Its been 35 years, where were you?

8th grade, and I always picture the classroom where we had science when this comes up, though I don't recall the actual first viewing; not sure whether it was at school, or just a million times on the news right afterward...

Brookings SD University cafeteria in a corner surrounded by a hundred other people looking up at the TV that was playing the event live.

stukndapast said:

In reply to bobzilla :

Thought Christa was from New Hampshire....?

She was.

 I was at work, and heard about it on my truck's radio.

 

It's my earliest memory. I was 2 and with my grandparents in their backyard in Titusville watching it in person.

In reply to bobzilla :

Teacher in space hoopla would be my guess. 

I had just left school and gotten home for lunch. I was in 2nd grade and remember it like it was today. My parents were in shock and no one would say anything, just glued to the tv. 

For those who'd like to know more about how it all happened, Netflix has a really good doc called "Challenger: The Final Flight". Goes into some detail about all the astronauts, including McAulliffe, how she was chosen, etc. And a lot about Morton Thiokol, who made the O-ring that failed. A lot of factors went into that failure, but the short version is that NASA had grown complacent and cocky.

stukndapast said:

In reply to bobzilla :

Teacher in space hoopla would be my guess. 

probably. Us country bumpkins still liked that fancy space stuff

Home sick from high school in the UK watching the launch live.  It was instantly obvious there were zero survivors despite the hopeful words from the commentators.

I can also tell you exactly where I was for the Columbia re-entry disaster.  I'd just been to traffic school to avoid points, I was just getting on the free way to go home when NPR broke in with an emergency announcement.

Sad days both.  

In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :

Columbia I was working the parts counter at the Hyundai/Kia/Suzuki/no-longer-Daewoo dealer.

bobzilla said:

stukndapast said:

In reply to bobzilla :

Teacher in space hoopla would be my guess. 

probably. Us country bumpkins still liked that fancy space stuff

 

Us too. I was in the 5th grade and they brought us all to the gym to watch on a big screen.  I was excited because I usually had to watch launches on tape when I got home.  I also got to meet the school psychologist for the first time for asking how to get a few more teachers into the space program. 

Two days old so I don't remember but it is one of those stories my parents tell about watching it with me from the hospital room.

gathered in the school library to watch the teacher go to space. It exploded and after a minute a teacher walked over to the TV in silence and shut it off. It was really horrible. I remember where I was when Columbia disintegrated too. :-( 

So from a lot of these comments, were all shuttle launches shown live in school over here in the USA?  In the UK I believe most if not all schools showed the first launch in 81 live.  I was still in elementary school then.  We all went to the gym and they brought in all the TV's in the school on rolling karts so we could all see it.  It was science fiction come to life for us.  But after the first launch we had to catch the replay on the 6:00pm news once we got home.

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

bobzilla said:

stukndapast said:

In reply to bobzilla :

Teacher in space hoopla would be my guess. 

probably. Us country bumpkins still liked that fancy space stuff

 

Us too. I was in the 5th grade and they brought us all to the gym to watch on a big screen.  I was excited because I usually had to watch launches on tape when I got home.  I also got to meet the school psychologist for the first time for asking how to get a few more teachers into the space program. 

that made me chuckle.

Groton Ct. with my engineering group at EB.  It was a very somber few days afterwards.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :

No, this was the only one I remember seeing live. I was a huge space shuttle geek so I either watched them on tape after school or would get my mom to bring me home for lunch to watch them. 

In reply to bobzilla :

They weren't ready for my sense of humor, that could be said of a lot of people I know. 

I remember my grandma telling me about the brave Teacher-Astronaut years later. My grandmother (also a teacher) LOVED that woman, even if she never met her. Between Judith and Christa, (as well as the other women in Group 8) my grandmother believed that American women had been liberated from the patriarchal constraints and assumptions of society. This was coming from a conservative, God-fearing, Reaganite. 
 

I was a senior in my last semester of college.  I ditched a morning class I couldn't really afford to miss so I could watch the live launch coverage on TV.

Then I ditched the rest of my classes to watch the aftermath coverage.

I was in school, trying hard to not be sick as my Crohnes was just manifesting.  The school didn't let anybody know what was going on, we all found out on the bus or once we got home.

I was sitting in 10th grade chemistry class watching it live on tv as it happened.  It was so unexpected, and most of us were dazed and trying to process what we had just witnessed. It even took the teacher a moment to process it before she turned off the tv.

I lived across the street from the University in a dumpy apartment.  I went  home to get lunch, flipped on the TV because I knew it was shuttle launch day, and was greeted by continuous replaying of the exploding rocket.

Year later it came out that the engineer who designed the "O" rings had written a memo that the rubber of the ring would fail below I believe 35 Deg F.   Launch was at like 29 deg F.      A totally avoidable tragedy.

The Morton Thiokol  Engineer had made a huge effort that fateful day to get that message across to NASA but he was shut down.  No one wanted to hear anything about canceling the launch after all the "teacher on board" publicity.

And Politicians are still over-ruling engineers and scientists who speak in facts.  

I was in 9th grade.  As some have pointed out, launches were getting somewhat routine by then but we were watching this one because of the teacher aspect.  My 8th grade science teacher had applied for the spot but he didn't make the cut.

I remember that it was astonishing how quickly kids came up with jokes about the disaster.  

Wow, 35 years! I was in 5th Grade and we got the news from the lunch line servers as they thwacked a scoop of spaghetti casserole onto our tray. I guess back then nobody really thought about managing kid's emotional responses to scary news!!