10 Christa McAuliffe
“I really don’t want to say goodbye to any of you people” (Before boarding the Challenger)
Christa is probably the most tragic figure on this list, and one who will always be in many of our older readers’ hearts.
When she was still a child she had been fascinated by the space program, but when she grew older she instead opted to become a teacher. In 1984, however, NASA announced that it was seeking a teacher to fly on the Space Shuttle Challenger. Christa applied, got the job, and took a leave of absence from teaching to train for the fulfillment of her childhood dream.
She and seven other astronauts on board were killed when the Challenger exploded only seventy-eight seconds after taking off from Cape Canaveral, in what remains to this day one of the most tragic accidents in NASA’s history.