Challenger

[ciroccoj]

Wow. I had completely forgotten that today was the 20th anniversary of the Challenger explosion.
Edit: Ah, that's why I forgot. Because it's not today, it's tomorrow. Thanks, fes42!

General question out there: were you around when it happened? Do you remember it? What do you remember?

I was in the "red room" at J.S.W. high school - basically it was a hallway that had red carpets, and the upper-year students would hang out there between classes. Some Guy (I think it was Alan Gardiner, but wouldn't swear on that) said to Some Other Guy (Joe Gauthier, but again I could be making this all up) "Hey, did you hear about the shuttle?"

"What?"

"It blew up."

"Ha ha."

"No, I'm serious."

"Right."

(Some Other Guy, possibly Bruce Furlonger) "That's not funny, man."

"I'm serious!"

And then somebody else said they'd heard it on the news too, and then during the class change, one of my teachers (Mr. Spence, I know that one for sure) was talking to another teacher about it and it sank in that it was for real. As I recall it, everybody was talking about it that day, and one of the things that struck me about it was how many of my teachers remembered exactly where they'd been when they heard JFK was shot, which naturally came up in a "Hey, I wonder if years from now this generation's going to remember where they were when the Challenger exploded, like we remember JFK being shot" kind of way. One even remembered what mold he'd been looking at under the microscope when a fellow student had rushed into his classroom yelling the news (about JFK, not the shuttle).

Strange, the awful things that stick in your memory.

And here, from cabenson, is an interesting linke: Seven Myths About the Challenger Disaster.

Comments

[fes42.livejournal.com]

LJ drive by:

Check out my post in my journal.

FYI it was 1/28/86 - I got it wrong too.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. And the other perspective on the disaster, from a somewhat more invested POV than mine. I mean, I toyed with being an astronaut, but mostly wanted to be an astronomer, and by the time of the shuttle disaster I was learning that me and physics actually didn't get along that well, despite my talents at math. I was starting to turn away from that particular dream already; the shuttle disaster moved me along a little bit more.

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

My problem is that I have very clear memories of it, except that they're wrong. I very clearly remember sitting in the living room at Grandma and Grandpa's in MN, watching the launch on television, being excited because of the first American woman in space, and she was a teacher (and at that stage, everyone I knew was a teacher or a fire-fighter...) and then turning to Mom and saying "that's not right".

Except that we weren't in MN in January of 1986, we were in Mildura, and my grandparents were back in the US. So I don't know where that "memory" comes from.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

My problem is that I have very clear memories of it, except that they're wrong.
Wow. That's... kinda cool actually. In a weird way. That you could have strong memories of something that didn't happen at all.

It's like when there was that survey that found that something like 20 x the number of people who were actually at Woodstock, think they were at Woodstock ;)

[shiningmoon.livejournal.com]

I think I was watching in school, but I would have been in high school, so I'm not sure how accurate my memory is, either.

[shiningmoon.livejournal.com]

Just remembered. We may well have watched it in class, because one of the teachers in my high school was in the running to be on that shuttle flight.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Yowch, that must've been an eerie experience for them.

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, I was in school when it was announced.

I remember

[jessebee.livejournal.com]

more vividly than I care to, actually. I was working front desk at a local hotel (I lived on the Gulf Coast of FL then) and if the weather was very clear, which it was that day, you could see the con trails of the shuttle launches. The restaurant manager and I were standing in front of the big glass windows which faced east, watching the shuttle go up. And then the con trail split, and I knew something didn't look right. So we quick turned on the news, and ... nothing at first. Nobody -- or nobody local, anyway -- wanted to voice the fear.

It was, next to 9/11, about the worst day of my life.

Re: I remember

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

The restaurant manager and I were standing in front of the big glass windows which faced east, watching the shuttle go up. And then the con trail split, and I knew something didn't look right.
Oh god, that's horrifying. Christ.

It was, next to 9/11, about the worst day of my life.
I can imagine.

[snarkhunter.livejournal.com]

I was home. School hadn't started yet (west coast), and I was sitting in my bedroom at my little table, coloring. I was six years old.

[snarkhunter.livejournal.com]

No, wait. I was seven.

[jenniferjames.livejournal.com]

I was in the sixth grade. The bell rang and I was leaving gym class and the kids walking from the main building were talking about it because they'd seen it on tv.

[woffproff.livejournal.com]

I was grad school and Culturevulture was my roommate. We were getting ready to go to class---she was brushing her teeth, I was sitting on our sofa watching "The Price Is Right." They broke in with a CBS News Special Report.

Me: Hey, Michele, Dan's on!

CV: What, did someone pop Reagan?

Me: Ohmygod no, it must be something really awful! Dan Rather looks way too upset for it to be Reagan!

Of course, it was all anyone talked about for the rest of the day, and I had a night class that evening---there we were all saying 'hey, you know, we will always remember this, where we were, for the rest of our lives. It will be like our JFK moment.'

And it does still haunt my historical memory.

Yep, that's how it was...

[culturevulture7.livejournal.com]

We knew it had to be something serious because Dan was on, not the morning news person (although at that point, I'm not sure CBS had morning news).

What was bizarre is that I can still remember that not two nights before, the news had had a snarky line about the on again off again shuttle launch, because they'd scrubbed several times that week.

And remember, Woff, we went out to Something Hill because we had to do that museum project? I was GA for that lunch American history class and we discussed it for a little bit in the beginning.

I will always remember that there wasn't a whole night of news, too. NBC ran The A-Team (which featured something blowing up), then ran their news thing, and ABC ran Moonlighting which had a plane blowing up.

And I remember that the last song I heard that night was a DJ saying that he was happy the long day was over and playing "Night Shift" by the Commodores. I ended up using that experience in a long ST: Next Gen story I never finished.

Re: Yep, that's how it was...

[woffproff.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's bizarre---I had totally forgotten we went out to Pebble Hill that day for the museum project!

And was it you or someone else who told me later that there was a teacher from Jax who had been the backup teacher to be on the shuttle, and some of the kids from Jax were saying that it was a darn shame the nice lady teacher was on board and not this guy, because he was a real jerk? (Which I realize 20 years later sounds so heartless, but I swear I remember that....just don't remember who told me.)

Re: Yep, that's how it was...

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

And I remember that the last song I heard that night was a DJ saying that he was happy the long day was over and playing "Night Shift" by the Commodores.
Ooh. That's... yeah, I'd want to use that in a fic too.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Me: Ohmygod no, it must be something really awful! Dan Rather looks way too upset for it to be Reagan!
Sorry, but - LOL!! "It must be something really awful!" It's hard to remember, so many years later, that Reagan was actually not universally adored while he was president.

And yeah, I remember Dan. His voice was starting to go by the middle of the day.

And it does still haunt my historical memory.
Mine too.

[ladystarstruck.livejournal.com]

I was at home on a school day, because of exams I believe, although I might have been sick. I remember my mom calling me down from my room to watch on TV. I think I was more profoundly affected by it than I would have been by the equivalent of JFK. Wanting to be an astronaut likely had a lot to do with it.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

I think I was more profoundly affected by it than I would have been by the equivalent of JFK. Wanting to be an astronaut likely had a lot to do with it.
Yeah, same here. Though I actually wanted to be an astronomer more than an astronaut. And actually, by 1986 I was starting to realize that, though I was good at math, physics was not my friend and so the whole astronomy career choice might have to be reconsidered.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

I was in college, and I didn't have a class that morning, so I was watching the launch on my little black and white portable tv that my parents had gotten me for Christmas a year or two previous. So, yeah, I watched it live, and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I might have moved into the dorm lounge to watch the coverage in color afterwards, but I saw the actual explosion live on my little black and white tv. Funny, I also saw the moon landing in '69 on a black and white television, although they were certainly much more common then.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

So, yeah, I watched it live, and couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I can imagine. ::shudders::

[(Anonymous)]

I don't remember. I mean I remember listening to news reports that evening but I don't remember what I was doing when I heard about it first.

daf