I was a Navy Reservist at the time and one of the guys in my squadron worked at the Cape. One day shortly before Challenger launched, he came upon the entire crew and he got their autographs - on the only paper he had - a $1 bill.
I wonder if he still has it, or if he donated it to a museum.
That particular detail is included in this story.
I can tell you that at that time, security at the docks on the north side of Port Canaveral (the military part) was both very tight and, yet, very low-key in appearance; it was a different sort of security we usually provided.
TYVM. I’ve long wondered if I imagined it.
Nope. I didn’t.
I remember a cartoon that showed a pair of cupped hands, coming down from the clouds, with the shuttle cradled in them.
Geez. 
I was just before school age when it happened; I’m not sure how I would have found out, but I remember riding with my mom by Dad’s workplace later that day and pointing out that the flag had been lowered for the astronauts. (The lobby of his workplace had a picture of Challenger hanging in the lobby; Astronaut William Thornton had taken one of the company’s products on board for STS-51-B.)
After the NPR piece about the guilt carried by one of the Morton Thiokol engineers who tried to prevent the launch, the anniversary also makes me think about who and what was involved in giving the go-ahead. By the time I got to college, the Challenger Disaster was being taught not just as an engineering disaster, but also as a communication issue.
While I agree that engineers should value communication skills, using the Challenger Disaster as an example of a communication failure rubs me the wrong way.
The Morton Thiokol managers, including the Vice President of Engineering, understood what their engineers were telling them. They just didn’t like the message. During the Congressional investigation, one of the managers tried to portray the decision room as “evenly divided” but admitted under closer questioning that the O ring experts who were present were unanimously against the launch. (But when you add in the votes of the non-experts, “evenly divided.”)
We can observe similar reactions now when scientific experts explain various aspects of global warming.
I remember the day of the Challenger disaster. I was a high school senior at the time, and didn’t make a point of watching the launch on TV because they were so routine by that time.
I was actually eating lunch with a friend when an excitable freshman told us about the disaster. We though he was either confused or kidding, and made fun of him. Turns out he was right. 
I didn’t get home until late (probably due to swim practice), and didn’t watch the news when I got home. For that reason I missed the endless loop of the video of the explosion that played around the clock for days after the accident. After a few days, though, they stopped showing it. I actually didn’t see the video of the breakup until many years later.
Many years later still, I visited the memorial at Arlington.
I have no doubt that many (even as high as 19/20) probably did not actually watch it live. But I do know that it was shown live in my school at the time. That’s probably how most people saw it live.
I actually watched the count-down and lift-off live on the tv, and then we ran outside to watch it in person. It was a clear day in Florida, making the launch visible from as far away as the west coat. The fire and smoke from the explosion was quite clear, though we didn’t know what actually happened until we went back inside. I still vividly remember my teacher saying, “See that? That’s the boosters separating!” She wasn’t wrong.
Richard Feynman’s report is fascinating reading.
And 1/27/67 52 years on.
Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom
Edward H. White II
Roger B. Chaffee
I was denied the opportunity to witness it live. The middle school that I was attending at the time had a television set up in the cafeteria, but lunch periods were staggered and my lunch group happened to still be in class when everything went down. Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing at the time for my impressionable brain to have missed out on the tragedy, but decades later, I do feel just a little cheated. Come to think of it, I was kind of late on the draw learning about Kurt Cobain’s suicide AND the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I don’t seem to have a whole lot of luck when it comes to the defining moments of my generation.
Good God. I knew NASA’s reputation had been damaged by their conduct before the Challenger was lost, but this paints an awful picture of their post-disaster conduct as well. Disorganized, dishonest, and far more concerned with protecting their image (or funding, I suppose) than dealing with the brutal truth about the risks of space flight and the horrifying consequences when things do go wrong. So much so that they really did load human remains into garbage cans to hide the truth from the press and from the local medical examiner who was legally required to perform autopsies.
Feynman summed up matters nicely at the end of his report:
It would seem they failed to do this before and after the Challenger was lost.
There’s a cartoon depicting this, but it’s about Columbia.
http://www.susannataliefreeman.com/ColumbiaEditorial/ClearedForLanding.gif
There’s a similar cartoon with Columbia held on the palm of a single large hand. You can see it in
this gallery of editorial cartoons about Colombia collected by an astronaut.
Thank you for posting that. Very disturbing but necessary to know.
Perhaps I misrember the illustration, and I do not have a link to what I do remember. Those two links do not conform to what I saw, but I could very well be in error. Thank you for those links though, those cartoons are moving.
A very sweet and moving video about Ronald McNair. I am sorry for the loss of your friend.:
