I was a junior in college, just shy of 21 years old. I learned about the explosion just after leaving my morning class, when I ran into a friend who had spent the morning watching the coverage on TV. I had to go to my work-study job at that point, but spent the next few hours (in the office) listening to radio coverage of the story.
It was a pretty big deal to me, because I’d always been a nerd about space exploration (even at age 4, Apollo 11 was a huge fascination to me). I’d avidly followed the Apollo missions as a little kid, and then the development of the Shuttle program. This was the first time in my lifetime that we’d lost any astronauts on a mission, and I very much wanted to understand what had gone wrong.
I was at work at the audio-video place I worked at, and I had the launch on a 10’ projection screen. One of the idiot salesmen joked about it, and I regret not punching his lights out.
I was seven when it happened, so I wasn’t an adult. But growing up I had a space shuttle toy and the Space Lego sets, and space adventure really seemed to permeate a sizeable chunk of boys’ entertainment–such was the impact of the Space Age up until the mid’80s.
My sense is that the romance of space was pretty much killed off in public consciousness with Challenger. The death of a civilian–a teacher, no less–really put an exclamation mark at the end, too. Halley’s Comet was a bit of a sad joke in its wake.
The disaster itself may not have been as big as, say, 9/11, but IMHO its ramifications are still being felt almost 30 years later. Once space was a playground for the imagination; for the last few decades, however, dreams of space travel have become dated and forgotten.
I was 13 or 14 when Challenger broke up, and it’s something I’ll never forget. I wasn’t watching it live- I was in Mr. Doggett’s computer class, but I do remember him telling us that it had broken up, and I remember watching the news footage a while later with the rest of the 7th grade. I’ve always been a huge NASA / space wonk- going to the JSC as a kid was about my favorite weekend activity (we lived in Houston, and drove by on the way to my grandparents’ houses), and I still have a pile of 1970s-1980s era NASA prints that you could get if you filled out a card when on your visit.
I was 31 when Columbia broke up, and that’s something I’ll never forget either. Maybe it’s because I live in Dallas- it was a lot more personal when I woke up out of a dead sleep at roughly the time it broke up, and my roommate came banging on the door not 2 minutes later saying that something had gone wrong with the space shuttle he thought. Apparently he’d been awake and outside waiting to see Columbia zip by during re-entry- you can see it if you’re in the right place at the right time.
Anyway, going outside and seeing the glowing pieces in the sky is an indelible memory, and even more surreal was going back in and turning on the news to… nothing. We’d beat the news media to it. We basically went in and out for the next 10 minutes or so- the debris was falling relatively slowly from our perspective, and the news took a bit to get it figured out.
In many ways for me, the Columbia disaster was more personal than 9/11. I actually witnessed the aftermath of Columbia, while 9/11 was something a lot more abstract to me even though I watched the news coverage from about 3-4 minutes after the first plane hit. Challenger was much the same- I didn’t personally witness it.
I was 25. I distinctly remember it–I worked night shift & was watching my 3 year old & six month old that day. I had the TV on when it happened live on the air.
First time I remember the local newspaper putting out a special “Extra” edition that afternoon.
I was 22, and remember it clearly. I was at my college’s University Union when I heard about it–I didn’t usually watch TV or listen to the radio when getting ready for classes, so I didn’t hear until I got up to campus. It was quite a shock. Not 9/11 level, for sure, but definitely a shock.
That was the day that NASA lost their innocence, we did not know it at the time watching the images, but the post mortem that followed, and that the bureaucrats overrode the flight people. NASA was supposed to be special, but I guess folks were more concerned with pensions, than safety.
Yes, to me, the Challenger is right up there with the first 3 Mercury flights, Apollo 11, the JFK assassination, The Beatles debut on Ed Sullivan,Watergate, and some other momentous events, some being personal and nothing that would interest anyone here.
I remember it as a big deal, not so much to myself but just that it was a very big event at the time. People were shocked and for a while everything was about the challenger disaster. Televisions on stands were rolled into foyers and hallways showing the news. Basically nothing got done that day. Next to 911 it is the biggest event I remember; not in significance to me but rather as far as how it was received at the time. It was big big news.
I do not remember how I found out, I was at university and I think I was walking down the hall and everyone was talking about it - not sure. My girlfriend at the time was in class and a memorable and somewhat snotty department administrator walked in to her lecture and said ‘In case any of you care the space shuttle just exploded’ and walked out (off to the next lecture hall I presume).
As others have said, aside from the loss of crew, it was one of the final nails in the coffin for the space program. As it has been said before, the dreams of Asimov, Hienlien and more crashed with the shuttle. We, as a species, need to get into space. Its a narrow window, as if we don’t global pressures will soon shut that window - shrinking resources (that could have been supplimented by space technology, energy, etc) will not allow a space program.
I was living in Berlin and it was of course breaking news.
It was very sad news, but somehow I seem to have relegated that news to the same part of my brain that remembers all crashes of flights - the Swiss Air flight that crashed shortly after take off from NYC, the Concord crash in Paris, Lockerbie…maybe it is just because I have a fear of flying that I have lumped all of those into one category.