On January 28, 1986, I was home from school with the flu. I remember that, no matter what I did, I couldn't get warm, so I was sitting in a hot bath when my mom knocked on the bathroom door.
"There was an accident with the space shuttle," she said, in the same voice she used when she told me that my grandmother had died.
For the next few hours, I sat on the couch, wrapped up in as many blankets as we had, and watched one of the local news networks – probably ABC – cover the unfolding disaster. Because of the fever and the years between now and then, I can't recall a single detail other than how impossible the whole thing felt. How could something like that even happen? And did it mean that we'd never put people into space again?
This morning, I sat in my office and watched the shuttle Atlantis launch into space via a NASA TV stream through VLC on a monitor that is bigger than my family's 1986 television. When mission control gave the order to go with throttle up, I held my breath like I have every single time since the shuttle program was reinstated in 1988, and when the shuttle separated from the boosters and glided into orbit, I got something in my eye. Just take a moment, if you don't mind, and think about what it means that we can leave our planet, even if we've "only" gotten as far as the dark side of the moon. Think about what it means that something as incredible as putting humans into space and bringing them back safely to Earth today earns less media attention and public excitement than the typical celebrity breakup.
It is amazing that we can do this, and even though I've come to believe the shuttle program isn't the best way to spend NASA's tiny budget (which is a pitiful fraction of what it should be), I hope that there was a child watching the launch today who will feel inspired to reach out to the stars and see what's out there.
We humans are a flawed species, to put it mildly, and I think we could do a much better job taking care of our planet and each other … but when I see what we're capable of doing, it gives me hope that the future I pretended to live in twenty years ago will actually arrive some day.
FSMspeed, Atlantis.
Boston.com has a collection of awesome photos of the prep and launch.
I saw the Challenger disaster live on TV, too but due to the time difference, it was just before dinner. It was all my dad (who’s an engineer) and I talked about that evening and we watched all the special programmes on TV.
I was in college, taking a one-month course in programming games and simulations on a Commodore C-64 in the physics lab. I was stuck on a loop that wasn’t looping when I heard a holler in the hallway, and I ran down the hall to one of the prof’s offices that had a television. Forty people crammed into an office the size of a large bathroom, and we watched on a 13″ black-and-white television.
I’m old enough to remember Armstrong on the moon, as well, and I think it’s pretty sad that we’re giving up this mode of transportation, flawed as it is, without a plan for the future. Then again, I’m also pretty sad that we didn’t have some sort of plan in place for what to do about replacing the shuttle TEN YEARS AGO… Sigh.
Thanks, Wil, for sharing your memory. It’s times like this that I realize, despite the age gap, that many of us have had the same feelings at the same time. Makes me feel a little better when I gulp like you do on “go at throttle up” and keep my fingers crossed until the wheels hit the ground.
I was watching in my office so worried that the horrible person that is my boss would walk out and I would have to minimize the window (like I just did while typing this comment 😉 ). I was only 6 in 1986 but I remember how sad I was. I knew about the teacher on the shuttle and I understood the loss life. I always watch the NASA TV stream until they start the replays in case anything happens.
I too was home from school that day. Watched it live on TV. I’m a cynic and a pessimist. I knew immediately what had happened, and was not surprised. Something as complicated a machine as the shuttle would inevitably have something go wrong and given what it does when something goes wrong it does so catastrophically. Even knowing this I would go in a minute. For me the music of our space program is Countdown by Rush.
It was years before I could relax at that point in the launch. I am still reminded of Challenger each time I hear it, however. And we only have three more missions. Three more “go at throttle up” calls. After that, we hail the Russian cab to get to space. Shame on US.
I remember my Social Studies coming into the class room and in an ‘oh btw’ voice, saying that the shuttle had exploded. They set up TVs in the cafeteria for students to watch the coverage.
One thing I will always remember is sitting in a darkened theater waiting for Trek 4 to start when something flashed on the screen…
“The cast and crew of Star Trek wish to dedicate this film to the men and women of the spaceship Challenger whose courageous spirit shall live to the 23rd century and beyond…”
One question for Wil: If memory serves, wasn’t there a line in The First Duty that mentioned ‘McAullife Hall’ at Starfleet Academy?
I didn’t get to watch today’s launch, as I was on my way home and not near a TV.
However, I remember, to this day, the Challenger disaster. The prior summer, my family went to see it land at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. Even though the weather was too hot for this kid who was in a full body cast, I remember being fascinated seeing it land and not having to go to FL to do so.
On that fateful January day, I was in the 6th grade in L.A. (where I still live). As I arrived on campus, I was approached by the school janitor, as he was friendly to me and my mom. He told me what happened and I was in disbelief. I didn’t want to believe the shuttle could be destroyed.
Since it happened before class began that day, we weren’t told, officially, until we got into class by our teachers. There, one of the 5th grade classes came into our classroom and our teachers were scrambling to find an available TV to bring in. They ended up finding one, where we watched Peter Jennings on ABC for most of the day. Even after we stopped watching, our minds couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Even our teacher was stunned, as he had tried to get in the same teacher program but was unable to.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day. For a 10 yr. old kid, it was my first lesson in true reality. While I have never been eligible to be an astronaut due to my disability, I have always admired and respected NASA and the space shuttle program. Maybe one day, as Gene Roddenberry depicted in ST: DS9, we’ll have a space program open to all, regardless of disability.
It was a teacher workday that day where I lived, so my brother and I were staying with a sitter and her children. I don’t think we were in front of the TV when it happened, but within minutes we were watching the replay over and over. One of the sitter’s kids, who was younger than me, wanted to change the channel, and her older brother snapped, “This is important!” I can still see the plume and the parachute so vividly.
My classmates and I were close to it in a weird way … we’d written letters in support of our teacher being the one on the shuttle that day.
Great post, Wil. As flawed as the shuttle program has been, I have loved it for a variety of reasons. One of the strongest is that presents the kind of illusion of a big plane that just takes off into space and lands on a runway. A future where man is at home among the stars is one of my fondest hopes. I think more than anything (with its form and its routine of missions) the shuttle program has put the vision of that future as a truly viable one into people’s heads.
I was 5 when the Challenger accident happened. The first memory I have of space is being home sick watching the return to space flight in 1988. Since then I’ve soaked up everything I can about the space program.
I was in some random college class when Columbia broke up. I remember stopping by the computer lab I worked in after class and no one mentioned anything. I didn’t hear about it until I turned on the radio on my way home, hoping for news of a successful landing. I was in shock.
I know when the last shuttle returns to Earth that I will be very sad and angry, knowing that American culture has decided the manned space program is not worth investing in anymore. I can’t imagine giving up but it looks like the people who control the purse strings are perfectly fine with letting it rot. Very, very sad indeed.
i feel more sorry for the people who died in the shuttle. They didnt have to go on it noone was forcing them they where just making a step for mankind.
I knew I couldn’t be the only one whose memory of that day was inextricably linked to childhood illness.
Yours was less embarrassing than mine, as I had to be retrieved from the school restroom and sent home in a spare pair of pants. It adds total surreality to the memory, though. As soon as I was properly cleaned up, Mom sat me down in the tv room and said, “You need to see this.”
She had to explain. While I was excited about the space program, it was so incomprehensible that at first I thought the shuttle had set off some fireworks as a launch surprise.
To quote the geek prose love poem Aliens Enter The Conversation (Greg Beatty, totally awesome)…
“Aliens enter the state of Florida, to watch us hurl ourselves towards the sky. They cheer louder than anyone when we succeed, because they are lonely. But they don’t cry quite so loudly when we burn, because hey, it’s not their loved ones ascending to heaven.”
I was walking through the hallway of my little Catholic school in Northern Michigan. Unlike every other school in town we weren’t going to be watching it because we had better things to do than watch a bunch of Kirk wannabes… we had fottball games to win. Whatever. I was mad and hoping to use my +5 Invisibilty cloak to sneak into the counselor’s office. On my way out of Mr. Trapp’s English class one of the cheerleaders ran up to me. “Oh my God it blew up.” “What did?” “The shuttle. It blew up. Right on TV. OMG! OMG! OMG!” Now being a geek, I considered myself rather gullible and had resolved not to have the wool pulled over my eyes. When I found out she wasn’t kidding I was numb. I cried for days and days and days.
My birthday was two days later. I felt like I’d aged 15 years in those two days. In the pit of my stomach I was afraid that it would be the end of everything. We wouldn’t go back. No Mars mission. No stretching our imaginations. No Warp Drive. No “Vulcans”. No finding the best of ourselves in the struggle to overcome techincal and cultural limitations. I was numb for a long time. Thank God NASA didn’t throw in the towel.
I was in 11th grade geometry class when the Challenger disaster occurred. About 20 minutes into the class, the principle came over the loud speaker to tell the teachers to turn on the TV for some important news. We spent the rest of the class period watching the TV. I don’t remember much about the rest of the day except being sad. Later that spring, our high school band went to the AstroWorld band contest in Houston. We took a field trip to NASA and I bought a couple of Challenger commemorative coins that I still have and treasure today.
That day is one of four major defining dates that I remember, the other three being the Reagan assassination attempt, 9/11, and the Columbia disaster. My friend and college buddy is the Dentist who owns the building in Nacogdoches ,Tx that was on the news when a piece of the Columbia crashed through the roof (that side of the building was being used by an optometrist). He said the experience was surreal to say the least.
“Go at throttle up” always flashes me back to the 15-year-old me going weak at the knees as I watched that awful V-shaped cloud glowing in the sky on our common-room TV.
But the words I really never wanted to hear again, that stay with me both for their finality and for the helpless, hopeless tone in which they were uttered, are “Lock the doors”.
I was fortunate to be in Orlando today doing some Army training and we got to go on the roof of the building we were in to watch the launch. It was my first live launch and probably the last I’ll have the chance to see. It was pretty awesome from where we were at.
The world has lost a lot of perspective when it comes to the magnitude and scope of what we are capable of, and our obsession with sometimes meaningless detail represents a stumbling block to our advancement.
We have a great planet, and are a fascinating species, but we constantly stumble when it comes to moving forward, distracted by ourselves, distracted by minor issues, distracted by things that just aren’t important – to the point where we neglect relationships, neglect family, neglect our responsibility to our very planet, and to our species. We’ve spent far too long divided from where we need to be headed with our future – and blinded by those things that aren’t as important, while crucial things that SHOULD be thought about get lost along the way
I find the situation tragic and disappointing, and freely admit I am as guilty of it as anyone else, I just hope the rest of the world can acknowledge the difference we can make together and our responsibilities to each other, and our shared future.. but we face many distractions, many temptations, and unfortunately even our most noble souls can occassionally fall victim to their own mistakes, sometimes even tragically.. Humanity will always struggle with these issues, but perspective on what is most vitally important is what is essential for our future
Thank you for making this statement, I remember that moment all too well myself – especially as it came in the midst of some of the darkest years of my life.. I really hope we can someday achieve the vision of peace embraced by inspirational personages like Roddenberry, and hopefully move past our limitations and mistakes together as a species to embrace our responsibilites properly. Because honestly, I don’t want us to stay here, fighting with each other in the dirt, the risk of something bad happening wiping us all out is just too great, we have to move forward into space. Too risky keeping all our eggs in one basket.
I was taking my 9th grade science mid-term exam when our teacher came in and told us what happened. He stopped the test for awhile and took a small portable TV out of his office so we could watch the reports coming in. As has been said before this is our JFK moment.
I recall feeling sad. Also, wondering why of all the times it had to happen on the flight with the first “civilian” passenger. And I was angry. Someone screwed up and people died.
Now the shuttle project is done. That was just dust in my eye dammit! I would like to see some real exploration, with people, start but I think it will be a robotic exploration for the foreseeable future. It’s not the way I’d do it but I’m not yet emperor of the world.
I was working at Hughes Aircraft in Carlsbad California when I heard about the disaster. We had one of our own, Gregory Jarvis, on board as a Payload Specialist. I had met him and believed that with hard work, and the right project, I too could get a chance to fly on a Shuttle. That morning, at staff meeting, our manager didn’t say anything about it and, as I recall, I stood up, hurled a few expletives and walked out.
That following Sunday, there was a memorial ceremony at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. My daughter, about two years old, watched the tears on my face, never having seen me cry before. Several years later, she wanted to become an astronaut. She began planning at the age of 10 and did it all. Advanced math in high school, a degree in aerospace engineering, and is now a pilot in the USAF. She didn’t even get to apply for the program.
I worked on Ares I-X for three years and in spite of the doomsayers, the flight was brilliant. The decision to kill Constellation has brought manned spaceflight in the United States to a screeching halt. We have been spacefaring nation for over 40 years, but that is now done. Commercial entities may have manned suborbital in the next few years but that is the equivalent of riding a bicycle to driving Formula 1.
@reidmcc – FSMspeed = godspeed for us Flying Spaghetti Monster fans…
I remember the excitement of sitting in the library in second grade when this tragedy happen, and then all of a sudden a quiet fell over everyone and we did not really know what had gone on, but you could tell something was wrong. Thanks for remembering this event, and do not forget the Columbia either.
If we spent as much on science as we do on the military, I think we would have colonized Mars already.
Note: During Atlantis’ takeoff… has anyone seen a roll like that as soon as it took off?
I was in 4th grade. I always have had a fascination with space and science, and knew this launch was a big deal.
I was kept in class while the rest of the kids went to PE due to not finishing some work (a rare instance for me back then). As I was working, my teacher brought in a TV. The launch had already happened by then, so I was not watching the footage of the explosion live. Even still, it impacted me greatly. I wanted to know what happened and was transfixed as the ABC coverage discussed things at great length.
I remember after the investigation was complete, I would go to our local library and regularly pull the NASA report on the accident off the shelf. I would sit and stare at the images, more fascinated by the science and technology of things than anything, as I had not yet had the personal and visceral experience of death in my head to taint the analysis.
Alas, I never became an astronaut or anything associated with NASA, but I still love space and find myself looking up at the stars in wonder regularly. It saddens me that I missed today’s launch, but I would love to find a way to make it to the new final launch that was discussed on the news.
I remember that very well. My grandfather was one of the head electricians (at Rockwell) on both the Apollo and Space Shuttle projects. He’d retired about a year or two before the disaster, but it was still a point of pride for our family, and we watched them religiously back then. I still keep track of the missions, even now that he’s been gone for a few years, and I keep close track of the future vehicle and proposals.
So odd that so many of us were home sick that day. I’ll never forget how awful the reaction of Christa McAuliffe’s parents was to watch as they realized what had happened. As a nation we’ve become so blasé about shuttle launches, but I’ve never taken one for granted after the Challenger disaster. I have the same reaction as you, Wil, to “go with throttle up”, and I still find the launches amazing enough to make me teary-eyed.
Thanks so much for the tweet about the live coverage. I would have missed it if not for you, and that would have been a shame.
It’s very rare here in Australia to see any coverage on TV so NASA TV is fabulous. I watched as far as the close out of the white room before setting an alarm for 410am and then getting two hours of shut eye. I woke up with under ten minutes to go until launch.
I too still hold my breath at about T+73 for the call to throttle up.
I’m always relieved when they make orbit.
Just one question Wil, and I will probably feel dumb when you answer, but what does FSM stand for? It’s probably right in front of me, but right now it escapes my sleep deprived brain.
Amen, Wil.
I get that something in my eye every time they go up and come home, too.
I remember watching the Challenger disaster from my best friend’s family’s kitchen. I was 8. Not too long after, I went to Space Camp, twice. 🙂 The second time I was in geek heaven when I found they’d modeled the new dorms after the Enterprise. I wanted to be an astronaut then. Instead I became an actor, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, since we have the privilege of being *anyone*…but I still stargaze and wonder what it might have been like.
The retiring of the shuttle fleet with no immediate plans for a replacement US manned space program makes me so very sad.
Reaching for the stars has always been a wonderful part of the…human spirit, I suppose. There are a myriad of reasons why we should continue manned space exploration but on some level, the neatest reason is because we *can*.
The Future is, indeed, incredibly cool. Thanks for the lovely post.
I am a space freak who just finished a scifi novel, Hel’s Bet – http://helsbet.com – about kickstarting an open source Singularity by stealing space shuttle Enterprise. I’d love Wil Wheaton to pilot Enterprise in the movie ;^)
I’ve never posted here, but after reading this I had to say I know exactly what you mean. I can distinctively remember being home sick with my older brother “baby-sitting” me, standing in front of the television in my underwear, trying to understand what just happened. I can still see the plume spiraling out… A quarter of a century later I’m 35 and I still can’t bring myself to watch shuttle take offs on TV. The best I can do is listen to coverage, post-flight, on NPR and hope for the best.
regardless of how I feel about NASA and its programs, you have to respect someone putting their life on the line for something they are passionate about.
Thanks for the wonderful post Wil!
I am from NH, and my mom worked with Christa McAuliffe’s husband, Steve, for years. I knew them and their kids from company softball games, etc.
Our whole school was in the gym (I was in 5th grade) to watch “NH’s own Teacher Astronaut” launch into space. It took several minutes for the teachers to comprehend what we had all just watched.
And the whole place was dead silent for what seemed like forever.
We eventually went back to our classrooms and the next thing I knew, my Dad came to pick me and my little sister up from school. He had tears in his eyes and it was the first time I’d seen either of my parents cry.
I’ve held my breath at “go for throttle up” ever since too.
I will never forget that day.
Thank you for your contributions to our space program, Scott. It's beyond cool that you read my silly little blog.
FSM is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Ramen.
Coincidentally, I was also sick at home the day of the Challenger disaster. I remember that I had just finished watching a repeat of “2010: The Year We Make Contact” on HBO when I turned the channel just in time to see the explosion.
Now, here we are at the real 2010: The year we retire the space shuttle.
“putting humans into space and bringing them back safely to Earth today earns less media attention and public excitement than the typical celebrity breakup”
Homo sapiens have the capacity for the sublime, yet aspire to the mediocre.
It really is strange that so many of us were home sick. I was 8 years old, in 3rd grade, sick with the flu, but excited about watching the shuttle. My mom had always been fascinated by space flight (when I was even younger, she woke me up at some ungodly hour to watch a night launch), and it had rubbed off. And, of course, Christa McAuliffe was on the flight — a girl, a teacher, a role model for kids like me. I’d like to hope that if I hadn’t been home alone, someone would have stopped me from watching the replays over and over.
Years later, my husband and I took a side-trip to KSC during our honeymoon. One of the presentations we saw that day described space flight as a controlled explosion followed by a controlled fall. When put that way, it’s kind of amazing that those tragedies are the exceptions, not the rule, you know?
I was watching the launch live – one of my teachers had been an alternate for the Teacher in Space program, so we got a satellite feed. I was watching with her…and I will never, as long as I live, forget the look on her face when it became apparent that something had gone incredibly, horribly awry. To that point in my life, I had never seen a teacher cry. It was so deeply unsettling.
I couldn’t watch launches for years after that. Then I had kids of my own, and they always wanted to watch. Twenty-four years after Challenger, I still hold my breath when Mission Control intones “Go at throttle up.” It took years for me to be able to articulate to my sons why I had that reaction.
As a currently enrolled astronomy undergraduate student it is nice to see your support for the space program. I know you’re a nerd and obviously I am too, but it means a lot still the same. The politics involved with my future profession can become discouraging and disheartening. Thank you Wil.
I haven’t watched a launch in years. But I remember, as well, Challenger. I was in 7th grade. We were in gym class that day, and the teacher brought in the AV cart to let us watch the live broadcast. I don’t remember being excited about the launch so much as I was thrilled not to have to play sports. Then the explosion. I remember my teacher in tears. That’s about it.
It’s sad that the shuttle program is ending. But, like others have said, it was time years ago, had they been forward thinking enough to have something else to offer.
Why is it programs like space exploration and public education are first to get cut? Don’t those in charge realize that these two are the probable keys to our survival as a nation and a species???? Oh, wait…employing logic….never mind.
I also was home sick from 6th grade that day, and watched it live. I get that same twinge at every launch.
Not long after that I was playing an old Commodore game called “Project Space Station,” where you schedule launches and plan payloads and astronaut crews and budgets and such, with the goal of completing a space station. One day I brought a shuttle out of orbit, but forgot to let the spacewalking astronaut back inside first. I never played that damn game again, just from sheer guilt.
The post-launch maneuvers are dependent upon the target destination. They are updated until the T-31 second call, after which the Shuttle computers make the call. (A delay in launch can cause an adjustment to the maneuvers, though fine-tuning is always done on approach to the target.) That roll procedure was necessary because of the “current” (at time of launch) position of the ISS.
When the Challenger explosion happened, my mom was watching it on TV and me and my twin brother were about 8-9 months old(I’m now 25). She called my dad in hysterics and kept saying “They’re dead, they’re all dead!” into the phone. It took him about 5 minutes to get her calmed down enough to explain that it was the shuttle, not his babies.
Unfortunately, my generation is just an inkling past this “where were you?” moment, but I got to experience that mooment with (in order) Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9/11, and the Columbia explosion. I agree Wil, we need to take care of our planet better, cuz some serious sh*t is going down.
I worked the morning shift airing NPR’s “Morning Edition” at KGOU, the University of Oklahoma’s college radio station. I then went back to the dorms and crashed, thinking it was “just another shuttle launch”. My roommate told me what happened when I woke up.
===
I got to see Atlantis’ launch last year in person.
There’s only two left…if you’ve never seen a shuttle launch in person, you really should.
Note: this post fueled by sleep deprivation and cold meds…
When the Challenger blew up, it was one of the first launches I could remember not watching live. I was sure I had jinxed it…
Our principal came in to class and told us “as you know, the shuttle has been going into space” and I just knew what happened… We spent the day watching the news on a tv they rolled into the classroom.
Like you, I held my breath this morning when I heard those words, “go for throttle up”.
But how cool is it that we come from a generation who knows what that means… What MECO and “SRB sep” means. A generation of geeks who were raised to the sound of sonic booms and rocketdyne tests and dreaming of Space Camp (and Lea Thompson)… Who stood in awe of names like Enterprise, Colombia, Challenger, Discovery… It made the inevitable nuclear holocaust a little more bearable.
Man, I really really need to see “The Dream is Alive” in IMAX now… but the theater at usc is only showing hubble 3d and some other 3d silliness… That scene with the escape baskets….
Wil,
It is not an issue of whether or not we use the shuttle, but whether we continue to look beyond the stark barrier which is Earth. The shuttle is just a means to an end, and one which given the track record may not be the best possible solution.
Don’t want to get hung up on the semantics of using the shuttle versus the bigger picture here.
I was in 10th grade for the Challenger launch. I’m not sure if any of the classes in school were watching it, I know mine wasn’t. I first heard about the explosion in the hallway going from one class to another. A student said “The Space Shuttle blew up.” and my immediate thought was “That’s not something to joke about.” I got to my next class, English, and after the bell rang our teacher told us what had happened. I’m not sure if a tv was brought into that room for us to watch or if it was my next class after that, but I remember watching and it was just not real.
With the end of the shuttle program we made plans to come down here to Florida to see the last launch of Atlantis. Me, my husband, my dad, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my 6 yr old niece & nephew. It was the first launch for all of us.
Until just three weeks ago the plan was for us all to watch the launch together. But, thanks to NASA I abandoned my family to watch without them. NASA sponsored a Tweetup, I entered, and out of over 1000 entries I was one of the lucky 150 chosen. We were responsible for our own travel, lodging & food but it was really a small price to pay for the experience of a lifetime!
I got to watch my first and only live shuttle launch from the press area. It was beautiful, breathtaking, tense, exciting, exhilarating, amazing. There’s nothing like it. I’m not ashamed to say that as she flew I had tears streaming down my face (just as I do now thinking of it again.) It was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in my life.
Anyone who has any opportunity to see one of the last two launches live should do it.
Not even 12 hours later and I still can’t believe it was real, and that it was as perfect as it was.
Wil, if you’ve never seen a launch live, GO. I promise you that you will never regret it!
~Sharon
4th Grade, and already crazy for space.
http://apollosdtr.livejournal.com/31872.html
For Columbia, I was running late to volunteer for the Expanding Your Horizons conference at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Almost exactly 7:45 am Central time would be when I parked my car and was walking towards the building. I didn’t find out until about 10:30, and the rest of the day was just numb.
One of these days I’ll blog about what ST:TNG meant to me. But not yet.
What a sad day that was, too. And then 2003 came. You are so right, the media has got it backwards on what what is important and what is not. What a great post! Have a nice weekend, Wil. =]
My sons name is ‘Tobias Zephram’ .. you never know!! (OK spelling is the alt. version which we preferred…). Maybe he’ll be a pioneer one day. (My husband drew the line at Tiberius). So what would you have NASA spend their money on instead? Longer space flight?
I was just over 21 years old on January 28, 1986, and sleeping in after the previous night’s work at the movie theatre and when I turned on the TV, CNN was going to commercial with footage of an American flag at half-mast. My first thought was, “Uh oh. Who died?”
I hung around long enough to find out and I couldn’t believe it, either.
I had another shift at the theatre that day and the entire time I was outside, I found myself staring at birds in flight, wishing we could do it as easily as they did.
I saw this video on MTV later that year and bought the 7″ single. Jean-Michel Jarre dedicated the tune to the seven Challenger astronauts.
Now when I hear it, I think of the video — and I get something in my eye.
My wife and I would love to be able to coordinate a Florida visit with some kind of space-vehicle launch, but no luck yet.
While I may not have been around for the Challenger disaster, I vividly remember how I felt for Columbia. Everyday I think about how incredible it is that we have the power to put a human into space and I dream about what it would be like to drift among the stars. I was one of those kids who was inspired by what I learned about the space race, the shows I watched on tv with my parents and the science fiction I read. I’m in my second year at Oregon State University (W00tstock 2.1 was amazing btw) and it is my dream to graduate and be a part of making the future I watched on tv, read about growing up and dream about every time I look at the sky come true.
I grew up in Florida going outside to watch the shuttle launches in the sky. When I was in kindergarten, our entire class went out to the playground to watch the Challenger launch. We were all excited because there was a teacher(!) on board. (When you’re in kindergarten, the only grownups that exist are your parents and your teacher. So this was big.) I remember seeing the initial takeoff, and then everything looked kind of funny. There were more bright, burning parts than I recalled there being on previous launches.
Since we weren’t watching it on TV or anything, we just went back into the classroom and finished our day. Only when we went home was it clear that we had just watched 7 people die. The next day, the school brought someone in from some sort of scientific place (NASA or the local college or something) to talk about what happened. I remember feeling incredibly sad and not understanding anything. I hadn’t had any relatives or friends die at that point; the whole experience is burned permanently in my brain.
I love the space program. It informed most of my childhood. Space and space exploration feels like an organic part of being an American to me — I’ve gone to Kennedy Space Center so many times. I am sad that the shuttle is no more. I’m hopeful greater economic prosperity in the future will reinvigorate our research.
I’ve become a scientist myself — albeit in bioinformatics, the newest awesome science thing. I think all those nights and afternoons watching science in action probably had something to do with encouraging me to pursue my own career.