Challenger
Pull up a chair and enjoy one of the strangest stories you’ll ever read.
The 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle explosion is one of the iconic events of the 1980s. For many, it was the JFK Assassination event of that era — everyone remembers where they were when it happened.
Almost 30 years later, a truly baffling online discovery added a strange, almost unbelievable, wrinkle to the Challenger explosion. Those 7 astronauts who died in the Challenger crash? Yeah, most of them might actually be alive today.
Seriously.
Here’s the story of that incredible discovery and a few reasons that faking the deaths of the Challenger astronauts might not be as far-fetched as it seems.
THE CONTROVERSY
The controversy started in 2013 when an internet commentator stumbled upon something odd. Judith Resnick, one of the Challenger passengers who supposedly died in the 1986 explosion, might not have actually died.
Because someone with the name Judith Resnick was a successful Law Professor at Yale — and she looked virtually identical to the astronaut Judith Resnick (adding 30 years). She was 65 years old, too, which was the exact age the Challenger astronaut would have been if she were alive.
Same age, same face, and same name? That’s…weird.
Naturally, people started wondering: if Judith Resnick was actually alive, what happened to the others who supposedly died? And thus began a trip down the rabbit hole.
The same thing was found for Michael J. Smith, an engineer who served as the Challenger’s pilot. A man with the same name who was a dead ringer for Smith (adding 30 years) was 69 years old, the same age that Michael J. Smith would’ve been had he survived the crash.
Once again, same age, same face, same name. And he, too, was a professor — Smith taught Industrial Engineering at The University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Christa McAuliffe was the face of the 1986 Challenger mission, a schoolteacher who’d supposedly been selected at random to be sent to space on Challenger as part of a Teachers in Space program.
Well, her real name was actually Sharon Christa McAuliffe. And a 2013 person named Sharon McAuliffe was found. Like Judith Resnick and Michael Smith, Sharon McAuliffe was the same age the supposedly dead astronaut would have been in 2013. She looked like an older version of her dead counterpart, too. Like the other two, she was ALSO a college professor — McAuliffe taught law at Syracuse.
Challenger Commander Richard Scobee was found, too. He was the CEO of a Chicago advertising firm named Cows in Trees. Many noted how the logo of his company bore a striking similarity to the famous image of the Challenger explosion.
I mean…really? Of all the logos he could’ve chosen for his company, he chose THAT logo? Was this some sort of inside joke?
Astronauts Ronald McNair and Ellison Onizuka both supposedly died in the Challenger crash. It was found that both men had identical twins, Carl McNair and Claude Onizuka, who are still living today. But ancestry searches were done for both Carl McNair and Claude Onizuka — no birth history came up for either man.
The chances that two of the seven astronauts both have identical twins is incredibly remote. Onizuka’s brother, it was noted, even had exact same crow’s feet wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Could it be the supposedly dead astronauts were simply pretending to be their brothers?
So…that was six of the supposedly dead astronauts, each of whom had someone who looked nearly identical with the same name and the exact age the astronaut would be if they’d lived.
What are the odds? Astronomical. One of the six with a same-named lookalike would be a coincidence, but it simply defies reason that six would have matches.
This is far from the first time NASA has been accused of fakery. The moon landing being faked has long been a popular topic of speculation and discussion. Ralph Rene’s NASA Mooned America and NASA contractor Bill Kaysing’s bestseller We Never Went To the Moon are two of the more comprehensive books about the moon landing being faked.
In Kaysing’s book, he even describes how the 1969 moon trip was faked. The astronauts, he says, weren’t even on board the shuttle: After the astronauts went up the gantry for everyone to see and boarded their capsule, they secretly came back down the elevator and remained on earth in hiding the entire time.
A similar hoax could have easily been pulled off for The Challenger launch: film the astronauts entering the shuttle, have them leave once the cameras have disappeared, and launch the shuttle without them.
If this was done for The Challenger launch, it raises one obvious question.
WHY WOULD THEY FAKE THIS?
The first question that comes up, of course, is: Why?
If these people actually didn’t die in the Challenger explosion, why would their deaths be faked? What possible reason could there be to pull off such a mammoth deception?
We can only speculate…so let’s speculate.
The answer to that question may be found by looking at the media coverage of the Challenger explosion — for weeks, the explosion dominated every headline and led every news broadcast. It was the only event that mattered.
In short, the Challenger explosion was the ultimate headline-stealing, attention-hogging distraction. So…was there something going on at the time that needed to be distracted from?
There was. Right around the time of the Challenger explosion, an absolutely massive controversy was going on. It ended up being one of the greatest political scandals Washington DC has ever seen, something so huge that many thought it would bring down Ronald Reagan’s presidency and almost everyone involved with it.
It began with an air crash that isn’t nearly as well-known as the Challenger explosion, but was far more devastating.
THE GANDER CRASH
On December 12, 1985, just a month before the Challenger explosion, a US military plane crashed 19 seconds after takeoff from Gander International Airfield in Newfoundland, Canada. All 256 people on board died, 8 crew members and 248 members of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, making it the worst air disaster in US military history.
Initially, investigators said that ice buildup on the wings had caused the plane to crash. But some really, really strange details started emerging about the crash, convincing many that the plane was brought down on purpose by a bomb or explosion.
“I have absolutely no doubt, I can categorically say I feel, I believe there has been an attempt to cover up what happened,” said Rep. Robin Tallon (D-S.C.) of his attempts to find answers in a Gander crash probe.
Just a few of the mysteries were:
A bright flash was witnessed by multiple people before the crash.
Mysterious “casket-shaped” boxes were loaded onto the plane, the contents of which remain unknown to this day.
High levels of carbon monoxide were found in the lungs of flight passengers. Where did this poisonous gas come from? More importantly, if the passengers had died instantaneously in a crash, as was reported, how did they breathe this gas into their lungs? A dead person is obviously unable to inhale air, so the carbon monoxide couldn’t have come from a fire after the crash.
The crash scene left over thirty rescue workers with symptoms of radiation poisoning.
The soldiers on the flight were returning to the US from a six-month “peacekeeping” mission in the Middle East; the exact nature of their mission, however, was secretive and many people questioned what they were truly up to during their deployment.
The debris from the Gander crash was quickly buried in a dump (instead of reassembled to study the crash, as is the norm), and the US government sealed the crash records for 70 years.
In the weeks after the crash, as one strange detail after another emerged, the Gander crashed received widespread media coverage. To reiterate, this was the worst air disaster in the history of the US military — and it was starting to look like it wasn’t an accident.
The Gander crash itself was controversial, but a far greater controversy happened a year later, when the crash was connected to the Iran-contra scandal.
THE IRAN-CONTRA CONNECTION
Oliver North: The face of Iran-contra
Most have heard of the late 1980s Iran-contra scandal but few today are aware of just how massive the scandal was.
If you have 90 minutes, watch the documentary “The Secret Government – Constitution in Crisis” from 1987. It’s one of the very best documentaries out there and does a great job of covering the true impact of Iran-contra.
In a nutshell, some very high up people in the US government were caught illegally selling weapons to Iran in exchange for US hostages being held there. We’re not talking knives and handguns either; they were selling heavy duty shit like missiles and rocket launchers for millions of dollars. This US group then used the money they made from the weapons sales to train and equip a rebel group in Nicaragua (the contras) who were engaged in a bloody civil war trying to overthrow the government.
Gary Webb’s incredible Dark Alliance covers Iran-contra in detail.
But the real controversy of Iran-contra was that it exposed a shadowy group of federal agents, military personnel, and politicians who oversaw Iran-contra. This group was branded The Enterprise. The general public, almost all of Washington DC, and even a majority of the world had no idea this secret group even existed. Everything that was going on during Iran-contra — the missile sales, the training and funding of rebel armies who killed hundreds — it was all being done in total secrecy by The Enterprise, without telling Congress or anyone else in the government.
Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye during the Iran-contra hearings
During the Iran-contra hearings, Hawaii senator Daniel Inouye described The Enterprise as “a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.”
You read that right. The Enterprise was so big it had its own aircraft carriers and fighter jets.
Congressional report on Iran-contra affair, 1987.
When people talk about the Deep State, or secret government cabals, it’s often written off as far-fetched or a conspiracy theory. But The Enterprise exposed by Iran-Contra is it. That’s the Deep State. That’s the cabal. A secret group of government and military officials, operating in the shadows, doing things the general public has no idea about — many of them illegal and immoral.
Iran-contra and the exposure of The Enterprise was such a big deal at the time that many thought it would result in President Reagan and his VP Bush being forced to resign. It was rumored that both used The Enterprise for missions they wanted to keep secret from Congress and the public.
Both Reagan and Bush denied knowledge of The Enterprise and escaped punishment.
For a while, Iran-contra was everywhere.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
So we have 3 things, all happening around the same time. Iran-Contra. The Gander Crash. And the Challenger explosion. What do they have to do with each other?
Quite a bit. Remember, the 248 soldiers on board the Gander flight were returning from a six-month “peacekeeping” mission near Iran in the Middle East. In fact, the plane that crashed in Gander had left Egypt earlier that day, only stopping in Gander for an hour layover before flying to its final destination at Fort Bragg, Kentucky.
Delta Company soldiers who died in the Gander crash, Sandford.org/gandercrash
Also, it turns out that not everyone on the “peacekeeping” mission in the Middle East was there to keep peace. 20 members of the crew were part of the elite Special Forces group known as Task Force 160, whose main specialties were covert missions and rescues.
Further, it was later found that The Enterprise was using a company named Arrow Air to secretly transport missiles and cash during Iran-contra. And the Gander flight that crashed was…surprise…an Arrow Air flight that had been chartered to bring home the troops home.
The State, December 11, 1989
The crash also occurred at a very suspect time. It was later learned that, only three weeks before the crash, The Enterprise had royally pissed off the Iranians by selling them outdated, faulty missiles.
The Courier-Journal, Dec 9, 1990
In fact, it was later found that Oliver North, one of the primary players in Iran-contra, had warned others the Iranians may retaliate due to the faulty missile shipment.
The Courier-Journal, Dec 9, 1990
This fed into the theory that the Iranians had blown up the Gander flight as punishment for the faulty missiles. The Islamic Jihad Organization even claimed responsibility for the crash, but the claim was dismissed by both United States and Canadian authorities.
Over the years, there have also been rumors that Israel was behind the Gander bombing as punishment for the US Army’s presence in the Middle East.
Was the Gander crash a result of arguments between IDF (The Israeli Defense Force) and the 101st unit? http://www.sandford.org/gandercrash/guestbook/cgi-bin/gbook.cgi?type=view
Israel had done something similar two decades earlier, when they attacked the unarmed USS Liberty and murdered or wounded close to 300 Americans. No one in the Israeli government or military has ever been punished for the unprovoked attack, and most US citizens have never even heard of the USS Liberty tragedy.
York Sunday News, June 27, 2004
But the Gander theory that has garnered the most attention over the years is that the US government was behind the crash. There are simply too many connections to the shady, mysterious worlds of Iran-contra and The Enterprise to ignore.
First, one must remember that Iran-contra was still unknown to the public and press at the time of the Gander crash; the story wouldn’t break for another year. Perhaps some of the soldiers in the 101st division were involved in Iran-contra and were threatening to blow the whistle, which could’ve led to resignations and even prison time for those who’d authorized the weapon sales, potentially up to and including President Reagan and VP Bush.
“As one person put it, she wants to know if her family member died protecting this country or if he died because our government was protecting itself.”
The crew behind Sandford.org/gandercrash, the best resource I’ve found for information on the Gander crash, has a slight variation on this theory. They believe there was an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran. After the shipment of faulty missiles to Iran, this theory goes, The Enterprise feared Iran would kill the US hostages in retaliation.
So The Enterprise used Task Force 160 (elite rescue mission specialists in the 101st who were already in the Middle East) to attempt to save the hostages. But they failed, which could explain the mysterious “casket-shaped” boxes loaded onto the Arrow Air flight; they were the bodies of these soldiers.
Crashing the Gander flight, then, was a way to tie up the loose ends, keep Iran-contra a secret, potentially cover up a bungled, unauthorized hostage mission that had left soldiers dead — and most of all, protect the powerful people involved with The Enterprise.
Dead men tell no tales, as the saying goes. But as questions kept emerging about the Gander crash — Why did the debris look like a bomb had gone off? Why did the dead passengers have carbon monoxide in their lungs? And was there more to this “peacekeeping” mission in the Middle East that was being kept secret? —the attention on Gander became even more intense, threatening exposure of Iran-contra and those involved.
It could have created total chaos. Imagine what would have happened if it was discovered that the Gander crash was caused by a foreign country (Israel or Iran)…or even individuals in our own government. At best, a pissed-off citizenry. At worst, a war, even a complete collapse of the federal government.
They needed a distraction. A way to get the public and press to focus on something other than Gander. And a month later, the Challenger explosion provided that distraction.
The Challenger mission, it should be noted, was essentially a military operation — four members of the Challenger crew were from the military and two were from major military contractors. Plus, almost every member of NASA’s leadership comes from the military.
Were these military personnel simply ordered to take one for the team and participate in a hoax that would distract from a situation (the Gander crash, illegal weapons sales in the Middle East) that could lead to some really powerful people getting in some really big trouble?
If so, it worked like a charm. The Gander crash was turned into an afterthought when the Challenger explosion and investigation hogged headlines and news broadcasts for months. The public pressure that was starting to mount for answers in the Gander crash all but fizzled out; the Challenger explosion buried it.
Ask anyone about the Gander crash; few have heard of it. Ask them about Challenger; everyone knows it.
Eventually, details of Iran-contra came out, but they came to light almost a full year after the Gander crash had started to first reveal the scheme. One wonders if the Iran-contra story we were given was even the true, full story of what happened. How much was covered up in the year that passed? Who was able to hide their involvement in the scandal? Was the story we were shown only a partial glimpse of a scandal that was far, far bigger?
MISC. INFO
Richard Scobee’s son became a big deal in the military and even served as the Deputy Director of Operations for NORAD, a group that’s been involved in many questionable events over the years including being accused by some of playing a prominent part in a 9/11 coverup.
Christa McAuliffe was a schoolteacher supposedly chosen at random to be a part of the Challenger mission. But she has some interesting connections. Her widowed husband became (was rewarded with?) a district judge in New Hampshire. There are rumors she’s related to Terry McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia who was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and was even mentioned as a presidential candidate himself. Syracuse (where McAuliffe worked as a professor) has a long history of involvement with NASA projects and grants, as does Yale (Resnick) and Wisconsin (Smith).
One YouTuber showed up to Michael J. Smith’s house and asked him about the rumors he was a Challenger astronaut. It’s an odd interview; Smith seems (perhaps understandably) nervous and edgy as he talks. And he sure does like to look at the ground an awful lot when he answers questions…
The Challenger Camp is a foundation for the “victims” that was established shortly after the Challenger crash. Family members from each astronaut are on the board, and the foundation has revenues of close to $5 million per year, mostly from donations.
Of course, it’s long been rumored that many “foundations” aren’t really foundations at all; they’re just fronts for money laundering. Ways to discreetly pay people for participating in coverups and other illegal activity. Instead of paying someone directly (which has to be reported and explained to the IRS), one can simply mask the payment as a donation to the foundation and “pay off” participants that way.
As this discovery of the Challenger astronaut doppelgängers has gained more recognition over the years, it’s interesting that, in 2021, articles started appearing everywhere that detailed how a new book claimed the Challenger astronauts SURVIVED the shuttle explosion…but died after the shuttle crashed into the ocean. Odd that this detail was magically uncovered and widely-reported a full 35 years after the crash happened.
The widespread coverage of this detail was most likely a way to bury the articles that started appearing about the Challenger astronauts still being alive. If one does an online search for ‘Did the Challenger Astronauts Survive?’ all that’s returned are mainstream articles about this new book. There’s nothing from the sites that present information about whether they’re still alive today.
These articles all appeared on the same day in 2021.
Lastly, when talking about Challenger, a common question that comes up is: If the astronauts didn’t actually die in the shuttle explosion, why would they continue to use the same names? Why not stick them in witness protection and create new identities for them?
First, as documented in Pete Earley’s book WITSEC, the Witness Protection program has a long history of identity leaks and information hacks over the years. The program is far from a steel trap, and putting anyone into the program is a costly, complicated process.
The more people involved in a coverup, the more likely a leak could happen — and issuing new IDs and social security numbers requires a number of people to be involved.
Remember, too, that the Challenger explosion happened long before the internet, back when it was nearly impossible for the average citizen to research and find information on others.
Perhaps it was simply easier to have the astronauts disappear after the explosion for a year or two, resurface later in new cities, and begin new lives, as opposed to giving them new identities and getting many others involved. If this was indeed the case, it speaks volumes that the strange similarities between these people and the Challenger astronauts weren’t uncovered until 2013, almost 30 years after the explosion.