I will never forget: I wasn’t watching the launch. At the time, I was working as Marvel’s sales manager and so for me it was just another workday. And then my then-wife called me and told me. She’d been watching it live and sat there in horror as the ship blew sky high. She was choking back sobs as she told me what had happened. I was one of the first people at Marvel to find out, but within minutes word spread throughout the office. Everyone was in shock, stunned.
I wound up honoring them in my own small way years later in the TV series “Space Cases.” We named the ship the “Christa” in honor of the highly publicized teacher who was part of the crew.
My greatest condolences to the families and NASA on their loss.
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Thank you, Peter. It wasn’t long after I got up this morning that I remembered this day’s tragic anniversary. I was disappointed to find no mention of Challenger in either my local newspaper or USA Today. It’s good to see someone remembers.
Since 1986, Destinies-The Voice of Science Fiction has dedicated the last show in January to the memory of the crew of Challenger. In 2004, we added Columbia’s crew to the tribute as well. This year, our shuttle-related programming includes an excerpt from Evelyn Husband’s audiobook, High Calling, and music from Blake Neely’s score for the documentary Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope.
Listen on Friday, January 29th at 11:30 PM on 90.1 FM, WUSB, Stony Brook, NY, netcasting at http://www.wusb.fm. Or, check out http://www.captphilonline.com/Destinies.html.
I was waiting in line at the Unemployment Office.
A couple of days later, Susan and i were in the Book Nook, when i guy came in with a big box of ANALOGs; Alex said he couldn’t give him anything for them, and the guy said he’d just leave ’em for anyone who wanted them.
I took the whole box.
The first issue i picked up had JWC’s editorial responding to the Apollo One fire.
What he said then was just as applicable to Challenger. and later to Columbia … and to other things.
Basically, he said that what most people don’t remember is that the history exploring at the edge is often the history of finding new ways to die.
Shortly after Columbia, a bunch of us online (rec.arts.sf-fandom) were talking about it, and the general consensus was that, if we knew there was definitely a one-in-ten (say) chance of making it up but not making it back down safely … we’d still ride the Shuttle to the ISS if we had the chance.
Space travel is still an adventure – and, remember: An adventure is someone far away who you don’t know, having a REALLY bad day.
I was a senior in high school; I’d just gotten home from a morning midterm and had the afternoon off. My brother, home “sick” from school, was watching television while I fixed lunch for myself — then he yelled, “Tim, get in here. You need to see this.” The rest of the day is a blur.
Every five years I give a talk about Challenger to my school. This year’s talk was yesterday afternoon. Among other things, I quoted the end of Richard Feynman’s appendix to the official report: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence before public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
May we all manage to avoid fooling ourselves one time too often.
And Mike, that quote at the end is way too appropriate. If it’s yours, I’d like permission to use it in a physics class at some point.
I was in in the eighth grade at the time, and was a space enthusiast who was eagerly awaiting the launch. I did not see it–but I’ll never forget when the Principal of our school made the announcement over the PA about the explosion. A TV was brought into our class and we watched the news for the rest of the school day. Even after watching the replay I still couldn’t believe it had happened.
I wonder how many of us can recall the names of the seven astronauts off the top of our heads.
I was in class at Chaminade High School, Mineola, NY. We were sitting there when one of the Brothers wheeled in a television, warned us all not to laugh, and turned on the TV to show us something that seemed more like science fiction than anything that could ever have really happened. It was horrible.
At work, someone had a portable tv and called us over.
What I take away from that day, even more, was from that evening when then-girlfriend was almost falling to pieces. Not so much because of the blow-up itself, nor that she was a teacher as was Christa, but because of her students’ reactions.
Being a child of the space race days, it hit her especially hard to hear the kids going on about “why would anyone want to go up there” and “you wouldn’t catch me doing something stupid like that” and so on. Whatever happened to our societal spine? Not to mention, where would we be if Columbus and the like had felt the same way?
At school in fifth grade. Every kid in the city was watching (there weren’t nearly enough TVs to go around, so classes were doubling, tripling, even quadrupling up). Why was everyone watching?
Because this was Concord, NH – home of Christa McAuliffe.
Classes were pretty much shut down for the day. School lunches were planned to coincide with what she’d be eating that day, for the duration of her mission. I’m sure we’d all heard her speak at least once, and I’d actually met her briefly (she was a friend of the family of a friend of mine, and I happened to be at their house when she came over). Sadly, I don’t remember much about her personally, because I’d been space-mad for a couple of years and so I was just kind of in a state of awe.
When the time came for launch, I made sure I was in the front row – actually, sitting on the floor in front of the front row. We were getting the raw feed – no news commentary or anything, just the radio transmissions between shuttle and ground control. I’ll never forget the cheer that went up at launch… or the following cheer after the explosion. See, most of the kids didn’t realize anything was wrong until several seconds later when ground control said “Obviously a major malfunction” – they thought it was the SRBs releasing. I was just sitting there staring, because I knew it was way too early for that.
Pretty much every parent who could (and probably a fair few who really couldn’t) left work to go pick up their kid and take them home; however, many of us almost immediately went to lunch… the lunch we were supposed to share with Christa. My mother says that that’s when it hit me that she’d never share a meal with anyone else ever again. I don’t know; I don’t remember that.
I do remember that one of my very few fights in school (and as far as I can remember, the only one I instigated) was a few days later, when the jokes started cropping up. Even 30 years later, I still get upset when I hear any of them.
My god, I can’t believe it’s been 30 years.
I was in fifth grade, and my class had been following this particular mission for awhile, given that it was the “teacher in space” program and all. I recall that our teacher told us very simply what had happened. That’s honestly all I remember about it.
Some years later, when I was in high school, I found out my chemistry teacher, Mr.Clear, had applied for that program.
I was thirteen. That day, when my eighth grade class broke for lunch, a went to the corner store a block away from my school, where I typically went. The store owner had the small TV in his store on. He and another student, I think a year older than me, were watching it. They said the shuttle blew up. I didn’t comprehend. “You mean, what, it caught on fire, or something? Some part fell off of it?” “No, it blew up,” he said. I thought this was an exaggeration or something, because I genuinely could not wrap my mind around the idea that something like our space shuttle could be destroyed–as in completed destructed. It took a bit for what they were saying to sink in.
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The same thing happened 15 years later on 9/11. When I heard about a plane hitting the towers, I figured it was some flyboy on a joyride in a single engine plane, or something, and when I heard about the tower or towers “collapsing”, I thought they meant like a part of the facade at street level, or something. The idea of the entire skyscrapers just banana-peeling outward and imploding downward, I just couldn’t get it. I remember walking down to Frank Sinatra Drive in Hoboken to take pictures of the skyline, and wondering if I could see glimpses of the towers through those huge columns of smoke, but wondering why I couldn’t see them.
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That’s what it is during times like this. The event is so horrific that it’s hard to wrap your mind around it and comprehend.
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I loved science when I was a kid, and astronomy in particular. Still do. So this was definitely a rude awakening.
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Two years later, when I was a sophomore in high school, we had to do a book report one month on a non-fiction book. I chose Challengers, which offered a biography on each of the seven astronauts. I remember being fascinated by some of their stories. The one that sticks with me was that of Ronald E. McNair. In addition to being a PhD in physics from MIT, he could play the saxophone and was such an accomplished karate black belt that he could break cinder blocks with his head. It was learning things like that that humanized them for me, made them something more than just names and faces.
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But anniversaries like this still get to me.
I was in 7th grade. We were on a field trip to see bunch of short plays based on Poe’s work. I remember the telltale heart best because they somehow had the floor boards pulse and release steam/smoke. I guess they decided not to tell us what had happened or maybe no one in a position of authority knew what happened at the time. We got out of the playhouse and the smoke and debris clouds were still visible from the bus windows and we listened to the radio the entire ride, stunned at what had happened. I was lucky to be able to watch and see a lot of launches from my backyard between 1984/5 to 1986. I’m glad that I missed that one. It would have been the last one I would see live as the launches didn’t start again before we moved away from Altamonte Springs, FL.