Big Bird could have been on the Challenger space shuttle when it exploded on January 28, 1986.
Caroll Spinney has played the beloved Sesame Street character since the beginning, and he told the story of his brush with spaceflight in “I Am Big Bird,” a documentary about his life as the character, released in 2015.
“I once got a letter from NASA, asking if I would be willing to join a mission to orbit the Earth as Big Bird, to encourage kids to get interested in space,” Spinney said in an essay in The Guardian in 2015. “There wasnt enough room for the puppet in the end, and I was replaced by a teacher.” Advertisement
Big Birds costume is more than eight feet tall, and it was simply too big to fit on the Challenger shuttle. Tragically, high school teacher and trained payload specialist Christa McAuliffe took his place, and died along with the six other crew members aboard the shuttle that day.
NBC News reported in 2014 that NASA confirmed sending Sesame Street characters into space was a consideration, but never more than that.
“In 1984, NASA created the Space Flight Participant Program to select teachers, journalists, artists, and other people who could bring their unique perspective to the human spaceflight experience as a passenger on the space shuttle,” NASA said in the statement. “A review of past documentation shows there were initial conversations with Sesame Street regarding their potential participation on a Challenger flight, but that plan was never approved.”
Though Spinney didnt go into space as Big Bird, he still felt a special connection to the Challenger the day it exploded. Advertisement
“We were taping another episode of Sesame Street at the time it went up and they said, The ship is about to take off so were going to punch the broadcast of the takeoff onto the monitors on the set,” Spinney told CBC News in 2014. “So we stopped working and watched the monitors, and when we saw it blow up, it was like my scalp crawled.”
NASA did consider launching Big Bird, the beloved character from Sesame Street, and the actor who played Caroll Spinney into space aboard the Challenger space shuttle, despite how absurd the idea sounded. Rather, they launched high school teacher Christa McAuliffe as the NASA Teacher in Space Project’s first civilian astronaut. Unfortunately, she and her crew did not survive that fateful day on January 28, 1986.
In light of this, what consequences might arise if Big Bird (Caroll Spinney), rather than McAuliffe, had been assigned by NASA as the seventh crew member of the Challenger, and the catastrophe transpired in the manner that it did in our timeline?
“We were taping another episode of Sesame Street at the time it went up and they said, The ship is about to take off so were going to punch the broadcast of the takeoff onto the monitors on the set,” Spinney told CBC News in 2014. “So we stopped working and watched the monitors, and when we saw it blow up, it was like my scalp crawled.”
NBC News reported in 2014 that NASA confirmed sending Sesame Street characters into space was a consideration, but never more than that.
“I once got a letter from NASA, asking if I would be willing to join a mission to orbit the Earth as Big Bird, to encourage kids to get interested in space,” Spinney said in an essay in The Guardian in 2015. “There wasnt enough room for the puppet in the end, and I was replaced by a teacher.” Advertisement
The Big Birds costume was too large to fit on the Challenger shuttle because it is over eight feet tall. Sadly, Christa McAuliffe, a qualified payload specialist and high school teacher, took his place and perished on that day aboard the shuttle along with the other six crew members.
Even though Spinney did not travel into space as Big Bird, on the day of the Challenger’s explosion, he still felt a unique bond with it. Advertisement.
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