OK, i done gone set Facebook on fire. In honor of Reagan's stirring Challenger speech:

Heard this during my commute. My heart broke for him.

 

I heard an interview with the NASA historian and he said one reason that NASA wanted to launch was because it had an ambitious schedule for the year. They wanted 12 missions in 1986 and the delays were obviously putting that in trouble.

 

Right, one of the big selling points for the shuttle as a launch system was supposed to be quick turnaround.

 

Is that John C. McGinley?

 

Yes.

 

He has been in a lot of Stone's movies.

 

Damn right, Sgt. Barnes.

 

Finally getting around to watching the NatGeo special "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" and it's tearing me up with all the behind-the-scenes footage of McAuliffe during the run up and the inherent, unintentional dramatic irony. Anyone else watch it?

 

Not watching. It was hard enough the first time.

 

I watched it. The reaction of those in the viewing stands and those kids in schools - ugh.

 

Anybody remember watching it in school? I think during elementary school we semi-regularly watched launches in the classroom. I don't remember watching the Challenger even though I grew up as few towns over from where Mcauliffe taught. My memory is that the teacher came into the classroom shaken up and either she announced it or it was done over the P.A. We may have watched the news after.

 

I watched it live on CNN.

At the time both my dad and I were working the 4 p.m.-1 a.m. shift working on different newspapers. I had started a month earlier as SE of a small daily about 40 miles front my hometown and I was commuting from home to save on rent.
So the whole house was on the vampire schedule, rolling out of bed about 11, and we were sitting around the breakfast room table having coffee as the launch went up.

In the Sixties and Seventies, I was a total space geek; I could tell you every technical detail about every flight.
By the Eighties I wasn't quite such a NASA guru any more, but I still kept up with the basics, so when the shuttle broke up, I blurted out, "holy shit!!!" Which alerted my parents to the fact something big had happened.

I knew exactly what the deal was: there was no escape system on the shuttle, so if anything went wrong before the SRBs jettisoned, the crew was finished. All the crap they talked about with "bailout options" was nonsense.

My dad was the wire editor at his paper; I said, "you better call downtown and tell them to get ready for a big night."

Within 15-20 minutes both of us were hot off to work. Neither of us got home until about 3 a.m.