1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Challenger

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by bigpern23, Jan 28, 2011.

  1. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Walked into the student union on campus right after it exploded and there were a whole bunch of people huddled around the TV watching the coverage.

    I've seen video of the explosion numerous times but the most gut-wrenching clip that stayed with me was the shot of McAuliffe's parents watching the launch, and explosion, from the viewing stand. It was clear they really weren't sure they'd just seen their daughter killed.

    The day of the Columbia explosion in 2003 is even more vivid for me because parts of the ship landed within a few miles of our house and our property was part of the grid they swept for debris a few weeks later.

    The eighth anniversary of that disaster will be Feb. 1.
     
  2. Gutter

    Gutter Well-Known Member

    Third grade. We were in the library picking out our weekly reading selections when the principal came on over the speaker to make the announcement. The rest of the day, including lunch/recess, we were watching the coverage on TV.

    The first "news" event I remember.
     
  3. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    I think it was such a big deal because space travel was about hope and dreams, a sort of intangible mythical quality that went with sending men and women into orbit. That hope was shattered on national television in front of the entire country and in front of countless school children. It shook a lot of people.
     
  4. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    I'd agree with that. The fact a civilian - and a teacher at that - was a part of the crew for the first time ever added to the importance of that particular launch and was the reason why so many schoolchildren were watching. Those kids are adults now and that image was forever burned into their memories at a young age.

    The other thing that made it so shocking was that NASA was still held in high regard by the majority of the American public. It was the one government agency people believed employed the "Best and Brightest." The subsequent investigation into the explosion shattered that belief and the agency never really recovered from it.
     
  5. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    Columbia is much more memorable to me. My wife and I were touring the maternity ward when we saw it on one of the room TVs. Then our son was born the day of the Iraq ground invasion.
     
  6. budcrew08

    budcrew08 Active Member

    Reagan's address:
     
  7. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    I was in high school. We were out for a snow day. I was outside riding my sled. I stopped and walked over to my great aunt's house next door. She said "isn't it terrible about the space shuttle?" I figured she must be confused because of her age. We flipped on the TV, and sure enough. I went back out, got my sled and went home to watch the rest of the day.

    I can still take you to the exact spot in my folks' yard where I had parked my sled.
     
  8. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    I was a 27-year-old radio reporter in the press grandstand at Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 28, 1986.

    There was an ad from WMEL-AM/Melbourne, FL in Radio and Records in the fall of 1985, advertising for a news anchor who would string for CBS Radio's Shuttle coverage. I lived on the Space Coast as a kid when my father worked at the Cape, so I sent a resume and air check from California. Couple of months went by and I hadn't heard anything. Then out of the blue, I got a call from the general manager. We talked no more than 15 minutes and he offered me the job, sight-unseen, over the phone.

    So I packed up the AMC Concord and drove cross-country, packing all my winter clothes in boxes to be sent later. Bad idea, as it turned out.

    At the time, NASA was planning on launching a dozen shuttles a year. CBS had declared it "routine" and was going to hand off launch coverage to the local affiliate -- meaning me. I watched Congressman Bill Nelson's flight from the parking lot of the station. So when Challenger came up next, I was supposed to go help Christopher Glenn -- the guy who voiced "In The News" -- and then take over from there.

    First there was the issue with the hatch bolts being stripped, then the winds aloft were too high to launch. And the temperature the night of the 27th went below freezing, so news director Don Germaise suggested I cover the Brevard County Board of Supervisors meeting in Merritt Island instead, and call the station from a payphone just in case they decided to start the clock. (Imagine a time before PCs and cellphones.)

    And despite ice on the orbiter, NASA did. So I rushed to the south gate, drove to the press area and got out of the car only a few minutes before launch. All I had with me was a thin windbreaker, and I was shivering the entire time.

    You all know what happened. NASA officials immediately herded the families to cars and shuttled them away. Germaise switched from the CBS feed and I got on the phone line in the bleachers, reporting what I could for the rest of the day. I kept going into the geodesic dome media center to warm up, then back outside to file the latest info, teeth chattering all the while.

    We watched Reagan's speech on TV from the media center. Vice President Bush came from Washington to visit with the families and answered some questions. One thing you have to remember was there were many rumors about sabotage. There had been a Russian trawler off the coast that had delayed the launch. So tensions were very high.

    I filed my last report, packed up and headed for the car. Driving back through the Cape in an effort to find a way back to the gate, I seemed to be stuck behind a silver delivery truck going fairly slow. Suddenly, the rear doors swung open and two men with dark glasses holding automatic weapons motioned that perhaps I shouldn't follow so close. I'm guessing Bush was aboard.

    Two memories about that day.

    It was crystal clear and not a breath of wind, so the contrails of the launch and the debris hung in the sky for hours, white against the blue sky, a haunting image.

    There's a huge countdown clock right in the front of the lagoon on a line of sight with the launch tower, and it was never turned off. All afternoon, it kept counting a mission that had lasted little more than 70 seconds. Very eerie.

    I made a couple thousand dollars that summer, covering the investigation for CBS, CBC and a number of other organizations, but never got to cover a successful shuttle mission. I did a number of unmanned launches, and eventually left WMEL in 1987.
     
  9. mpcincal

    mpcincal Well-Known Member

    I haven't mentioned this specifically on this board before (though many might have put two and two together from previous posts), but I grew up in (and again reside today) in Lompoc, about 2 or 3 miles from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Everybody on base at the time was preparing for the West Coast shuttle program and the launches that were to start a few months from that point. Everybody in the area was looking forward to the impact, economic and otherwise, the program would have on the overall area.

    Anyway, I was a senior in high school at the time. We actually weren't watching the launch live, I had first period English and it was starting out as a typical day until the bell rang at the end of the period and we all got up out of our desks. Suddenly, the loudspeaker came on and it was the principal saying he had the radio feed from the coverage of the "shuttle explosion," which we didn't even know about yet, and started playing it over the loudspeaker. I rushed to my next class, and they already had a TV in there with the news report on. The first thing I saw as I entered the classroom was the huge contrail from the blast on the TV screen.

    Obviously the biggest loss is the astronauts and the person who was supposed to be the first civilian in space. But, with the subsequent cancellation of the West Coast program, it was a big hit for my town. Like a lot of cities, it's struggling big time with the current economy, but I wonder if things would be a little different if we were able to follow through on those launches out here.

    EDIT: You're a tough act to follow, maumann.
     
  10. EStreetJoe

    EStreetJoe Well-Known Member

    Was a junior in high school. Someone came into my Creative Writing class to tell us the shuttle had blown up.
    Of course it was the topic of conversation during lunch the next period.
    After school I raced the block home to watch it on TV.

    As to other historical events:
    - I remember where I was when I heard the American hostages were freed in Iran, the Oklahoma City Bombing, Columbine masacre, the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks,
    - Don't remember where I was when I first heard about John Lennon being shot, the assassination attempt on Reagan, or the San Francisco earthquake
     
  11. EStreetJoe

    EStreetJoe Well-Known Member

    CNN's reporter on the scene John Zarrella reflects on what happened:
    http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/28/zarrella-on-25-years-ago-we-realized-that-something-was-really-wrong/

    Part of CNN's Remembering the Challenger with a link to their live coverage of the launch:
    http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/28/remembering-the-challenger-disaster-25-years-later/?hpt=C2
     
  12. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    I was in my first year in my first job, working at a PM. I had the day off, and I woke up around 2 and called in to ask a fellow desk person if anything interesting had happened that day.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page