30 Years ago Today

[C-dub]

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist ... r-explodes

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

Thirty years ago today I was sitting in my barracks watching this launch on the barracks television in The Navy. Where were you?

[txglock21]

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist ... r-explodes

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

Thirty years ago today I was sitting in my barracks watching this launch on the barracks television in The Navy. Where were you?

Working in school library, senior year of high school. We had a tv on, but no sound. I didn't know what was going on until the teacher turned up the sound after it happened.

[Pawpaw]

I was stationed in Germany with my family. We had been out, but rushed home to watch the launch on AFN (American Forces Network). Arriving home, I went straight into the living room to turn on the TV so it could warm up (remember those days?). My wife and kids ran upstairs to put coats away and such and would join me to watch the launch.

When the picture came up, the countdown was down to the last few seconds. Wanting my family to hurry up and get back downstairs to watch it, I counted down the last 5 seconds. I stood there and watched what appeared to be a flawless liftoff until the explosion. Seeing that shook me to the core and I literally screamed, "NO!!!". That brought my wife downstairs in a dead run. It took a minute or two for her to understand that I wasn't joking... the shuttle had just blown up.

[WildBill]

I was at work in California with no radio or TV.
I was scheduled to have lunch with a friend that day and she called me to tell me the bad news.
I first saw the video at the restaurant where we had lunch.

Soon after the Challenger explosion, an unmanned Titan 34D exploded 8 seconds after launch at VAFB.
After this failure the entire fleet was grounded, which meant that the US didn't have the capability to launch large satellites.
I went to work as a contractor on the Titan Recovery program.
It was about three years before the Air Force launched another satellite.

[Breny414]

I was a student at UT at the time... Freshman year. I never missed a chance to watch a launch on TV. I went to see STS-2 and STS-4 at the Cape.

I was in my student housing watching it live. I was glued to the TV the rest of the day and didn't make any of my classes.

[Jago668]

We were watching it in elementary school.

[anygunanywhere]

I was standing in my living room watching while talking on the phone with the Anahuac, TX Fire Chief.

What I remember the most about the next few days was how Ronald Reagan led the country in dealing with the grief over losing the Challenger crew.

[TexDotCom]

I was in second grade, in the hallway with the other students watching the launch on a big CRT television the teachers wheeled out on a cart. The launch had an impact on all of us...the subsequent explosion much moreso.

[Charles L. Cotton]

Once of the teachers in the running for a ride on the shuttle was in the Friendswood ISD system, but I don't recall which school. I don't remember where I was, but I was not watching the launch. I saw it on a new bulletin not long after it exploded.

Chas.

[The Annoyed Man]

I was out in my company's warehouse and missed the live explosion. When I came back inside the office, the owner's crackhead daughter told me "the shuttle just blew up after it launched" like it was some kind of joke or something. I was floored. I grew up with the space program. The first Apollo moon landing occurred during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. The astronauts were my personal heroes. So the way that woman broke the news to me pretty much confirmed for me how low she had sunk in the character department. Of course, most of us who were alive then remember what we were doing, but my own memory is also marred by the recollection of a wicked person.

[joe817]

I had just left my office, heading towards the elevator in our office building, when the secretary of our real estate firm, ran out into the corridor and said to me: "Joe, you might want to come in here and watch this. The space shuttle just blew up on launch. Dashed back into the office, and all the associates were glued to the TV. We watched in horror of the reruns of the tragic event. I cancelled my appointments for the rest of the day, and watched the news until they stopped broadcasting. A sad day for all of us.

[ELB]

I was at my desk at Tinker AFB when someone came into the office and told us the Shuttle had blown up. It was almost lunch time so some of us headed to the Officers Club where we often ate and watched the re-runs over and over on the TV there, until we had to head back to work.

[Jusme]

I was at work on a construction site in North Dallas. the only radio playing was in Spanish. I remember the music stopped and then Spanish speaking on the radio ( I don't speak Spanish) all of the Spanish speaking workers stopped and gathered around the radio. I asked one of them what was going on and he told me that the shuttle had exploded. I found another radio and turned it to an English speaking station and listened to the reports on the radio. My co worker and I left early, no work was getting done anyway, and I watched the news well into the night.

[n5wd]

I was working for the City of Fort Worth at the time, working on the computer systems controlling the traffic lights. I was working on an intersection, not listening to the broadcast radio at the time, when there was a collision at the intersection. I walked over to the two cars, and remember the woman in one of the cars crying hysterically. I tried to find out if she was injured... she just kept repeating "it blew up". Took quite a while to find out what she was talking about. She had gotten so distracted listening to the radio that she plowed through the intersection without noticing it. Luckily the car she T-boned had only minor injuries.

After finishing up on the controller, I stopped in at a nearby 7-Eleven to grab something hot to drink.. they had a television going... It was a long day, indeed.

[n5wmk]

At the time, I was Chief Engineer at a TV station in Bryan, TX. The news director and I were visiting a sister station in Alexandria, LA. We were sitting in the newsroom, visiting with that station's engineer and news director. We watched the launch and the subsequent catastrophe, and got on the phone back to Bryan to get them moving on coverage, then cut our trip short and got on the road back home.