My dad was stationed at RAF Upper Heyford in England… and one of my teachers, Mr. Klaes, was in the competition at some point. (Don’t know if he got very far but he was a nutty science teacher who liked burning things…) I was a huge space nut - we lived in Florida in 1981 and my dad and I got up to see the vapor trail from Columbia’s first flight on April 12 that year. We were even pumped about seeing the lesson from space. Scholastic Magazine had a series about who Christa McAuliffe was, and I think that’s when I first thought about being a teacher.
My memory is really fuzzy but I think “Jackanory” was on the tube, and I think John Craven came on and announced that Challenger exploded. I’m tearing up thinking about it right now. The next day Mr. Klaes blew up a balloon with oxygen and lit it to show us how the explosion happened. We were all quiet that day. Living on an Air Force base, most of us had a connection to flying and I think it hit us particularly hard.
My secretary was listening to the launch on the radio in her office. Suddenly, she came into my office screaming that the Shuttle had exploded. I remember doing a quick mental calculation based on the then reported altitude of ~70,000 feet and thinking that, here I am in Texas and I know about it, and they haven’t even hit the water yet.
Nothing to be done.
Having long been a supporter of the space expolration effort, I was majorly bummed out.
At lunchtime, I went across the street to a department store, Foley’s, and stood in silence with ~150 other people as we watched, on several different screens, successive reruns of the explosion footage.
That evening I sent a telegram to President Reagan expressing both my condolences and my urging that we continue to support a space exploration program.
I was a senior in high school. I was coming out of the school library, into the cafeteria. I usually spent my time during lunch in the library - it was quieter than the cafeteria, and the company was better. Anyways, one of the history teachers, Mr. Trocchio, who knew I was a space booster, told me that the shuttle had just blown up.
I tried to believe it was a joke for a moment. Then started bitching about lauching out of the designed temperature envelope. I didn’t know exactly what had happened, but I was sure that had to be a factor. I wish I’d been wrong. I don’t know if it was then, or later, that I began to have worries, or nightmares, about the astronauts drowning. I do believe I worried about that even before the autopsy results came out. (But Jman’s point is well taken. I am reasonably sure of all I’m reporting here, but after 20 years, I can’t promise that things haven’t been rewritten in light of later developments.)
I certainly wish that the people who decided to launch that morning had known as much about design tolerances as a intelligent high schooler might - and postponed the launch, even if it would have been a PR mess.
One more comment - I thought then, and still think, that the goal for the space program shouldn’t be to have all the launches televised - rather that a working space program should have a public acceptance that such things happen, and that successes are as newsworthy as a successful airplane flight. I remember thinking it was a good sign that school hadn’t stopped for us to see the launch, because everyone expected it to be routine. I am inclined to think that’s still valid thinking, but I wish I had been watching the launch live. It wouldn’t have changed a d****d thing, of course, but I would feel better to know I hadn’t been so blase about their lives.
I do know I like the monument for the Challenger Seven in Arlington. (Even if not all of them are buried there. I think just three of them are.)
Twenty years ago - I was an engineering student. I was an older student, married - my daughter would have been about six months old. A bunch of us “commuting” students hung out in the engineering building during the day, studying or doing homework in the large conference room between classes.
My dad was a Civil Engineering professor at the same University. He had done his graduate work at NASA. We stayed in Huntsville for 3 consecutive summers when he was working for the Apollo space program. I remember the other engineers and scientists he hung out with; smart, young guys who were part of one of the most exciting programs in America - I envied and admired them.
Anyway, that morning when the Challenger disaster occured, a few of us students were in the CE department doing homework. I don’t remember how the news came, but I remember going to the department head’s office to see the TV. We were all stunned. I’m not sure what my Dad made of it; he kept his same poker face but I know it was devastating to him to think of not only the astronauts but all the design teams who worked on the shuttle … I think, as designers, we sometimes ignore that catastrophic failure can happen… and there is no way to describe how it feels when it does, especially if you have been part of the program.
I was at work on my way home for lunch. My boss made some comment that the shuttle blew up and a lot of schoolkids were going to wish it had been their teacher. I thought he was making a really bad joke. Then I got home and turned on the TV and was shocked.
I was in my senior year in college. (Yeah, I’m old.) I went to the lab where I was doing a research rotation and walked into the middle of a conversation about the future of the space program, which was an unusual subject for a molecular biology lab. I asked what was going on and was told, “The space shuttle blew up.” I don’t think it really sank in until I went home and saw the video on TV, though. I also remember Reagan’s speech that night, one of the few times my family ever watched a presidential address (especially by a Republican president) live.
And speaking of cartoons, Tony Auth of the Philadelphia Inquirer did a good one: the space shuttle alone, against a backdrop of stars, with the caption, “The sea is so great and my boat is so small.”
I was on the phone with my favorite Producer/Client, getting a call time for the gig the next day. She stopped suddenly and made an awful sound, and said, " I have to go, the shuttle just blew up". HUH???
I turned on the t.v., and called Dad. He’d been a science writer through the second half of Mercury, all of Gemini and almost all of Apollo. The entire space program was integral to my childhood. ( I can’t watch a launch videotape without tearing up. New or old, it gets me every time ).
39 years ago? I was 4 1/2. Dad was in Houston, covering the Apollo 1 test. I never asked him about it specifically. He lived through it with a group of people dedicated to that program, it was and is their life, their family and their career. I have such respect for the NASA family. Politics aside, those folks are hardcore and care about the dream.
I was sitting in the Power Shop on board CV61 the USS Ranger. Myself and several friends and our Chief and 1st class were watching the launch.
One of the few times the Crew came close to a halt. We watched her live Blow up.
If I may paraphrase the late great sportswriter of the Washington Post Shirley Povich. “That day I saw strong men cry”.
So many were heart broken. Ranging in age from 18 to 50. We were all broken up.
I was in the 7th Grade. Specifically, I was in Chorus class at the time. The room had a big picture window, and we could see the launches when it was clear (which it was that morning). We were preparing for a competition, and our director (also an ordained minister) said “Look, the shuttle with the teacher has taken off, lets all say a quick prayer for a safe journey.” I turned around and looked out the window and I immediately knew something was wrong. I didn’t say anything because people already thought I was a “nerd”. Shortly after, the bell rang and I went to my locker.
My Mom volunteered at the school, and I remember seeing her taking a TV to the Principal’s office. I thought “that’s weird”, but I kept going. When I got to my locker, someone said “The Shuttle blew up!”; I responded with “Yeah, right!” (I thought a good defense against my perceived nerdiness was to deny what I already suspected was true).
After I went to my locker, I reported to my library assistant job. Our Media Specialist’s son had applied to be the Teacher in Space. I walked into the Media Center to find every TV we had in the library on and tuned to different stations. I plopped myself down in front of the TV that had Peter Jennings (this was one of the first things I thought of when I heard of his passing) and stayed there basically the rest of the day. I think my Mom signed me out, but I’m not sure.
The next day, our Chorus teacher announced that instead of practicing for our competition we should use the time for quiet contemplation. He said if we wanted to talk, he would be in his office. We spent the rest of the period filing music.
I think I wrote a poem in English class. All I remember about it was it was really bad and I think I used the word “griddle”.
I was a senior in high school, sitting in accounting class. The principal came over the intercom and said that the space shuttle had blown up. I was so much expecting to just hear that it had launched that it took me a couple of minutes for it to sink in. Ac tually, I was thinking snarkily, “Big whoop, the shuttle took off, happens all the time. You interrupted us to tell us that…wait, what???”
My brother had been allowed out of whatever jr. high class he was in to sit in with the science class that was going on during the launch, and was going to be watching it. He loved everything to do with space exploration, had attended Space Camps, etc. He was devastated.
I was a Freshman in college, and had just returned from morning classes to find that coverage, such as it was, was the only thing anyone had on their TVs. I recall that most of the channels were rerunning the footage to a mind-numbgin degree. I recall we hardly heard from NBC News at all until a press conference, where they were the only ones who had a question about the solid rocket boosters.
Two years later, I realized that the news had stopped covering space launches altogether, for fear of having to give up that much airtime ever again.
NASA has had only three fatal accidents - Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia - and the anniversaries of those three accidents all happen to fall within a single week. I’m sure some astrologers and other superstitious types have had a field day with that coincidence.
I was in the 8th grade, heading down to the cafeteria (converted bomb shelter) under the school, when I noticed that one of the line monitors, Ms. Stiles, the 8th grade science teacher, was in tears. I couldn’t imagine why (I had actually forgotten about the launch that day). As I sat down, one of the guys at the table informed me that the shuttle had blown up. My initial reaction was that it must have been a joke.
I have no clear recollection of the rest of classes that day. The next thing I remember is sitting a foot away from the television at home, numbly watching the replays.
I was in second grade and didn’t find out about anything until my mom picked me up from school. There was no talk about it whatsoever in my school that day.