I was in college that morning. I had gotten up early to watch the launch. I was, and still am, a hard-core Space freak. My soul cried when the Challenger failed. I went to school, and just sat in the hall and cried. My advisor walked by, saw me, and told me to go home. He knew I would be useless in class that day.
I watched Columbia die, and a part of me died again.
Lest We Forget.
Remember the pioneers, that sought to take Man to the stars. Remember them all…those who died in the Apollo 1 pad fire, those cosmonauts who flew for the glory of Mother Russia and died in the attempt. Remember all of them. They are the ones who make us more than we are.
I was at home, nursing a cold and trying to cope with the fact that my mother had died the night before. I had completely forgotten that there was supposed to be a launch that day, and was watching something else on TV. A friend called to tell me about the explosion, which is how he found out about my mom. The whole day was like that, with people calling to talk about Challenger and being told that my mom had died. At her wake there was a lot of discussion (in the parlor, not in the viewing room) about Challeger and how this would affect the space program. As a result, Challenger and my mom’s death are interwoven in my mind.
I was in the 8th grade. A friend of mine was the only kid in our class who lived close enough to go home for lunch. When he came back he said “The shuttle blew up.” I was squirming in my seat the rest of the day anxious to go home to find out what was going on.
My dream was to be an astronaut!
My friend and I were the “school artists.” The most talented two (not trying to brag, it was just our reputation - luckily we both just enjoyed ourselves and while we would impress each other, we were never competitive and worked really well together). Anyhoo… we got out of class for two days to paint this realy cool memorial thing that was bigger than a door.
And to this day I’m still pissed that we typoed Gregory Jarvis’s name and didn’t notice until after it was too permanent to fix!
I was 5 years old. I don’t remember where I was at the time, and I don’t know if my memory is of the live feed or replays later during the day.
I do remember lying on the floor in the living room, watching the TV and seeing it explode, and of being suddenly very very afraid and sad. I don’t know that I knew WHY, and maybe I thought the astronauts could still be alive, but I know I didn’t like what I had just seen.
For Columbia, I was here, at my desk, reading the Dope and seeing threads about the shuttle explosion - I thought they were Challenger threads that happened to still be on the front page until I read the shuttle name, and I was confused in my memories - I KNEW it was the Challenger, NOT the Columbia. I turned on the TV and was pretty much glued to it all day. It still makes me very sad - just reading this thread has me in tears.
I was a freshman in high school, sitting in English class, when the pricincipal announced over the PA what had happened, and led the school in a prayer (it was a parochial school).
It didn’t really start sinking in until a few days later when the NASA jokes started making the rounds. The first time I heard one, I gave the poor guy a stare that would have stopped a charging rhino and told him I’d deck the next person who said such things in my hearing. Part of it was the moral outrage that someone could be so flippant about such a great tragedy. But I was motivated even more by the fact that Christa McAuliffe’s brother used to work for my father, and we were friends with their family. It’s not so funny when it’s someone you know.
I was 28 years old, living at Ft. Benning Georgia, and I heard the news on the radio as I pulled up to my daughter’s preschool to pick her up. I went inside and told the teacher what had happened, and then I walked into the little cloak room and just cried. I felt so guilty for not having been aware that the shuttle was taking off that day…for having let the experience become commonplace. I remember looking at all the little jackets and thinking that some children had just lost their parent.
I was a jr in high school, in Herndon Va. I was at home, and until I read this thread I had over the years tried in vain to remember why I was at home when I saw the new report. Now I realize it was likely a snow day, as it was for others.
I remember pacing around the house, in shock. I logically knew that an accident like this was possible, but my heart didn’t.
A year later, when I was a senior in Boca Raton Florida, a teacher took us outside on the one-year anniversary to show where in the sky he saw the explosion.
When I heard of Columbia last year, I was in the Raleigh-Durham airport waiting for my flight home after my father’s funeral. It was already the lowest point of my life, not just because of father, so it really barely registered. I had no more room to feel worse.
I was twelve years old and living in Oregon at the time. I was to stay home from school that day since it was one of those rare moments when my hearing aids were on the fritz. My mom took them with her in the morning before I woke up.
When I woke up, and walked downstairs, everyone had already left for work and school, but curiously the TV was left on. As I poured myself a bowl of cereal I watched a replay of the shuttle launch. I briefly wondered why they would be showing a mere replay of the shuttle launch well after liftoff, and then remembered that a teacher was supposed to be on board. A historic occasion: the first civilian in space.
When the shuttle exploded, I froze. I discovered then that it was no mere metaphor to say that a person “froze in shock.” I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
We didn’t have a closed caption decoder then, so I had to run upstairs and grab the portable TV, bring it downstairs, plug it into an outlet, and run the volume up to maximum with the speaker next to my ear just so I could barely hear what they were saying, while keeping an eye on the TV in the den. I spent the entire morning this way. The cereal was never touched.
My mom came home somtime after lunch with the hearing aids. They were working again, so I was able to hear the TV in the regular way for the rest of the day. I remembered how in 1981 I was living in Florida and saw the first shuttle launch, first on TV, and then in person as our class went outside to see the contrail rising up into the sky. I kept thinking if the class had done the same that morning.
Unforgettable, and it ranks with September 11 as one of the most shocking things I ever saw on television.
I was working at night during that time. I usually didn’t get up until after 1pm. That morning was particularly cold and I couldn’t sleep. I got up around 11:30. My mother was watching Wheel of Fortune when they broke into the show from Cape Canaveral. I immediately said, “Something’s gone wrong,” because at that point, only CNN carried the launches live. The other networks couldn’t be bothered I suppose.
I wish I could’ve been wrong.
Later that day I’d gone over to a friend’s house. He worked later than I did and slept throught it.
I asked him, “Did you hear about the space shuttle?”.
“No, what about it?”.
“It blew up this morning.”
“That’s not funny.”
I turned on his TV and said, “Tell me about it,” as the footage played over and over.
It’s only been in the last couple of years where I could watch the footage again. I would change the channels whenever I saw the liftoff.
Same thing for 9/11. Both events are too impossible to believe and yet there they are.
I was a senior in college going to do laundry. I got to the laundromat just as the coverage was happening. Everybody else there was silently staring at the TV.
I too was a “space baby.” I remember watching the first moon landing at age 5 (though I will admit that it didn’t really sink in at the time. I was more upset that the Beverly Hillbillies had been pre-empted. I was only 5 after all) and pretty much all the Apollo coverage after that, up to Apollo/Soyuz. I was thrilled to watch the first Shuttle launch and landing at school, and part of me couldn’t believe what had happened.
Of course another part of me knew that what they were doing was incredibly dangerous and they made it look easy.
Ironically, when Columbia went down I was also on my way to do laundry.
I was in 1st grade. We didn’t get to go outside for recess because it was too cold or snowing or something. Most of the kids were playing in groups on the floor. I, on the other hand, was working at my desk on some overdue assignment. I remember our teacher standing in front of the class, and these were her exact words:
“Remember how the space shuttle was taking the first teacher into space today? Well, they launched… and it blew up.” Then she turned on the TV, and we saw it on replay.
I don’t think my homework ever got completed.
As for Colombia, I woke up on the couch at a friend-girl’s apartment (after crashing there the night before due to being too drunk to stand, much less drive my car home) with a killer hangover. Friend-girl had woken up about 10 minutes earlier and had turned on the TV and had frozen in her tracks watching the footage.
I was at work, teaching in Israel. One of our fellow teachers had been a hot contender for the Teacher in Space slot. Her friends had sent her a slew of telegrams right before the launch saying “It should have been you!” When the news hit, they were all sending telegrams that said “So glad it wasn’t you!” I didn’t see the footage (though I saw stills) until I returned to the US that summer.
Seventh grade–I got off the school bus, walked into the library (the warm place), and it was dark, and about 50 kids were silently watching the TV that had been pulled in. For the rest of the school day, there were TVs everywhere; in every class, and (I particularly remember) in the halls of the grade school next door that I helped out in for one period. There was just a lone TV in the empty hall, showing exploding-Challenger footage over and over to nobody.
It had a particularly devastating effect on our town, though I didn’t realize it at the time. The Challenger had been slated to be housed at the local Air Force base. It took a lot of local jobs, including a good chunk of my dad’s, along with it.
I was nine years old, and I was visiting my old school (we’d moved to Austin from San Antonio the year before) because I was having major back surgery the next day in San Antonio. We (my mom and I) stopped at my third grade teacher’s room to find out where she was, and were told she was in the lounge, and when we were almost to the lounge, she came out and told us the shuttle had just blown up.
I’d never been in the Super-Secret Teacher’s Lounge before that I can remember, but I didn’t care at that point, except that there was a TV in there. So we went in, and there it was.
I heard about Columbia here on this board, about fifteen minutes after it happened. Things sure have changed.
I think Challenger hurt me more, because I was a kid, and very into the whole space thing. I still am, but now I know that Bad Things can happen. Of course, we shouldn’t stop just because of the Bad Things. Gus Grissom said as much back in the early 60s!
Same here. I was 22 when Challenger was destroyed. As for Columbia, I remember being a senior in high school when Columbia was launched for the first time.
The biggest difference between the two was that Challenger had barely gotten off the launch pad.
