As I get older it takes alot more to shock me. 9/11 certainly did it.(i was 28). But Columbia breaking up in 2003 didn’t. I remember it happening and I was interested in the news about what went wrong but the particulars of that day aren’t frozen in memory.
When Challenger happened, I was 13. I remember exactly where I was when I heard (leaving gym class in 7th grade) I remember not much useful schoolwork getting done because everyone was discussing it and I remember getting off the bus and all my friends going to my house because we had CNN. Although the event is burned in my memory, it doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal compared to a Presidential assassination, or the Cuban Missile crisis or 9/11. Riding a controlled explosion into orbit is gonna go wrong eventually. Maybe it’s such a memorable thing to people my age because it was the first national shared event we remember.
A 30 year old in 1986 would have had at least vague personal memories of the Cuban Missile crisis, JFK assassination, definite memories of RFK and MLK, Watergate etc. If you’re a poster who meets that description, was the day Challenger exploded seared in your mind as an unforgettable memory or just another tragic thing you sorta remember in the same way I remember Columbia as an adult?
Yes it was. I was 23. I think it felt bad, precisely because I was quite familiar with things like the four wars, the Cuban Crisis, the Kennedy’s and Watergate. The US had setbacks in the past that didn’t hit people that much. Some, like Vietnam, are a source of embarrassment to this day. Why, I still can’t understand.
But the first shuttle accident hit people badly. People viewed the shuttle as man’s greatest tangible work at the time they felt a certain loss for the accident. Perhaps they felt sorry for themselves as much as they did for the crew, and Christa.
I was sad about it because of being interested in and supportive of space exploration etc but I wasn’t shocked. I think I’d probably read “The Right Stuff” and other material about the US and USSR’s respective space programs and had absorbed the fact it was all immensely risky.
The death of a civilian woman school teacher had a LOT to do with it. NASA really fucked up allowing a civilian onto the shuttle to prove how safe it was.
When it all came out about the O-ring being predicted to fail and that they should have called off the launch that day, it was an outrage.
The challenger should never be forgotten.
However, I wasn’t even born then, so please forgive me posting in your thread.
I was 40 when the Challenger exploded. Certainly a horrible event, but not at all at the level of the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, plus of course 9-11. It wasn’t that much of a personal loss for me; my only thought was how it was going to adversely affect NASA.
I remember it because (back in the day before 24 hour news), the BBC broke into their normal programming and had a special program whereupon they showed the explosion again and again and again and again…until it was burned into the brain. The lead presenter was David Dimbleby (or at least one of the Dimbleby’s) and a selection of guests talking about “should manned space flight be abandoned” or some such knee-jerk twaddle.
After the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, the Vietnam war and the protests against it, Watergate, and the Iranian hostage crisis, it was certainly a tragedy, but a comparatively minor one.
It was a disaster on the scale of when Grissom, White, and Chaffee died in a fire on the launching pad in Apollo 1. They were both disasters, but neither one shook my world.
My mother worked for NASA- her department procured parts for the Shuttle. I was always a big NASA geek, growing up, and followed every launch… so, yes, it was a huge event in my family.
I remember it as a pretty important event. Rockets do tend to go boom every now and then, but it’s still a pretty big deal when they do. You have to keep in mind that the only astronauts we had lost prior to that were the three men killed in the Apollo 1 fire (not counting training jets and such).
The “big news” events that really stuck with me over the years (up through 9/11) were:
1st moon landing
Beatles break-up
Watergate / Nixon resigning
end of Vietnam war
Gerald Ford assassination attempt
USA Bicentennial Celebration
Jimmy Carter’s killer rabbit (and Billy Carter whizzing in public)
Elvis’s death
3 Mile Island
Iran hostage crisis
Mount St. Helen
Assassination attempts on Pope and Reagan
Soviet downing of KAL007
Bhopal disaster
Walter Mondale on a tank (which still makes me giggle)
Challenger disaster
Berlin Wall
Chernobyl
Branch Davidians / Waco disaster
9/11
Not sure I got all those in order, and I probably forgot a couple, but there you go.
I suppose I was an adult but was a senior in high school.
I was hanging out in the caf. when a classmate came running in and reported the news. I remember no one believing him at first then the whole school scrambling to get to TVs to see what had happened.
A good point to mention is that you rushed to see CNN, as did most because they were the only network to feature live television coverage of the launch and subsequent disaster. This was a defining moment for CNN as it was the first major event covered by an a 24 hours news-only network and set the precedence for their style of coverage for all future events.
The one space shuttle event that is burned into my memory is positive, not the Challenger disaster.
When the first shuttle flew, and returned to earth as a glider, with no engine to guide it, I was IMPRESSED. It seems like a whole new age was dawning–regular flights into space, factories making exciting new things (The popular press was full of stories about how in zero gravity and a perfect vacuum it would be great for growing crystals, making super-efficient electronics, growing pure cultures for medicines, etc, etc, etc…)
I was 25 yrs old and remember following the first shuttle trip in the news with excitement… There were all kinds of questions: would those heat-resisistant ceramic tiles hold up? would the vehicle enter the atmosphere at the right angle to glide to a landing,with no engine to control it.?
I remember thinking: if this crashes, it will be the end of all the dreams. And if it succeeds, it will be earthshaking, with revolutionary and wonderful things in our future.
So , to compare all of my emotions then with the challenger disaster :no, I don’t remember it as a major unforgettable event. It was one setback in a complex technology.
Sad, but not earthshaking.
I still have a full 2-hour VHS tape (remember those?) of the NASA press conference, and news reports and follow-ups for the days following. Two solid hours of shuttle disaster.
