Here's the thing about space travel: it's scary.

Like, anything-can-go-wrong-at-any-minute scary (and we don't mean you can't get your barf bag open fast enough). There's a reason visiting space isn't as easy-peasy a day trip as going to your favorite mermaid theme park. Just getting the space shuttle off the ground takes some serious science, tons of money, and a lot of resources. It also involves incredible risks.

And, unfortunately, sometimes those risks can prove fatal.

When the space shuttle Challenger was flying mission number STS-51-L on January 28, 1986, an internal rocketship part called an "o-ring"—a sort of rubbery tire for keeping super-hot rocket gases from leaking into the wrong place—malfunctioned because it got too cold in the winter air.

As a result, those sneaky, super-hot gases got past the o-ring and burned a hole in the side of the space shuttle's external tank. This was bad. Once the external tank was compromised, the solid rocket boosters on either side of it started to lose their structural integrity too. This was worse.

Then, suddenly, the whole thing went haywire and fell apart mid-flight, a mere seventy-three seconds after takeoff, reminding the world of how dangerous and unpredictable trying to leave the planet could be. (Source)

By the way, the disaster, which resulted in the deaths of the entire crew, was broadcast live…on national television…to hundreds of schoolchildren.

Oof. Somebody got fired over that one.

The Challenger disaster was a major issue, and President Reagan bumped his annual televised State of the Union address, originally scheduled for that night, to talk about it. A challenge (hey-o!) to say the least.

Reagan needed to make everybody feel better about something awful and restore public confidence in the American space program. He enlisted the help of presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan to write a speech that tiptoed through a delicate situation that was as political as it was emotional.

The resulting presidential remarks honored the lives of those lost in the accident and reminded everyone that sometimes the quest for greatness is painful and tragic. Most strikingly, the speech made the astronauts into heroes of history.

Speaking with his gentle grandpappy voice, Reagan finished off the speech with a couple of phrases from John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s poem "High Flight," which created the now famous final line:

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." (45)

In doing so, he symbolically placed the Challenger Seven among the stars, and signed off with an equally stellar clincher.

An accomplishment that is—that's right, you knew it was coming—out of this world.

Explaining a national disaster to an entire nation via live broadcast isn't exactly a walk in the park. Reagan had to tread both carefully and assertively. He had to offer significant condolences to the families of the deceased and make the people at NASA feel better, too.

On top of that, he had to comfort every demographic of the country, especially when it came to the range of age groups he was addressing. (Remember all those school kids watching TV when a rocketship blew apart?)

Determined not to be swayed, Reagan sports-patted the butt of America into holding it together for a grander vision of the future (source).

Had he not been so convincing and determined to remain supportive of the important advancements made by NASA research scientists, the Space Shuttle Program might have shut down right then and there.

Though NASA eventually did retire the program in 2011, it wasn't before space shuttle projects gathered valuable information about our universe via the Hubble Telescope, the International Space Station, and special unmanned missions to research Venus, Jupiter, and the Sun.

Now we can look at pictures of alien landscapes and be terrified by black holes. (Thanks, NASA!)

The Space Shuttle Program also taught us a lot about what happens to the human body in space…which is a whole other conversation about how space travel is super, super scary.

Reagan didn't just secure the legacy of the Challenger Seven, he secured the legacy of space travel and research as we know it today.

Reagan, you get a gold star. Or maybe a couple of 'em. After all there are—and we got this info straight from NASA, btw—approximately 1000 billion stars in the universe.