[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Space Shuttle Challenger (Page 1 of 3)
Posted: 1/28/2017 1:28:45 AM EDT
I remember watching this live in school
 1986: CNN's coverage of the Challenger explosion |
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I was watching it in Cocoa Beach,FL which is right next door to Cape Kennedy.Very surreal.You could feel the sadness in the air.The only other time I have experienced this was my 1st visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.You could just feel this heavy feeling of loss and what might have been.
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 Reagan Speech after Challenger Disaster |
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I was at home laying on my Mom and Dads bed watching it live. We had a snow day. My Mom was there as well and when it blew up I remember her asking me "What happened?!"
I didn't know but I stayed glued to the set in hopes yhat they made it out alive. I was in middle school at the time. |
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I remember faking sick that day so I didn't have to take at test. I was in fourth grade.
I was watching it live on TV when it happened, and then ran to tell my mom about it. She was on the phone, and when I told her she started crying.
Astronauts were her heroes throughout her life, and I unknowingly broke very bad news to her. |
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If I recall correctly post incident investigation showed most of them actually survived the explosion and died on impact with the ocean. At that time my job took me once a month to one of the biggest contractors at the Cape and I remember talking to some of the engineers just a couple months after it happened and they told me some were definitely still alive after the explosion because they had activated some of their emergency equipment.With nothing like ejection seats there was nothing really to do but ride it down.I can't imagine what was going thru their minds. |
| In the Coast Guard on the mess deck eating lunch, deployed later that day from Portsmouth Va. to recover debris in the Gulf Stream. Intercepted debris two days later off the coast of Georgia and brought them back to Cape Canaveral. Spent weeks searching empty ocean. |
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Yep home sick that day. Think I was fifth grade. Hard to process as a fifth grader home alone watching that. ETA: Crap I was actually in 8th grade, lol WTF my mind it going. still hard to process for an 8th grader home alone. J- |
Different perspective. This is Barbara Morgan, Christa McAuliffe's backup:
 Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion Watched by Back Up Teacher Explosion occurs at 1:22. |
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At the time, I was in the Phillipeans as my stepfather was stationed at what was Subic Bay. My mother woke me up a bit earlier in the morning and told me the shuttle had exploded.
My stepfather was already in uniform, getting ready to report in for duty. He told me "They knew the risks and did it anyway. It takes fearless, brave people to go up there, which is why we will always give them great respect" |
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I was at the Naval Hospital at Long Beach waiting for a pre-screening appointment for surgery.
I was sitting in a waiting room all by myself with no TV listening to my Walkman. After 30 minutes without my name being called I went out into the hallway and asked a Corpsman what was taking so long. About that time a LT doctor came out of a staff lounge where they had TV. He had been watching it with other staff members and he got really pissy with me when I asked him what was taking so long. How the fuck was I supposed to know. One noteworthy life item, I ate at my first El Pollo Loco after my appointment. 
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The very next year was the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255, just minutes after takeoff from Detroit Metro. A little girl was the only survivor. Those two tragedies still remain quite vivid in my memory. Yep remember like that was yesterday. A guy who graduated from my highschool and would always come back to coach early football 2 a days was on that plane. Saw him like 3 hours before the crash. I was in ninth grade at the time and my girlfriends dad was E/b I94 coming home from work and saw the plane coming and the crash in his rearview mirror about 3 seconds after he passed over Middlebelt. J- |
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I watched it from home age 6 on the OTP NW side of Atlanta. Was so dam cold the school buses wouldn't crank up, so school got canceled. In hindsight that has always ate at me.
Dam thing was half covered ice, not from the fuel or anything, but cause it was that dam cold even in Central Florida. Whoever pushed that launch I can't judge in hindsight, part of my mind says they need a butt kicking. But no one knew a O Ring issue even existed. Far as I know from post cold war cable docs it was kept quiet for 6 months while the Air Force retrofitted ICBM's just to be safe. Some of yall, I am sure where serving at the time, Discovery Channel back when it was legit said it, maybe yall can confirm, or deny? But when people say why do we need to go to space. Or a waste dime on launching even those silly satellites? Well aside from needing to launch things so your TV, and credit card works at the gas pump. We owe it to a lot of good brave and bold people the world over have died trying to get us off this rock for good. Anything less than a good try is taking a piss on all their collective souls in my book. |
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I remember faking sick that day so I didn't have to take at test. I was in fourth grade. I was watching it live on TV when it happened, and then ran to tell my mom about it. She was on the phone, and when I told her she started crying.
Astronauts were her heroes throughout her life, and I unknowingly broke very bad news to her. Are we related? That's almost identical to my experience that day. We must be about the same age too. |
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Was working at Underwriters Laboratories and had been out at lunch with my brother. Came back and saw everyone standing around in the TV lab watching the sets. Asked what was going on and was told "The Space Shuttle just exploded." I figured for sure that they must have been exaggerating.
Then I watched it. Years later I ended up working with one of the space shuttle astronauts who had flown on the shuttle mission right before the Challenger disaster (it landed ten days before Challenger). We talked about his experiences a lot, but I never asked him about that. |
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I was out at the farm that morning. My folks were big space race types so my brothers and I
 all grew up watching early morning launches. I remember being the only one up that day and watching the launch by myself. When I saw saw the boosters trailing off I remember thinking..."'Wow, THAT LOOKED WEIRD"? (I hadn't seen that before). When I heard mission Control say..."Obviously Some Sort Of Major Malfunction" I started waking people up
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