring and dismaying story of the Challenger via archival clips, fresh footage from home movies, and new interviews with former shuttle program personnel and relatives of the fliers lost in the fatal launch. ![]() NASA and SpaceX Count Down to the Next Stage of Space Travel How NASA Keeps Earth’s Germs From Reaching Mars Yet The Final Flight makes a strong case for forcing oneself to see it again, even-or, perhaps, especially-at a time when we’re overwhelmed by the disasters unfolding in front of our eyes. The destruction of the Challenger was a horror that everyone who was watching live or on taped delay wished they could unsee. The new Netflix limited series, which debuted on Wednesday, chronicles the lead-up to, causes of, and fallout from the fiery disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger 73 seconds after its launch on January 28, 1986, which resulted in the deaths of its seven-member crew of six astronauts and high school social studies teacher Christa McAuliffe. It’s a three-hour exhumation of a traumatic event that imprinted itself on the psyche of anyone who was watching when it went down. Which makes this a less than optimal time for Netflix to ask the question that its app is posing this week: Can we interest you in a four-part documentary about a devastating national tragedy?Īs an alternative to the endless hours of low-stakes escapism that streaming services serve up to temporarily take our troubles away, Challenger: The Final Flight isn’t an easy sell. When we aren’t preoccupied by case counts and death tolls, our screens are sending us warnings of economic collapse, flashing scenes of repeated police violence, and reminding us that the leaders who are supposed to be bulwarks against chaos have, through a combination of cruelty and complacency, only exacerbated the suffering and deepened the divides. More than six months after the country caught the world’s worst case of coronavirus and some of its more sensible citizens retreated inside, the United States is still convulsing from the effects of its failed response to the pandemic.
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