My Physics teacher was one of the teacher finalists; he didn’t make it. But our whole school was psyched and the day of the launch they had every TV in the school turned to the launch.
I would never have believed 1400 students could get so quiet so fast.
While at college in the student lounge. Walked in and it was really really quiet with everyone fixated on the TV.
And possibly one very relieved physics teacher.
For me, the launch was in the middle of the night, because I was living in Australia. I was just starting my final year of high school. It was a boarding school, and i heard about the explosion in the showers at about 7.00 a.m. I was having a shower, and a friend of mine, who was a big air and space buff (and who became a pilot in the Australian Air Force) came up and told me about it.
I was at work, my first job after graduating from electronics school. It was quarter to twelve and I was in the drafting room. My supervisor’s radio was on. I was looking out the window and thinking about lunch when the bland corporate music was interrupted by an announcement that something abnormal had happened. A little later the noon news came on, and it didn’t go off for a long time.
Ft. Sam Houston, San Antonio TX, Armed Forces Health Sciences Academy, getting my MOS training. On the late morning break between classes and headed across the road into our quarters to retrieve materials for the mid-day training, people had their radios turned on. As I first listened, from the radio commenters chatter about recovery vessels, range, SRBs and abort modes I picked up almost at once that something had gone abnormal about that launch, asked and was advised of what was up. Did not get to see actual footage until later.
Being military, schedule of classes and training went on unchanged, with some conversation about it during class changes and breaks, among ourselves and with the training cadre.
Not even close to being the first civilian in space. That was Valentina Tereshkova. The first American civilian in space was Neil Armstrong, though to be fair as a former combat veteran Naval aviator and NACA/NASA test pilot for the fastest plane ever built, he was a civilian in only the most technical sense. Harrison Schmitt also walked the moon and he had never served in the US armed forces either.
Science camp. The only TV was in the common assembly hall. We found out about it a few hours after it happened. Activities for the afternoon were cancelled and we all watched some of the coverage after the fact for a couple of hours before returning to cabins for bed check and lights-out.
I see your point but in view of the fact that in Mission Control the wording was that “the Flight Dynamics Officer has a report that the vehicle has exploded… Flight Director confirms that” I think we can be forgiven for using the word explode. While technically you may be correct, when most of us see something blow up into smithereens we’re going to use the term explode.
I was at work, feeling down.
My mother had died the previous summer, and Jan 28 was her birthday.