Challenger

As tough as it is to watch the launch and explosion 25 years later, even tougher is to watch the video of the crowd at the launch, including Christa McAullife's parents. You have to wonder how someone ever gets over a moment like that.

 

That's what hit me last night. I had forgotten how old her parents were, and I watched a video of the crowd at the bleachers. The gasps, the minute of quiet confusion and shock, and then everyone's face just falling as the reality hit them. But every shot of her parents, even time after the tragedy, and they never cried. Just kept ... hoping, I guess.

Tore my heart out of my chest.

 

I was looking through the slideshow on that MSNBC page linked above and the photo of her parents and sister choked me up.

 

The impact of Challenger was much greater than the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, because there was coverage (and then tape) of the actual event itself, which of course was played over and over until it was burned into everyone's mind.

With Apollo 1, it simply came out in a news bulletin that the astronauts had died. No film and very few photos of the scene ever came out. By the time a public announcement was made, they had already been dead for several hours.

Also, the Apollo 1 fire happened at 6:30 p.m. and didn't become public for several hours after that. There was no such thing as the 24-hour news cycle in 1967 -- a lot of people turned off the TV at 9-10 p.m. and went to bed. So for a fairly substantial segment of the country, they didn't hear about it until the next morning.

In addition, a good section of the country -- essentially the entire Midwest -- was blasted with one of the biggest blizzards of all time that day, so a lot of people were doing things other than sit around and watch TV; it took the better part of a week for many areas to dig out. So the impact of the Apollo 1 news was diluted again.

 

Ninth grade, science class. Was pissed because we freshmen weren't able to see it (but the damned sophomores next to us were). We were in the midst of finishing up when the biology (soph) teacher called our teacher into the hall.

Tearfully, he returned to the room about 45 seconds later and told us that Challenger exploded. I remember someone asking if there were any survivors; "no, Ken....they're all dead," he replied.

Add the fact I got sent home an hour later with a 102-degree temp and the worst case of strep throat in my life and it's not shock that I thought that day was well below average.

 

Had classes at 8, 9, and 10. Got back to the dorm room and was turning on radio for late morning nap before lunch. Heard what happened and turned up radio before turning on TV, realizing there would be live network coverage.
Had chemistry class at 4 that afternoon and needless to say, the volatile mixture of liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen was the topic of the day.

Anybody who's ever seen a space shuttle launch, either from Canaveral or from somewhere along the coast, knows what an awesome sight it is.

 

I was in elementary school during this time, and I grew up in Decatur, Ala., not far from the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal. I don't remember a whole lot about this particular time, but I'm sure it must have been a trying time for everyone working on the Shuttle project in north Alabama.