In-Text References

Literary and Philosophical References

John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s poem, "High Flight" (45)

Historical and Political References

First Lady of the United States of America, Nancy Reagan (3)
Apollo I disaster victims: Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger Chaffee (6)
Challenger Seven: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe (8-9)
The surviving families of the Challenger Seven (11)
The schoolchildren of America (23)
Employees of NASA (37)
Sir Francis Drake (41)

Biblical References

God (45)

References to This Text

Historical and Political References

Reagan's "Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Address" is pretty serious, so it doesn't get a lot of play on the pop-culture circuit. It's kind of tricky to make a humorous aside about a national tragedy. Check out a few of these articles from the 25th and 30th anniversaries reminiscing about the star quality of his delivery:

Peter Grier, "Challenger explosion: How President Reagan responded" (Source)
Justin Wm. Moyer, "Exactly the right words, exactly the right way: Reagan's amazing Challenger disaster speech" (Source)
Joshua Barajas, "President Reagan's speech to a nation reeling after Challenger disaster" (Source)