Challenger Seven, 1986

Komnena

In Honor of Peter Tomich,USS Utah
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Today it is twenty-five years since the deaths of Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair,Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe.
 

tiny

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I was home sick from school that day and watching the NASA channel when it happened. We were having a porch poured that day so there were a number of people on the property. I remember walking outside and saying the Challenger had just exploded... it was surreal.
 

Cranky

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We watched it live in the classroom, thanks to NASA's efforts to get the televised shuttle launch in there. Good intentions gone horribly awry -- I've never forgotten that day, for obvious reasons.
 

Snowstorm

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I had just been reassigned from Germany to Oklahoma. While in Germany, the military was always on watchful for bombs, courtesy of the Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhoff gang. When I heard the shuttle had blown up, my first incredulous thought was someone had gotten to the shuttle.

A nightmare.
 

Jersey Chick

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I was in wood shop. Every kid who passed through 8th grade in my town made this tile-top table in wood shop (I don't know if they still make them or not, though) and mine was finished. I was talking to someone about god-only-knows-what when one of the other shop teachers came in and said, "The space shuttle just blew up."

We were all like, "Yeah. Sure it did." No one believed him at first. But the way he repeated it, made us believe it.

Next period we went to the library, where the rest of the student body was crammed in, and watched the news coverage.

I remember it as clearly as I remember 9/11 - which I remember as clearly as if it happened this morning.

I think, in one of my file boxes, I still have the Time magazine covering it.
 

benbradley

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I was late getting to work and I think heard about it on the radio, then turned on the TV to watch coverage for a while. I remember a reporter saying one of the astronauts predicted this would happen "He told me 'you know, one of these days this thing's gonna fail' - he had a PREMONITION it was going to blow up."

I kept thinking :rant: NO, idiot, the astronaut knew it was like any super-high-tech high-power thing, like a military fighter jet, you fly it enough times and statistically there's gonna come a time when it's gonna fail, the astronaut did NOT have a damn premonition or any crap like that.

I wrote a letter to Analog Magazine about it that got printed (warning that this might be used as an excuse to cancel the Shuttle program and stop manned space travel), I forget exactly in what issue, several months later. It wasn't exactly my best writing.

I also bought the Time Magazine that covered it, that issue also has the "alleged" obituary of L. Ron Hubbard - alleged because Scientology always had possession of the body and his death was never independently verified by a coroner.
 

Gugland

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I was in my senior year in HS. We had this teacher, Mr. Wilson, who tried very hard to be the 'first teacher in space'. He trained constantly, and it was all he talked about for the year or so beforehand. Apparently he made it through several rungs of the selection process, but (obviously) wasn't ultimately selected.

That period I was working in the Attendance Office (remember those upper-classmen who would pop into your classroom and collect the attendance sheets? That was me). I was making my rounds and had just reached the library where Mr. Wilson (who was apparently on his "off period" and the old librarian ladies were watching it on TV.

I was still bent about missing the landing of the first shuttle mission because of the Jehova's Witnesses who came to the door right as it was happening (seriously), so I decided to stay and watch.

Mr. Wilson was sipping his coffee and bragging about how that "coulda been me." Then it blew up.

It was interesting to watch his reaction. I never liked the guy (he was a jerk if you weren't full of school spirit an' all that shit), but I honestly felt bad for him, even though it was a stroke of good luck that he hadn't been selected for the mission.

I think the contrast of our reactions - mine was something like "damn, sucks to be them" whereas he nearly fainted and needed to be helped into a chair - that made me interested in other people's perspectives and emotions, and probably sparked my interest in writing.
 

JerseyGirl1962

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I remember that day very well.

I was at work, while hubby was at home. He called me soon after he turned on the TV. I answered, wondering what the heck he could possibly be calling me about.

Horrified isn't a good enough word to describe how I felt.

And now when I look at the pics from that disaster and see Christa's mother looking up and all...it's just too much. To see any disaster like that - and esp. if someone you love is a part of it - I just don't know how you can function.

Although I did see the 2nd plane crash into the Trade Center - on TV - on September 11. I was at home recuperating from an operation, due to go back to work in a couple of days.

It was surreal - as that day was in 1986.

Nancy
 

Lyra Jean

Two years old now.
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I was 7 years old. I don't remember it at all. I think we just moved to Bradenton. In college I do remember reading an essay about it. The essay had something to do with how we remember things.

After the Challenger exploded he had his students write an essay about it. He had them describe what they saw, how they felt, where they were at. He kept the essays. About ten years later he found his students and had them write another essay about the Challenger explosion describing what they saw, how they felt and where they were. He found that the two essays weren't similar at all and when he showed his students the first essay he wrote they claimed the essays were faked or forged. So, that's what I remember.
 

whacko

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I remember the week before, when my neice showed me a photocopy of a letter her school had received from Christa McAuliffe.

God bless them.
 

benbradley

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I was in my senior year in HS. We had this teacher, Mr. Wilson, who tried very hard to be the 'first teacher in space'. He trained constantly, and it was all he talked about for the year or so beforehand. Apparently he made it through several rungs of the selection process, but (obviously) wasn't ultimately selected. ...
This brings back even more memories.

In recent years NPR had a story about the "backup teacher" for Christa, in case she had a cold or something and wouldn't be allowed on the flight. THAT woman had (and still has, no doubt) determination. The "teacher in space" program, and really the idea of any non-astronaut/not-payload-specialist or "civilian" going into space (*), was of course canceled after the Challenger explosion. The backup teacher did what she had to do. She quit teaching and signed up for astronaut training, and after several years became a fully trained astronaut, and in 2007 she went on a Shuttle mission AS AN ASTRONAUT.

Here's NPR audio, don't think it was the story I recall, but it's an interview with her and what it was like in space:
Barbara Morgan, Teacher and Astronaut
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15521226

Challenger astronaut Ronald E. McNair was an African-American and a graduate of Georgia Tech (where my father went for two years). Not sure if he actually grew up in the Atlanta area (resisting going to NASA or Wikipedia for his bio, this is the stuff I remember), but after his death an Atlanta school was named after him.


* There's the story of Miles O'Brien, the world's most knowledgeable science and space reporter (among other qualifications he has a pilot's license), then employed by CNN, which was in secret negotiations with NASA to have Miles be the first reporter to go into space. This was going on when Columbia was destroyed in re-entry, and of course that idea was nixed too.

There's also the story of John Glenn in space, surely the person with the longest period between space flights, who flew on the Shuttle while a Senator. He was "technically" an astronaut returning to space (after his previous flight, in the MERCURY program!), so it wasn't like NASA was being political by giving a politician a ride of the Shuttle (wink, wink).
 

Bubastes

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I was in HS history class. We were watching a film, and someone in the back apparently was listening to his Walkman instead of paying attention to the film. He suddenly said, "The space shuttle blew up." We all thought he was joking at first, but we soon learned that he wasn't.

A few years later, when I was in engineering school, there was a speaker that used Challenger as an example of what can happen when management and politics override concerns raised by engineering (IIRC, engineering had warned about the potential failure of the O-ring seals in colder weather). Unfortunately, I don't think we've learned much on that front since then.
 
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Hip-Hop-a-potamus

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I've always felt bad that I missed a lot of what was going on at the time.

I was in college, and I was in class when it happened. And for awhile after it, I guess, since all I saw were the replays. And those in the TV room with a couple of other dorm folks sitting around. And I wasn't glued to the TV like everyone else was for hours/days afterward.

I had never been a big space fan or anything, and just didn't get how important it was, other than the deaths of some high-profile people. It's only been in the last ten years or so that I've heard some of the stories about some of the astronauts, and such.

They had a great story on the news this morning about Ron McNair. He was a kid in a town outside Charleston, SC during segregation, and even then, they said he was a genius (he ended up going to MIT). He always went to the library and read books on science, physics, history, etc. And one day, he went to the library and wanted to check out books (which wasn't allowed by blacks). He raised a holy stink, so the librarians called his parents, the police, etc. And he was finally allowed to take his books home. They have now renamed that library in his honor, and his son (who was only about 3 when he died) speaks about his father quite often in front of groups.

This is the kind of stuff I need to know about.

In a different vein, my husband and I were getting ready to go out on the February morning the Columbia exploded. We heard a strange sonic boom sort of noise and wondered what it was. When we got in the car and headed out shopping, we turned on NPR and they said the Columbia had just exploded. We were in Rowlett (east of Dallas), near the long swath from East Texas to near Fort Worth where it broke up, so we knew that's what it was. That one seems much more real to me, I guess. For obvious reasons.
 

BeatrixKiddo

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We were home from school that day. I was in the 6th grade. My mom let us stay home to watch the launch. So strange. It feels like yesterday sometimes.