23 years ago today: Challenger

Was in the school cafeterorium eating lunch with Tommy Dyer and Darrell Mathis.
I was a sophomore and they were juniors.
A group had gathered in the library to watch and the librarian walked into the lunchroom. She was crying and said that the space shuttle had blown up.
We all had a collective gasp and went running into the library to see what was going on.
It was a huge deal because the school teacher was on that flight and she was going to teach classes from space.
I remember that day like it was yesterday.

 

I was running the dayside desk at AP Hartford, watching on TV as it happened.

 

I was either in second grade or watching it on TV in the second grade classroom. I'm not sure. I think we might have got sent home early too.

In the days that followed I recall someone starting a rumor that they had found body parts in a trash can somewhere in Florida.

 

OK, let me ask a delicate question. If you're free-falling that rapidly, don't the changes in pressure cause you to black out? I was thinking the same thing when I saw people falling from the top floors of the WTC on 9/11. Isn't there such a jolt from onrushing air that you lose consciousness? I guess I'm hoping that's the case.

 

The lack of air pressure would cause a blackout. There's not enough air to breathe or enough pressure to force any into your lungs.

 

Don't remember a school announcement per se, but I do remember watching the coverage all night with my folks on our little black and white (!) tv in our dining room. My mom was almost in tears, I just really didn't understand.

 

I was in first grade, and had just gone upstairs into the computer lab (which had a TV). We watched it for the entire hour.

Just two weeks prior, I had received an envelope from NASA that contained a bunch of photos and info about space and shuttle missions (we all wrote letters to NASA at the beginning of the school year). One of the photos was of the Challenger crew.

 

I was in sixth grade, and we were in music class when it happened. When we got back to our regular classroom, our teacher told us about it and everyone was shocked. I watched the news coverage late into the night with my parents.

My family had been at the Kennedy Space Center the previous spring, and when our tour guide found out that both of my parents were teachers, he suggested that they apply for the Teacher In Space Project -- a spot that obviously went to Christa McAuliffe on the ill-fated Challenger flight. Needless to say, I'm glad that my folks weren't selected.

 

Sophomore in college---just getting ready to walk into the cafeteria. Can't believe it's been 23 years...wow.

 

I was a freshman at Mississippi State, returning to the dorm after an early morning class. Somebody told me that the shuttle had blown up. As a freshman majoring in aerospace engineering and a lifelong space freak, it was obviously a terrible day.

I've taken way longer than I needed to to read Jones' excellent "Out of Orbit" because it pisses me off that two crews were lost because of hubris creep at NASA.

 

If that were the case, there were be a lot more dead skydivers, I reckon.