I was in 9th grade. I don’t believe I had even been aware that there was a launch that day; somehow the “Teacher in Space” bit hadn’t filtered down to us (or perhaps just me).
As my third-period geometry class ended and we were leaving the room, another teacher walked in and said something to our math teacher. I didn’t make out what she told him, and his look of disappointment/sadness/something in response didn’t reveal much on its own. For all I could guess, she’d just told him that a problem student they both had was truant again, or a host of other things. I didn’t think much of it and went on to my next class.
Once I got there we found out fairly quickly - somehow. I don’t recall, to be honest. Anyway, I put two and two together and concluded what my geometry teacher had been told some five minutes before. And then … that was it. I honestly don’t remember if anything else out of the ordinary happened that day. My best guess is that things went on basically as normal.
I was not strongly affected by the disaster. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of this; it’s simply the way it was.
I was at work and we were playing hearts on lunch break. By that time, shuttle launches were just yawn so only a few folks went out to the roof to watch. (on a clear day, you can see the exhaust trail from Jax) Someone told us it had blown up, and we all went out and looked at the split exhaust trails. One of our supervisors had a tiny little TV and we gathered around watching it over and over.
I was a drilling reservist at the time, and one of my squadron mates worked at the Cape. Just a few days before the launch, he happened to be in a meeting with the entire crew. On a whim, he pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket and got them all to sign it…
Having spent part of the 1970s living in Houston while my father worked for NASA, I was pretty obsessed with space missions. I had even been round the Shuttle mockup when I visited Johnson Space Center, and sat in the cockpit. I had been given some Shuttle food that I kept like a family eirloom. So obsessed that, aged 12, when I was asked how I would like in my new bedroom decorated, I chose Shuttle wallpaper.
On January 28th, 1986, I was 18, living back in England, and watching TV. There was a newsflash. I watched in horror as events unfolded. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.
Then I slowly went up to my room, and tore all the wallpaper down from the walls.
I was a senior in college, and walked into the campus center between classes just moments after it happened. The TV was on, and people were gathering around it, so i stopped to see what was going on. My first thought was how weird it was for it to happen 19 years and 1 day after the Apollo 1 accident (even though I’m too young to remember the Apollo 1 fire, I was a major space nut when I was a small child – I watched the moon landing when I was five, and had tons of books on space and rocket models, etc. – plus 1/27 is my birthday, so the date of the Apollo 1 fire obviously stuck with me when I read about it later).
I was 12 and in 7th grade. Our teachers had an inservice day that day, so my brothers and I were all at home. None of us had actually watched the shuttle launch, but my grandmother called at some point during the morning and told my mother. Mom then turned on the television and we saw it then.
I was 9. We were in Australia, I saw it on the morning news. My parents must have heard it on the radio and turned the TV on. It just seemed devastating. It was definitely the first huge news moment to catch me like that, which is odd seeing as the Bhopal chemical spill was in 1984, but I guess that didn’t get the same saturation coverage, or those two years difference in my age made a difference. We certainly got saturation coverage of the Challenger disaster and I know I cried for the astronauts and their families. It seemed so brave, and it still does, to put your life on the line for the sake of science and discovery.
Later that year was the whole horrible Chernobyl mess, and to my not-very-adequate childish reason, it honestly felt like the whole world was just coming apart at the seams. I waited for more bad news to fall.
When I read the thread title, “Challenger” was the first thing that entered my mind. What else could it have been?
I was 12, almost 13 (you look young for your age, jjimm!), and I was in my first year of high school. I don’t exactly recall whether I heard it in school - probably not. Given the time difference, the explosion probably occured later (a quick Google confirms this: launch was at 11:38 AM EST, which is 17:38 my time). I remember watching the footage on the evening news, and feeling absolutely gutted. Like any boy that age, I was fascinated with the Shuttle. I had a Lego one, even.
Add to that the fact that this was such a widely publicised mission, and the fact that my countryman Wubbo Okkels had been the first Dutch astronaut a few months prior, flying Challenger… it was a big crush, all right.
I also can’t believe this is 18 years ago, today. Almost two fricking decades. Where the hell have they gone?
I was in Albany GA that day, doing a computer upgrade. I spent the rest of the day in shock. Two years before, I interviewed at the Cape with Lockheed Space Operations for a job as an avionics engineer on the shuttle project, and I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t get the job. I was ultimately glad I didn’t, because it would have nearly killed me to have been working that close to the machines and people when Challenger happened.
I vividly remember the Apollo fire, too, even though I was 6 when that occured.
When Columbia broke up, of course I was concerned and sympathetic, but for some reason it didn’t rattle me like Challenger. The next one probably will, though, since I’m now part of the family. The director of my facility was the pilot of the last successful Challenger mission, and he’s put a personal face back on the Shuttle program for me.
Hey, so your director flew with Wubbo Okkels. Ask him if Okkels is as arrogant as he seems on TV.
I agree with you about Columbia. Maybe it’s because we’re all more blasé in this post-9/11 world, maybe it’s because it wasn’t the first Shuttle to not touch down safely. But somehow, it rattled me way less than Challenger did. I feel just as bad for the victims, mind you, it’s just that it somehow felt less… personal?
I was at school when I first heard.
All I remember was the older kids saying things like
What does NASA stand for?
Need Another Seven Astronauts.
Not being American and being so young I can’t remember anyone in my class actually caring about it, at all.
It didn’t seem to affect us.
I do remember my mother being upset at the news though.
I was a Senior in HS… The launch was scheduled during my Business Law class. This was significant to us as our Business Law teacher had applied to be on that shuttle, and even though he didn’t make it, we were all very proud of him.
Our class was a small class, so we all headed over to an adjoining classroom where we could watch the launch on TV. I remember standing in the back of the classroom, and watching in fascination as the shuttle launched and thinking, “Man, Mr. Mc M could have been on that thing! How cool is that?”. My fascination quickly turned to horror as the shuttle exploded.
We all sat there in horror and disbelief as they played the clip over and over again. Many of us, my teacher and me included, broke out into tears.
It is one of the few days that I will never forget where I was or what I was doing.
I was 15 going on 16, a sophomore in high school. After I had arrived for school and was on my way up the stairs to my first class a classmate told me, “did you hear the space shuttle exploded?” As in peritrochoid’s case with the janitor, this classmate was a notorious jokester, so I naturally didn’t believe him. Once I heard more and more people talking about it I quickly learned that it was for real. I didn’t see any news coverage of the disaster until I had gotten home from school that day. I spent several minutes glued to the TV watching the news replay the shots of the Shuttle exploding just minutes after takeoff. I remember the images they showed of debris falling into the ocean. One guy who was a live reporter exclaimde “Oh my God!” when he saw the shuttle explode. It was quite a memorable day, though I must say that the news coverage of September 11 had an even greater impact on my mind.
I was in 3rd grade, it was a snow day. My dad was home because he had taken the day of for his birthday (today). Us kids were upset because we wanted to watch cartoons, but dad wanted to watch the launch and insisted that we all watch it with him.
I remember watching it explode, there were a few seconds of stunned silence in our house before my mom burst into tears. I remember asking my dad why it happened and if he thought the people were ok. I remember the look in his eyes as he told me no while trying not to cry himself.
I was US Army Private JRD, attending Advanced Training at the Health Sciences Academy at Fort Sam Houston (San Antonio, Texas). It happened during classes, we learned about it when we had our break and returned to the barracks across the street to drop off some equipment from the morning training. It was barely minutes after – my first info was when I flipped on the radio in my quarters (the TV was in the Company Room two buildings over) and realized that (a) there was a live newsfeed at an unusual time and (b) the chatter going over the air included technical details about about SAR procedures and resources downrange from KSC. Took me about a nine-count to put two and two together. Damn.
The tempo and structure of the training regimen left little idle time for repeated TV-watching or dwelling much upon it (I did not get to see full footage until later in the weekend). Still, that afternoon the class pretty much had a consensus that apart from the families we felt the worst about all the students that had been following the teacher-in-space project.
I was a “space baby”, surrounded by space-related toys and fascinated by the amazing things that went on in the late 60s and early 70s. And yes, as a boy I was one of those who could rattle off missions and crews and specs of spacecraft, boosters and X-planes (when the hell did all that ability to concentrate evaporate? maybe after all that beer in college…). It was hard. But, then again, extraordinary deeds carry extraordinary risk – of the immediate and self-evident kind, while any rewards may be long-term and unobvious.
I was 27 and at work when the Challenger exploded. We were watching the launch in the employee lounge…stunned is way too mild for our state of mind after seeing the pieces fall.
When I got home that evening, my roommate said, “You know, it’s a shame they sent that teacher up there all by herself.” I felt the same way…all the coverage seemed to center around Christa McAuliffe.
What a tragedy Christa’s death was…
How hard this is on Christa’s parents…
Here’s live coverage from Christa’s classroom…
Now, an interview with Christa’s principal…
I thought then and I think now that the coverage of the disaster was an insult to the 6 ASTRONAUTS that perished on the mission.
8th grade. My mom was subbing that day at my school (but that’s a whole-nother story) and as I left a class, someone came up to me and said, ‘your mom is really upset; something happened with the space shuttle.’ Knowing my mom as a big drama queen, I said something like, ‘it’s probably a delayed take off and she is upset about it.’ And then they ushered us into the library in front of a tv and showed us what was going on. I felt really bad that I hadn’t given my mom much credit.
I was working at Eastern Airlines in Boston. At the time Eastern operated hourly shuttles between Boston and New york. A co-worker came up to me and said “the shuttle just exploded”. My first reply was “which one?” It took a few seconds for it to sink in that it wasn’t Eastern’s shuttle, it was America’s shuttle.
Like a lot of people, I was convinced that the crew just couldn’t be dead. I really held out a lot of hope that somehow they had survived. I still can’t get the image out of my head of Christa’s parents, husband and children watching the tragedy.
I was six years old, nearly seven, and in my extra class for gifted kids (first through fifth grades). We had a TV in the room and were all very excited about the shuttle launch. We had done a unit on space and space exploration and astronauts in preparation for the Challenger launch.
It was a bright, clear day, not too cold. Most of the day after the explosion is pretty fuzzy, though. I remember a lot of people crying (teachers and older students). I remember my parents explaining to me that night what had happened. I had a book with a story about Sally Ride at the time, and for some reason I thought she had been on that shuttle and had died, because she was an astronaut, right? I was a smart six-year-old, but I was still only six. I wasn’t really very sad, because I didn’t know any of the people who had died.
I was in graduate school retaking the orals part of a multiday, comprehensive test. (The previous year, somehow, I easily passed the 4 days of written exams, only to crack in the relatively easy oral test.) The rules were if you failed twice, you were out. I had just aced the first exam, and was biding my time for the second, when someone told me. It put everything I was going through in perspective.
Like others here, I remember the actual explosion vividly, but more the faces on Christa’s parents. I also remember some of the grad students, who had their thesis and years of work riding on the shuttle, trying to figure out how finish. (It may sound inhuman, but their lives were more directly affected by the equipment loss than the human lives. Some had spent 3-4 years building equipment. Their thesis would be 4-5 more years analyzing data from that equipment. Suddenly, they were facing coming up with a new project, and not graduating for another 7-9 years.)
