Although the dedication of remembrance to those people who passed away and the incredible achievements they reached was one of the essential purposes of a memorial speech, the more significant part of it is to tell other people what they should do and what they should believe. On January 28th 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and broke apart on takeoff, all 7 of the astronauts lost their lives in this accident. On the same day, Reagan changed his original plan from reporting on the state of the Union to this memorial speech. Surprisingly, he didn’t emphasize anything from a perspective of technological failure or reflecting on this event to ensure that the same problems won’t happen again in the future, instead, the main focus of this speech is to mourn the 7 astronauts and to explain this incident as a brave endeavor, and use it to promote the sense of this bravery to the whole population. Specifically, he mentioned, “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.” This sentence seems to be just encouragement for the astronauts, but a deeper interpretation would be a promotion of this spirit to explore new things and to not be afraid of the consequences of failure. From a broader perspective, this accident may significantly slow future scientific progress because the case of danger illustrated by this accident makes it easier for people to give up out of fear when confronting potential danger. In this case, this speech successfully promoted the right thought to prevent this fear of death, which encouraged people to continue exploring like this bravely without fear of failure or death in the future.
Above that, Reagan demonstrates their values during this accident as well by shaping their characteristics when confronting these events. In his speech, he said “that special grace, that special spirit that says, ‘Give me a challenge, and I’ll meet it with joy’”. The second half of this sentence emphasized their attitude while facing the danger. He argues that the 7 astronauts faced danger with joy instead of fear or unawareness. This argument basically illustrates the courageous character the astronauts had, and this allows people to have a different perspective when coming to view this event. In addition, it helped explain that death is not completely a bad outcome as they had expected. People might think of this accident as a helpless scene before, but this speech helped them to move beyond the grief and made them aware of their brave spirit. In conclusion, Reagan’s speech, as well as all memorial speeches, did not solely focus on death, but emphasized these deaths to reflect deeper understandings and to show other people how to inherit their legacy and perform them in the future.