Twenty Fifth Anniversary Of Challenger Disaster

[D Yizz]

I was in 8th grade. Heard it on the news on the bus on the way back. When I got to my grandma's home, it was on all channels. (All 4 of them cuz she didnt have cable, lol!)

 

[cncrd]

9th grade chemistry class. They came over the PA system and announced it. We had a television in the classroom, so we stopped class and watched it, and the room filled up with other teachers and thair classes pretty quickly.

I still remember sitting in that class that day, before it happened, and thinking "I'll be in this f*cking class the rest of my life". Nothing to do with what happened, just a coincidental thought on that day. One of the reasons I remember it so clearly.

 

[acidboy]

we call it 2nd year high school here... found out on the news, and watched footages of it on the u.s. armed forces channel on uhf.

 

[Reggs]

I heard that one of the astronaut's kids were in their classroom watching live as it took off and exploded.

 

[Mark from Plano]

There were lots of school children watching this particular launch because as a public relations ploy to re-energize interest in the space program, NASA selected a school teacher (Christa McAuliffe) to be the first civilian to go into space. It was highly publicized to schools ("First Teacher in Space" and all that). So many schools had specifically set aside time and brought TV's into the classrooms so that kids could watch.

As a public relations strategy it didn't work out all that well.

 

[StephenHero]

I watched the NASA video of the investigation report today. Fascinating stuff. It's assumed the astronauts all survived the initial booster disintegration based on the fact that they had activated switches to try and restore power to their capsule. They were conscious for anywhere between a few seconds up until the capsule hit the ocean. I can't even imagine that.

 

[Connemara]

Originally Posted by StephenHero

I watched the NASA video of the investigation report today. Fascinating stuff. It's assumed the astronauts all survived the initial booster disintegration based on the fact that they had activated switches to try and restore power to their capsule. They were conscious for anywhere between a few seconds up until the capsule hit the ocean. I can't even imagine that.
+1.

 

[Douglas]

I was in 3rd grade. We didn't watch it live but the teachers called us together right after it happened to tell us the news. I guess it was one of those seminal moments. I remember the teachers telling us that they remembered where they were when JFK was killed and that this would be our version of it.

One of the astronauts (Judy Resnick) had a nephew who was in my little brother's class, but they weren't in the school yet - the next year they were in first grade and that's when he learned that his classmate's aunt had a pretty somber claim to fame. I can only imagine what the scene would have been had it happened a year later; no doubt the whole class of first graders would have been watching.

 

[Logan]

I was way too young to remember

 

[willpower]

Originally Posted by Slopho

Its because they couldn't get 7 UP!!

No one remembers this joke that came out 1 week after the accident?


I do. Bums me out how time slips by in a blink of an eye.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

The date was my birthday and I was on my way to work. By the time I got there one of the waiters, a screaming queen. was running around cracking jokes about it. What does NASA stand for? Need another seven astronauts. He kept cracking on about it all day with these stupid banal jokes.

 

[fredfred]

As documented in one of Richard Feynman's books, the explosion was caused by an o-ring that failed to seal. The probable cause was that the o-ring didn't expand quickly enough due to in-elasticity caused by the cold temperatures that day. The temperature at launch time was the coldest it had been for any launch.

There were engineers that were very concerned about the cold problem, but they either were pushed aside or were not forceful enough with their opinions.

 

[JayJay]

I was on my way to class when it happened. I know Ronald McNair's brother, Carl, and have spoken to him quite a bit about his brother and what happened on that day.