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Space Shuttle Challenger: 30th anniversary of explosion (1 Viewer)

:( I was 12, home from school sick. I was looking forward to a day of game shows and was bent that every single channel was covering this. Obviously wasn't mature enough to realize the gravity of what happened.

 
I was in second grade. The whole elementary school had televisions in each classroom because they were so proud of the first teacher going to space. Oops.

 
nirad3 said:
:( I was 12, home from school sick. I was looking forward to a day of game shows and was bent that every single channel was covering this. Obviously wasn't mature enough to realize the gravity of what happened.
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me too. (and my 17th birthday)

i knew it was bad, but really didn't realize at the time how bad.

 
I had just come back from a class at college. We were just hanging out in the dorm waiting for lunch when we heard about it.

Can't believe it's been 30 years. I'm getting old.

 
Getting ready to walk into Trig class as a senior in high-school. Mr. Rosenkranz pulled me aside and told me the Challenger exploded not long after takeoff. Hung out with my girlfriend that night at her house and I distinctly remember one of the rumors going around was a Russian sub was seen in International waters during the takeoff and other students talking about that the next school day. I also remember all the jokes that were going around...

What does NASA stand for?

 
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My dad was a driver for Coca Cola and his route covered Cape Canaveral. While he was sad by the tragedy, he was excited for the opportunity that suddenly presented itself.

 
Jules Winnfield said:
Getting ready to walk into Trig class as a senior in high-school. Mr. Rosenkranz pulled me aside and told me the Challenger exploded not long after takeoff. Hung out with my girlfriend that night at her house and I distinctly remember one of the rumors going around was a Russian sub was seen in International waters during the takeoff and other students talking about that the next school day
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You sure it wasn't Dr. Rosenpenis or Dr. Rosenrosen?

 
Was in my school classroom in FL and we would always watch the shuttle launches live out the window because you could see it in the sky being on the east coast. As we were all watching, the explosion happened and obviously something went wrong. Will never forget that day and where I was.

 
10th grade at off campus lunch eating at Taco Viva. I was stunned when I heard it on the radio playing in the restaurant. We watched it all day when we got back to class.

 
pandora said:
Jules Winnfield said:
Getting ready to walk into Trig class as a senior in high-school. Mr. Rosenkranz pulled me aside and told me the Challenger exploded not long after takeoff. Hung out with my girlfriend that night at her house and I distinctly remember one of the rumors going around was a Russian sub was seen in International waters during the takeoff and other students talking about that the next school day
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You sure it wasn't Dr. Rosenpenis or Dr. Rosenrosen?
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Dr Rosen! Where's the records room?

 
Tom Servo said:
I had just come back from a class at college. We were just hanging out in the dorm waiting for lunch when we heard about it.

Can't believe it's been 30 years. I'm getting old.
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I was in between at the fraternity house with a bunch of fraternity brother clustered around the TV.

Oddly, about a year later, it was an almost identical fraternity house scenario when PA state treasurer Budd Dwyer shot himself on live TV

 
7th grade Industrial Arts class. No TV, but the principal announced it over the intercom.

 
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Anyone else remember Christa McAuliffe when she was on the cover of Time? She had those beautiful blue eyes.

Very sad.

 
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I was in 7th grade. We had it on the TV live because our science teacher had been in the final group being considered for the teacher in space program. Obviously, she was extremely upset. She left the room crying and didn't come back the rest of the day.

 
after her tragic death, remember how upset her students were? She was such a solid English teacher, that's why they picked her.... but they had to make the class a History class instead just to mix it up and help her students.

 
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One of the positives that came out of the disaster, was NASA did go on a major hiring drive. They hired a bunch of astronauts after that. Amazing they were able to fill all those positions.

 
Elementary school. I remember them wheeling in the TV so we could all see that teacher make it to outer space. I'm thinking I was in 2nd grade. Definitely a surreal memory.

 
Last memory... thanks for letting me get all these emotions out. I remember there was unbelievable increase in Christa's charities that she supported and was excited about, people were overwhelmingly supportive. What a county! People really worked hard to end that terrible food shortage for critters in the ocean and bring back the sea population.

 
12th grade science class. We didn't watch on TV because there were barely any back then in our school, but certainly heard right thereafter.

A truly defining moment for those of us in Generation X.

 
I was sitting at the Treehouse at ECU eating pizza for lunch and drinking beer with a couple friends. One of our roommates worked at the TH. It was the day after my birthday, and I remember there was still some snow on the ground. The television was on in the tavern, and everyone was watching the liftoff. Nobody was exactly sure what had happened when all the smoke trails went off, but then it become clear that it had blown up. It was shocking and sad.

 
In college and was at the cafeteria eating lunch when they I saw footage on TV of it exploding. Couldn't hear the TV but a picture paints a thousand words. It was pretty evident what happened. :(

 
I was in 8th grade. Heard about it during recess. My friend walked up an nonchalantly said, "did you hear the space shuttle exploded?" I thought he was joking.

 
MikeIke said:
I was in 7th grade. We had it on the TV live because our science teacher had been in the final group being considered for the teacher in space program. Obviously, she was extremely upset. She left the room crying and didn't come back the rest of the day.
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There must have been thousands of finalists in that group. I think everyone I know had a teacher who was a finalist.

On a serious note, like millions of kids, I was in school. 7th grade english class. We went across the hall because the social studdies class had a TV. We watched from the launch. What I remember most vividly about it was the absolute silence in the class, and the apparent inability of the teachers to know exactly what to say. After some time, I just remember shuffling back to class and the teacher telling us to read independently for the rest of the hour.

 
Fennis said:
One of the positives that came out of the disaster, was NASA did go on a major hiring drive. They hired a bunch of astronauts after that. Amazing they were able to fill all those positions.
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Her alternate actually became a fulltime astronaut after this and did go on one Shuttle mission.

There was an excellent program on the other night, want to say it was on NATGEO, called something like Lost Files of the Challenger Disaster. Not sure if it's still on this week, but definitely worth checking out.

 
7th grade art class right after lunch I think. Goofy kid came in and told everyone, I didn't realize what he said. Another person came in and repeated it. Teacher took us all down to a spot with a TV.

 
Junior high, they rolled in the TV and everything (big deal back then), and promptly rolled it out right after the explosion. Very peculiar.

 
Bull Dozier said:
MikeIke said:
I was in 7th grade. We had it on the TV live because our science teacher had been in the final group being considered for the teacher in space program. Obviously, she was extremely upset. She left the room crying and didn't come back the rest of the day.
Click to expand...
There must have been thousands of finalists in that group. I think everyone I know had a teacher who was a finalist.On a serious note, like millions of kids, I was in school. 7th grade english class. We went across the hall because the social studdies class had a TV. We watched from the launch. What I remember most vividly about it was the absolute silence in the class, and the apparent inability of the teachers to know exactly what to say. After some time, I just remember shuffling back to class and the teacher telling us to read independently for the rest of the hour.
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This was a huge deal for teachers I think. To the kids it was just another Space Shuttle launch but to teachers it was a bit of dream fulfillment that they had to show their students.

 
I was in high school. The school president interrupted class on the PA and started with something like, "I have terrible news to report...". My immediate thought was the same I got whenever there was a breaking special report on TV -- fear that the USSR has started nuclear war and missiles were headed my way. So, as terrible as this is, I felt a sense of relief after he told us what happened.

 
I don't know about you guys, but this anniversary makes me feel real old. But what a different world that was. The Cold War was still raging. And I could get an erection without medication : (

 
Good gravy, y'all make me feel really old here.

I was just shy of my 22nd birthday and was at work. My wife of just 52 days called me at work and told me about it. I spent lunch sitting in my car listening to the radio.

 
Also watched it in school as it happened. Woke up early one Saturday morning many years later and saw the live footage of Columbia breaking up. Living in Houston back then you knew it was the death knell for NASA.

Anyone else remember the very special episode of Punky Brewster? It aired like less than 2 months after the tragedy.

 
Fennis said:
One of the positives that came out of the disaster, was NASA did go on a major hiring drive. They hired a bunch of astronauts after that. Amazing they were able to fill all those positions.
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And by astronauts, you mean Nuclear Engineers. Naval Reactors took over their program because they couldn't run it. They essentially flew things into space without actually physically testing the materials. Their method of testing was a chalkboard and a math equation instead of actually simulating their materials in stressful environments and using good engineering practice to QA their product afterwards. Crazy to think about it now. NASA is much better today because of the nuclear program.

 
I guess I'm the old man of the group here - like Bernie Sanders shouting and waving my arms old. I was a full grown adult at work in a real estate office (think glengarry glen ross) in Florida when we heard it was "down in the Atlantic". We were watching a replay of the launch and just about #### my pants when it exploded.

 
Seems appropriate to list this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsAk3EJ1X1w

It's short instrumental called "Contact Lost" that Steve Morse (Deep Purple) wrote after the Columbia tragedy. Astronaut Kalpana Chawla was a DP fan and exchanged e-mails with the band during the flight. Morse donated all songwriting royalties to the families of the lost astronauts.

RIP Challenger and Columbia :(

 
Just read this article. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/28/464744781/30-years-after-disaster-challenger-engineer-still-blames-himself

Wow. Sad.

Thirty years ago, as the nation mourned the loss of seven astronauts on the space shuttle Challenger, Bob Ebeling was steeped in his own deep grief.

The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol had tried to stop the launch. Their managers and NASA overruled them.

That night, he told his wife, Darlene, "It's going to blow up."

When Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, Ebeling and his colleagues sat stunned in a conference room at Thiokol's headquarters outside Brigham City, Utah. They watched the spacecraft explode on a giant television screen and they knew exactly what had happened.

Three weeks later, Ebeling and another engineer separately and anonymously detailed to NPR the first account of that contentious pre-launch meeting. Both were despondent and in tears as they described hours of data review and arguments. The data showed that the rubber seals on the shuttle's booster rockets wouldn't seal properly in cold temperatures and this would be the coldest launch ever.

Ebeling, now 89, decided to let NPR identify him this time, on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger explosion.

"I was one of the few that was really close to the situation," Ebeling recalls. "Had they listened to me and wait[ed] for a weather change, it might have been a completely different outcome."

We spoke in the same house, kitchen and living room that we spoke in 30 years ago, when Ebeling didn't want his name used or his voice recorded. He was afraid he would lose his job.

"I think the truth has to come out," he says about the decision to speak privately then.

"NASA ruled the launch," he explains. "They had their mind set on going up and proving to the world they were right and they knew what they were doing. But they didn't."

A presidential commission found flaws in the space agency's decision-making process. But it's still not clear why NASA was so anxious to launch without delay.

The space shuttle program had an ambitious launch schedule that year and NASA wanted to show it could launch regularly and reliably. President Ronald Reagan was also set to deliver the State of the Union address that evening and reportedly planned to tout the Challenger launch.

Whatever the reason, Ebeling says it didn't justify the risk.

"There was more than enough [NASA officials and Thiokol managers] there to say, 'Hey, let's give it another day or two,' " Ebeling recalls. "But no one did."

Ebeling retired soon after Challenger. He suffered deep depression and has never been able to lift the burden of guilt. In 1986, as he watched that haunting image again on a television screen, he said, "I could have done more. I should have done more."

He says the same thing today, sitting in a big easy chair in the same living room, his eyes watery and his face grave. The data he and his fellow engineers presented, and their persistent and sometimes angry arguments, weren't enough to sway Thiokol managers and NASA officials. Ebeling concludes he was inadequate. He didn't argue the data well enough.

A religious man, this is something he has prayed about for the past 30 years.

"I think that was one of the mistakes that God made," Ebeling says softly. "He shouldn't have picked me for the job. But next time I talk to him, I'm gonna ask him, 'Why me. You picked a loser.' "

I reminded him of something his late colleague and friend Roger Boisjoly once told me. Boisjoly was the other Thiokol engineer who spoke anonymously with NPR 30 years ago. He came to believe that he and Ebeling and their colleagues did all they could.

"We were talking to the right people," Boisjoly told me. "We were talking to the people who had the power to stop that launch."

"Maybe," Ebeling says with a weak wave as I leave. "Maybe Roger's right."
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