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30 Years Since The Challenger Disaster: Where Were You? (space.com)
Martin S. writes: Thirty years ago today, NASA suffered a spaceflight tragedy that stunned the world and changed the agency forever. When I mentioned this at work most of my colleagues are too young to remember this first hand. When I heard the news, I was in a middle-school science class; our teacher walked us solemnly over to the school library, where we watched the television news. It hit especially hard because one of our other teachers had pursued the slot that was eventually filled by Christa McAuliffe.
In the gym, watching the launch with the rest of the school. I only remember the explosion, hearing gasps and then crying.
I was probably pooping myself at home. I was only seven months old.
Installing a Novell Network. We all gathered in the conference room to watch.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Thankfully not watching the launch, they interrupted class and announced the tragedy over the PA and we sat and discussed what it meant for a long time. I think I was just old enough to grasp the severity of it, it was certainly clear from the reaction of our teacher and the tone of the PA announcement. Very memorable moment in my life.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
... live, like million of others people I guess
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Who gives a shit?! This is something that's always bothered me: a major catastrophe anniversary and everyone's gotta put in their two cents worth about where THEY were and what THEY were doing at the time! That's totally fucking irrelevant! The disaster occurred, let's focus on THAT, NOT what you were fucking doing at the time, no one gives a shit about you! Buncha egomaniacs this species is...
And yet, here you are, giving YOUR opinion, like anyone cares.
Fucking USELESS ACs... I wish Slashdot would get rid of the AC concept entirely. It is FAR too often simply an excuse for abuse and hate-mongering.
with the rest of my class. Space Shuttle launches were something they stopped classes for back then, but we were all excited about this one because we knew a teacher was on the flight, and we would actually be taught LESSONS FROM SPACE. That was probably one of the most exciting things I could have imagined back then.
5th grade. One of the students from an adjacent classroom ran in and breathlessly announced that the shuttle had blown up. Instant silence. My teacher walked to the other 5th grade classroom to confer with the teacher there, then they opened the partition between the two classrooms and wheeled in the TV-and-VCR-on-a-cart so we could all watch the news together. I just remember feeling like I had been kicked in the gut.
I was 5 at the time, so I have some very vague memories of people being upset about it, but I don't remember any specifics. I remember more about the aftermath over the next couple years as my childhood memories start solidifying, plus my family was big into aerospace and the space program in general.
I was about 1 month away from being conceived. The first national tragedy (if you can call it that) I remember is the 1996 Olympics bombing, and that's just because I had just left the Olympics that night and it happened sometime between the time we left and the time we got home about 1.5 hours later.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Buncha egomaniacs this species is...
I notice you claim that other people have ego problems yet you feel compelled to tell other people how they should think. That's pretty interesting, wouldn't you say?
--
In my 7th grade class, Paul had just gotten a Swiss Army knife for Christmas and was having a problem not taking the chairs apart in the classroom (young people may now be astonished that kids carrying knives to school was normal just 30 years ago, in the pre-Bush America). So, when the Principal came in to "break the news" (I'm sure more than seven other people died that day) we immediately suspected and blamed Paul.
My god, were the tasteless Challenger jokes awful soon thereafter. Shameful - eleven year-old boys can be sociopaths.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's not really about where people were or what they were doing, that's just how we as humans prompt each other to share our feelings about events that happened so that we can relate to each other. Large scale tragedies and our experience of them are things that all people who lived through them have in common. I find it comforting to talk to other people about how they experienced these things, particularly strangers - anonymously or not.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
Lived in central FL at the time... 5th grade. We were moving stuff for a play. I was all excited about the 'separation' because I hadn't seen a day launch yet. Just night. I thought it was normal, but couldn't figure out why the number of objects (smoke plumes, really) we could see didn't add up to 2 srb's and 1 shuttle...
I had a sucky sig.
After that class was our morning break period. I immediately went to my next class, which was physics. In the back of the classroom, many of my classmates were huddled around a portable radio, listening to the news. No one said much. (I didn't actually see the video footage of the explosion until I got home that day.)
Yet the gods do not give lightly of the powers they have made,
And with Challenger and seven, once again the price is paid,
Though a nation watched her falling, yet a world could only cry,
As they passed from us to glory, riding fire in the sky!
- From "Fire In The Sky," written by Jordin Kare
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I was in third grade and we had a TV set up to watch the first teacher get launched into space. I had relatives working at NASA at the time and was obsessed with space so seeing it happen live in class was just that much more traumatic.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
True, but it also allows people to offer opinions that are different enough to the prevailing slashdot view without being eternally hounded for them.
I got rid of my Disqus account because I made the mistake of jokingly responding to some guy who was angry about the Minions all being male. The way a litany of MRA commenters (and one 'woman' who argued in such an identical way it was clear she was actually a guy) responded made it very clear to me that I would be followed around websites using Disqus and sea-lioned for ever more.
Slashdot is about 30% sea-lion. Commenting anonymously limits their effectiveness.
I had been following the space program since I was a kid, so I had read the book that was published after the Apollo 1 fire that also pointed out other problems with NASA safety - in particular the shuttle's SRBs using o-rings and segments instead of a single-piece srb as mandated by the military, because the only way to ship the rings from the pork-barred supplier (martin-thiokol) to nasa was in pieces by barge.
I had stopped by my mother and was watching it on tv when I saw what looked like a small plume of gas coming out the side of one of the srbs, and immediately said "bet you it's a joint failure." A few seconds later, ka-boom.
The whole disaster could have been prevented if the manufacturing plant had been located close enough to the launch facility not to have required the srbs to be shipped in segments. The real disaster has always been political influence on procurement programs.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I was waiting to be borned. Another 10 years! Not even sure what a "space shuttle" is.
We could actually see the shuttles go up and it was a once-a-week gifted pull-out class, so we were outside watching it directly. It looked really strange, with the contrail splitting and curving oddly, and we had to go back inside to figure what had happened. I vaguely recall being sent off to play while the teachers regained their composure. That, I think, was the worst possible launch to have an accident on -- but, for the same reasons, the pressure to launch on schedule was that much higher.
I remember not having school on that day. I was all hyped up watching this live on TV. Like the commentators, it took me a moments reflection to realize the deflagration was not normal. I remember being quite shocked by it. When my mother came in from work and I announced it to her, I was amazed at the indifference she exhibited, contrasting my thorn feelings on it.
You gave them what they wanted.
Programming, when my manager and another programmer walked by my cube, and told me they were going to what I jokingly referred to as the "accessory meeting room" (the bar next door). They told me Challenger had exploded, I joined them, and we all had drinks as we watched the reruns on the tv over the bar.
*shit*
Fucking "launch it anyway, the President wants to mention it in his State of the Union speech tonight".
mark
I skipped school that day to watch the launch. We had a satellite receiver and I found the NASA wild feeds (the unfiltered video that is sent out without all the talking heads and commentary). It really gave a different take on the disaster than what was on the networks. Much more unfiltered, at least until they killed all transmission.
I personally was about 5 months shy of dropping out, but my father-in-law was best friends with the pilot of the Challenger. They grew up together in Beaufort, NC and both went to the Naval Academy (my father-in-law went into submarines though). He and my mother-in-law were invited to go down to the launch but couldn't because she had just given birth to my wife!
He's still pissed off about it. It was a purely political decision to launch that day. The engineers said they shouldn't and said there was an unnecessary risk due to exact problem that ended up happening. But because it was already delayed several times before, they were pressured to launch against the engineer's recommendations. Because of that people needlessly died.
I was in a band called Warrren Frank's Current Name. We played in the Cellar, the U of Arizona Student Union hot spot, for the Eat To The Beat concert series that day. I heard the news on the radio of my 1959 Cadillac as I was driving the equipment over to the place at nine AM.
Naturally, our audience was all upstairs, watching events unfold in the big public TV set. It was all right, as the band was doomed anyways.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
"Quit explaining things! Can't you see I just want to be mad?!"
My immediate reaction to them was to tell them "and I still want nothing more than to fly on the shuttle, I'd be on it tomorrow if given the chance."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'm probably one of the few people in this country that found out about the Challenger explosion with a sigh of relief.
I was a senior in HS, and was taking classes offsite at a local college in the mornings. I had a tape deck in my car, so I rarely listened to news in the morning, and I think that day I'd even decided to skip class, sleep in, and screw around. So I'm minding my own business every morning.
I had to check in to my HS for the afternoon, though. When I walked into school, it was quiet. Like, CREEPY quiet...there were something like 2500 students in my highschool, it was lunchtime, and nearly completely silent. As I came into the commons, I could see that everyone - hundreds of kids and teachers alike - was just shocked, gobsmacked.
This was the 1980s. The era of Red Dawn, Reagan, The Day After, and 50,000 nuclear warheads. I genuinely feared that nuclear war had been announced.
When my g/f told me that the Challenger blew up, I may have even said aloud "Oh? Is that all?"
To this day, what I remember of that moment was my feeling of tremendous relief.
-Styopa
I was in high school, studying at a friend's house for our biology midterm, when her sister came running down the stairs shouting "The Challenger just went up." And my friend said "Yes, the Challenger is going up today." And the sister said "No, no, it blew up."
A couple of years later, I was in college taking Freshman Physics 102. The professor was supposed to be running an experiment on the (grounded) Space Shuttle. Instead, he was teaching Freshman Physics 102. And he never let us forget that. I think the mean on the first test was around 30% before somebody got a higher-up to step in.
Watching from the beach, after my dad decided we should skip school to go watch.
I have pictures of it from before launch til after the anomoly occurred ... And several pictures of random shots that happened when I stood in shock and awe looking at the sky and not realizing I was still pushing the button until my dad grabbed me and pointed out I was out of film.
I was in 3rd grade.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
We were all sitting around the wardroom (in port) waiting for lunch, and the TV was on (it was in a locker above the sideboard.) I was standing next to the table watching the smoke column, when the explosion happened. There was a moment of silence, then someone (maybe even me) said something like, "What the hell was that?" We were just starting to talk when the Captain came in for lunch and got the news. I don't remember a lot of emotion, it was more like shock.
On the flip side, within the week we had a (highly unofficial) Ship's Challenger Joke Coordinator, a former taxi driver who filled the same role for Princess Diana jokes (he hated the British.) In case you were wondering why I didn't identify anything better before ....
I was a Junior in high school, on my to (of all things) American history class when it happened.
We were on a touring yacht around Antigua. As a result, we only got sporadic radio reports for the first few hours. Bit of a downer in the middle of an otherwise idyllic setting.
Once I found out the contract was "wired" (i.e. internal nepotistic corruption) for Morton Thiokol and they refused to build onsite, and that that was the only reason the damn two-piece body was chosen over a single structure, I was thoroughly pissed off.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I was in the Navy at the time serving aboard the USS Kittiwake (ASR-13) out of Norfolk Virginia. Was the middle of the morning work period when we were all told to make immediate preparations for an extended at sea period. Unusual, but not unheard of for my little submarine rescue ship. While the intent of the Kittywake was to rescue the crew of downed submarines, she has extremely well decked out for all sorts of diving and recovery operations. Got underway a day or two later and held station over various collections or wreckage which we raised and brought to a hanger back at the cape (or thereabouts). Few months of that and we were back to Norfolk. Occasionally they would let us off the boat for a night or two.
In case you are interested, the Kittywake is now an artificial reef off the coast of Grand Cayman island and is a major diver attraction. I got to watch them sink it.
I was highschool age. There was no school that day. I slept in. I was having a dream about this crystal perfume decanter that was one of those "don't you dare touch that because you might break it" objects in the house. In the dream, I had removed the top which is a thin 3-sided pyramid about six inches tall. I fumbled the top. I was like "oh crap, gotta get this back on". For some reason I couldn't get it back on straight. I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. It was my Mom. She told me to turn on the TV.
My parents are both gone now. I pulled the decanter out of the estate stuff. I still have it. In fact, all I have to do is glance to the right while typing this and I can see it. It does in fact have some chips out of it now; but I have no idea how that happened. It was packed away in newspaper and/or bubblewrap for a long time.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I was a sophomore in high school in central Florida. By this time enough launches had gone up that we no longer went outside to see the launches live - they were routine.
Between classes, one of my buddies came up to our group - 'Hey did you hear? - The shuttle blew up". "Bullshit" I responded. "No way" from others. It couldn't happen. Impossible. The stuff was routine by now. A lot of people realized that day that there's nothing routine about space flight...
--Mark
I'm relieved to see that you used your full legal name here, "macs4all", and not some sort of a pseudonym or alias. Otherwise we'd have to think that you're posting your hatred anonymously, like some sort of a coward!
I was in HS and stayed home that day ("sick") to specifically watch the launch. I remember when it blew apart and knew instantly that is was over. The announcer on TV kept going on and on and on about how there might be a problem, this doesn't seem normal, they're checking the status, etc. I was screaming at the announcer to shut-up, understand, and realize a bunch of people just died. He didn't hear me.
In South Jersey we also had snow, so school was let out early. We were supposed to watch the launch at school, but between the launch delays and the snow day we were at a friend's house with the TV on when it launched. I was in the kitchen making hot cocoa when my friend yelled, "Hey, guys! The space shuttle blew up!" We said, "Shut up, Charles," and ignored his protestations to come in and watch. When we finished making the hot cocoa, we finally saw that, sadly, he wasn't making shit up this time.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Our grade school class had just got back from a trip to a planetarium. We saw it on a TV in the teacher's lounge on the way back to class. I do't remember if we discussed in class or not. I do remember seeing an very special episode of Punk Brewster. And Prince referenced it in his song Sign O The Times.
I was on hold with the local library to renew a book, and someone turned on the TV nearby and I saw the news. When the librarian came back online I asked her if they had a TV there, and she replied,"No, why?" I told her the Challenger appeared to have exploded during launch, and she said,"That's terrible, and that teacher was on it too wasn't she." I said yeah she was, and there was a pause, and then we went back to renewing my book. All day it was the news, Dan Rather trotting out shuttle models and pointing to them, and the same clip of the explosion right after they switched cameras, played endlessly. I had grown up with the shuttle program and it was pretty traumatic.
12:50 - press return.
As a 14-year-old self-identitying geek interested in all things science & technology, I'd just got home from school after staying an extra hour to mess about in the computer room (networked BBC Micros) and was watching TV (the 2 main TV channels here at the time programmed kids entertainment between around 3pm and 6pm) when John Craven's Newsround came on (around 5pm) and broke the news Newsround is a highly-respected news programme aimed at children, set up by the BBC in the '70s, which often pulled no punches with its reporting and more tan once scooped breaking news stories, as it was broadcast an hour before the 'adult' news bulletins at 6pm. I vividly remember being pretty distraught and running into the kitchen to tell my mum that 'the Space Shuttle has just blown up!'
Who gives a shit?! This is something that's always bothered me: a major catastrophe anniversary and everyone's gotta put in their two cents worth about where THEY were and what THEY were doing at the time! That's totally fucking irrelevant! The disaster occurred, let's focus on THAT, NOT what you were fucking doing at the time, no one gives a shit about you! Buncha egomaniacs this species is...
And yet, here you are, giving YOUR opinion, like anyone cares.
Fucking USELESS ACs... I wish Slashdot would get rid of the AC concept entirely. It is FAR too often simply an excuse for abuse and hate-mongering.
Pot, meet kettle.
I was in French I class failing miserably when we were told about the accident. IIRC we were sent home early but after 30 years hard to recall for sure. Sad to day heard the first in poor taste joke about the accident at the same time
I was at home, working on my plumbing, wondering why I received space grade o-rings instead of the cheap ones I ordered.
I remember watching the launch and aftermath on the Dinnie's Den (the campus bar) big screen TV. Thinking back now, the weeks immediately following included an off-colour lost-and-found ad in the campus newspaper, which was then turned into an awesome (but still inappropriate) prank on its editors by some students with whom I may or may not have been associated.
Less is more.
Watched it live in elementary school, several adult faculty/staff sighed out exclamations in dirty words, which made a lot of the younger kids laugh at hearing this and initially getting scolded for what was perceived as laughter over the tragedy.
Fuck Ajit Pai
NASA folks were at my facility for a week long class in Lewisville Texas on how to use our (Texas Instruments) TI4100 Global Positioning Receiver. A 50 lb white box, no map display and externally powered off 28 volts. It would keep you warm in the winter. A very sad and depressing day for everyone.
My school (or maybe just my teacher) thought it would be great an inspirational for the kids to watch the launch. It was quickly turned off.
At RPI (a geek school), whenever Star Trek was on they put it up on the big TV in the student union.
If you pass through the first floor of the union between classes and see a hundred people all looking at the TV, that's what you expect to see.
They weren't watching Star Trek.
I still remember those demon horns curling into the sky and thinking WTF is this?
For a while the fear was that we'd build something so complex that we couldn't maintain it for long enough to use it.
still get a chill thinking about that day
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I was onboard the USS Kittiwake (ASR-13) in home port Norfolk Virginia. First I heard of it was an MC1 announcement from the captain (highly unusual) to make all necessary arrangements and preparation for an extended underway period. At lunch we all were able to see it on TV. We where haze grey and underway the next day. We went from one location to another picking up wreckage from the sea bottom. The Kittiwake, being a submarine rescue ship designed to rescue the crew from downed submarines, was well decked out with diving and salvage equipment including two recompression chambers for extended and/or deep diving. Every week or so we would bring a fantail full of assorted space technology to a big hangar over near the cape where they were reassembling the craft. Did that for several months. One of the most somber underway periods I ever had.
The Kittiwake, a fairly small ship, is now an artificial reef and world class diver attraction just off the coast of 7 Mile Beach on Grand Cayman Island. I got to watch them sink it!
all I remember is the vehicle clearing the towwer, a big cloud of birds, and a big ball of fire... and every space nerd in my school (myself included) bawling for a week.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I was in my teens over mid-winter break and my father had taken me down to Florida to watch a Space Shuttle launch since I loved the space program so much.
Every day for the week we had gotten up before dawn, trudged out in the cold and driven to the Visitor's Center to be bused out to the Visitor viewing area on the peninsula across from the launching area.
I remember when it launched everyone cheering, and then it exploded and people were confused that it didn't look right.
The bus driver who had seen lots of the launches already immediately knew something had gone wrong, and then we were all stuck there for a few hours while everything was locked down.
Somewhere I might even have a Kodak Disc with shots of the launch and explosion, but I fear those pictures have been lost to time except in my memory (and in truth, they weren't that great).
As a long time fan of Richard Feynman (my father had read me his first book as bed time stories), I kept following the news as all of my major focuses at the time converged and overlapped.
Tempus Fugit
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
...the live video of pieces hitting the water, and then all live feeds being abruptly cut off? And then never seeing that impact footage again?
Our teacher applied for the program and was one of what was probably many alternates for the Christa McAuliffe spot.
Everything we did that year revolved around NASA and the space program. I
It hit home when we realized that our teacher could have possibly been on that ship.
Another student walked into our college art class saying it blew up. On the way back to the dorm I stopped by the student union, and saw the endlessly looping clip of it disintegrating, with the booster rockets careening away. Watching that made all those sci-fi novels I'd read as a kid seem more distant. I later found out my high school physics teacher (who was really great) had made it into the top 12 candidates for the "Teacher in Space" program.
I was in the gymnasium with the rest of the school to watch the launch. After the explosion, they cancelled classes, and sent us home. It was weird, because I was excited to get an early release from school, but also sad that it was because of why they let us out.
We had just gotten for the first time a TV system that all classes could be fed news and information. Watching the Challenger make its way to space was one of the first broadcasts to test our new system. The room was silent as we watched the ship make its way into the sky. When the explosion occurred, we looked at each other in disbelief wondering if we were watching was actually live TV. When the teacher left the classroom weeping to join other teachers in the hall, we realized that indeed this was real.
I was walking to my Middle School in Lakeland, FL. We were close enough that we could see the trails of every launch, and generally the glow of the engines. I stopped on the nearest hill to watch, as I always did, but this time to be greeted with an extra large glow. I know almost exactly the spot I was standing, just up the hill from Scott Lake. Its a day I'll never soon forget, as every class was nothing but re-watching the same tragedy over and over.
The local news was filled with storied about Christa McAuliffe for days and days afterwords. She was supposed to be the first School Teacher ever in space.
It was also a day filled with jokes. While somewhat sick, it is a very common way for people to deal with the pain.
I still remember almost every joke, they are forever etched into my memories.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Woke up in the morning, and walked to the front door. Milkman dispensed half a liter of fresh milk from a can, groggily picked up The Indian Express, (Bangalore edition) and it was front page news with the iconic contrail picture. I was an aerospace engg grad, working for a Dept of Defense in unmanned aircraft, and was following space news well, so it was a big shock to me. Indian English newspapers do a pretty good job of covering the world and was quite to up to date. Sadly the newspapers in America proved to be a big disappointment. Nothing compared to the Science, Engg, Technology section of The Hindu (Madras edition). Even now I find Indian newspapers cover the world and America better than American papers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm pretty sure I was turning on the TV, expecting to watch The Adventure Game, but all I saw was the footage of Challenger. At first I did not comprehend what I was seeing, and then it sunk in.
I was 16, and a sophomore in high school. We were watching it live on TV, when it exploded in front of us. We were horrified and students were crying. It was hard. There was an extra emotional element, our old 6th grade teacher Robert Forrester was the runner up for that program. If for some reason Christie couldn't go, he would have been next. When we were in 6th grade, he would always tell us that he was going to go up in space and we never thought he would have gotten a shot. But he got as far as he did, and luckily he didn't get on there because he would have died. I'm sure he was willing to pay that price. (for some reason I couldn't find a reference to it.. but it was announced at school at the time)
I was right in the cockpit next to the pilot
Signed,
Brian Williams
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I was driving to a job interview at TRW. This was noteworthy because TRW made the communications satellite that was in the bay of the Challenger when it exploded that morning. Needless to say, the folks in the office were a bit stunned.
My knee jerk reaction while at work concentrating at a particular task, someone ran in "the Challenger just blew up!" As I remember the day before when launch was scrubbed because they couldn't remove the door mechanism off side hatch. A handle assembly is attached to side hatch on Orbiter for crew entry, hatch is closed, and White Room techs remove this assembly. However, some bolts were stuck, they couldn't remove the assembly (was taking too long) so the launch was scrubbed. Meanwhile media people were criticizing NASA for continual delays of this flight particularly the first teacher in space. I remember many people saying "well back in the days NASA was able to do a launch one after another without all these delays." Hmm, they must have forgotten the 1960s launches had lots of delays and lots of exploding launch vehicles.
Shortly after I knew the Challenger did explode. I also remembered some of the guys play back on their VHS decks in slow-mo and pause to do their own analysis. Another remarkable thing because only few years before only crash investigators had those tools. Of course everyone can to wrong conclusions. Rest of day and the week was really sad, like it was night time even in the middle of the day.
mfwright@batnet.com
We were watching the launch on TV in our Elementary school (I want to say I was in 4th grade) science class.
That class more-or-less became the Challenger discussion class from then on. We followed all of the latest developments in the investigation and I want to say (though I don't recall 100%) that it was in this same class that we learned about the O-ring problem and what it meant.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I was in an ethnic grocery store fronting Bloor St W, somewhere between Ossington and Dufferin, buying rutabagas to make a vegetable stock for a fancy Swedish meatball recipe (three different kinds of ground meat) from The Joy of Cooking, when the radio behind the cash register booth came on with the breaking news.
I can even recall where I was standing in relationship to the interior shelving. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure I had been reading Surely You're Joking just a week earlier (not that the connection was especially direct at that time).
I already held the opinion that the shuttle was a financial albatross compared to other ways the same funds could have been spent, so I certainly had some conflicting emotions in the moment. While it's definitely gratifying to see a rather stupid publicity stunt reveal itself for what it truly was, the human cost was extremely high. Perhaps they should have used a stunt double for the teacher astronaut, Wag the Dog style. Maybe they did, and she's now living somewhere in deep cover under witness protection.
Somehow I don't think so. It's much easier just to fold the American flag into that fancy croissant and bow our heads in heroic grief.
I was all of like, 1.5 years old, so probably naked wandering around the house eating Cheetos straight from the bag, getting the cat all orange.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I was home sick (probably faking it like usual) from 7th grade. I was so excited I was about to watch my first live launch ever. Only my mom was home with me. I was sitting right in front of the TV. It started off amazing....then...went wrong. I knew immediately something wasn't right. I slowly turned around to look at my mom. She asked me, "Was that supposed to happen?" I slowly shook my head back and forth, feeling dread and sadness well up. I remember it like it was yesterday. :(
For somebody who is supposedly against anonymous posting, abusive comments, and hate-mongering comments, you sure do seem to like to post abusive, hate-mongering comments anonymously!
WTF are you prattling on about?!?
I think I can count on one FINGER the amount of times I have posted as an AC on Slashdot, and I have the Karmic Scars to prove it.
Now STFU and GO AWAY
I was really into the space shuttle--I used to build models of various proposed space shuttles when I was a teenager into model rocketry. At the time of the disaster, I had found my way into a program in the psych department at the local community college that tried to study the effects of living in enclosed spaces by using a space shuttle mockup built out of plywood, TV monitors, some Atari 800s and electronic hardware from the surplus yard down in Taunton. It was very not realistic, but at the same time not bad--apparently it felt very convincing to the people who were in it.
So needless to say, we were all pretty wrecked. I don't know how many times I watched the explosion on the instant replay, but it was a lot. Lots of crying, very maudlin, but on the other hand the lot of us were able to hang out together and grieve with people who got it. Looking back on it, it's a funny coincidence that we were all there when it happened, but we were.
Except that it was a very cold January morning in NJ and that the jokes started flying maybe an hour after it happened. (please don't kill the messenger here)
love is just extroverted narcissism
... in college, at the time. Another student came into the room and asked, "Did you hear the Challenger exploded?" He was a well-known practical joker, so I figured this was just another one of his jokes. The fact that he was an engineering student and delivered the news in a completely deadpan voice didn't help, any. When he turned on the TV to show me, I couldn't believe it. I'm pretty sure it took about an hour to really sink in, and I couldn't do anything for the rest of the day but sit there and watch in horror.
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
Why does it matter where I was? I had nothing to do with it.
Whenever the shuttle was scheduled to launch, most classes took a break and we filed out to the playground to watch. And that day was no exception.
I got in my first significant playground fight that day. While most of us were staring in horror at what had happened, the new kid was pumped, thought it was "totally wicked" and was cheering enthusiastically. This being Florida, where school kids practically worshipped astronauts and it was very obvious that seven of them had just died, I punched him right in gut. By the time the teachers got to us, a few others had joined in on my side. This being the '80s, when "boy will be boys" was still a thing, and the teachers were probably even more aghast in grief and horror at what happened than we were; we were separated for the day and nothing else was said.
There was kind of a half-hearted attempt on the part of the teachers at resuming the lessons for the day. But not much got accomplished, especially after the principal confirmed the destruction of the shuttle on the school's intercom. And no homework was assigned.
Imagine all the people...
I had just started a two year assignment to the IBM Boca Raton laboratory from the UK. I had arrived in the US on a plane to Miami on January 22nd, and I was still in a hotel room, working for most of the day and getting out in the later afternoon to meet with realtors to find somewhere to live. In those days, IBM paid hotel and car expenses for four weeks, but after that you were on your own. I was in a meeting in Boca, when an old time IBMer called Ron Cope knocked the door, came in and announced the news very solemnly. Many of the IBM older guys had worked at IBM Federal Systems Division at the Cape before joining the Boca lab, so it was a very personal loss to them all. I was very sad - not least since there wouldn't be another shuttle launch for the whole of my time in Florida, before returning to the UK.
When I heard the news, I was in a middle-school science class; our teacher walked us solemnly over to the school library, where we watched the television news.
I was probably in my crib or whatever, given I was like a year old. :p
I'd seen one previous launch from a parking lot in Boca before Challenger, and I was really surprised you could actually see the plume of smoke from the launch.
The engineers at my office wanted to watch the launch, so we invaded the accounting office that had the windows facing the Space Center. It was a beautiful launch, up to the time the exhaust trail forked, forming a "Y". The accountants all said, "Oh, look how beautiful!" The engineers all said, "Uh-oh. That's not supposed to happen. . . ."
As I recall I was temporarily between jobs and decided to watch the launch at home with my wife, who worked nights as a nurse. Being a big fan of the Shuttle, I tried to watch every launch, and when I saw the large y-shaped cloud, I realized something had gone *seriously* wrong.. The rest of the day was a blur.. Then again in 2003, I realized I had a good chance to see the firey trail of Columbia reentering the atmosphere, as the reentry path was close enough to Las Vegas to see in the northern sky. So I got up really early (for me) and drove out to a spot away from the bright lights of town, and right on schedule, there was this bright streak across the sky. I noticed it looked like flaming pieces were coming off of it.. Since I'd never seen a shuttle reentry like this, I didn't, at the time, realize anything was wrong.. That realization quickly changed when I turned the radio on, and listened to the latest news.. I'll never forget hearing Houston saying "Columbia.. Houston.. " quite a few times with no answer... I then realized, I must have been seeing Columbia breaking up during reentry.. I had to pull over as I couldn't drive safely for a while, and in fact, I'm tearing up just writing this... God Bless the brave souls who go into space and expand mankind's knowledge...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
..on the factory floor, listening on am radio the leadman had
I used to ride my bike about ten miles to work each day at a small Unix software developer in Brookline MA. I wheeled my bike through the front door and noticed the secretary was sitting at her desk with a stunned expression.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"It blew up," she said. You know how in books people who are overwhelmed with shock say things "in a hollow voice"? That was how she said it; I'd never actually heard anyone talk in that voice before.
"What blew up?"
"The Shuttle. It blew up."
So we all gathered around the radio -- this was before the Internet and before televisions were common in offices -- and listened to the news people speak in that special hushed tone they use for unimaginable catastrophes. Anyone who listened to the radio on 9/11 knows what I'm talking about, it's low and soft and ... hollow, like they're reluctantly whispering terrible things in your ear.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That morning I was getting ready to go to class, in my last quarter of senior year at university. The one thing I remember vividly was getting home late that evening to find the picture of Columbia on her launch pad had fallen from the wall and the glass and frame had shattered. It was eerie and most likely coincidence, but gave me time to ponder what had happened that morning as I swept up the glass. That evening President Reagan came on television to speak to the nation, having decided to defer his state of the union message to instead deliver an extraordinary speech to lead the nation in mourning, while pointing to a bright future in space. A day that can never be forgotten.
Have a Day!
Yes, after 51L, that was the end of Vandenberg Shuttle flights. Would have been cool for all those in Los Angeles that were major builders of it being able to watch it go into space if that pad became operational. Speaking of getting up and watching it on TV, reminds me when I woke up and turn on the TV to see replays of Columbia landing, but only to see all this stuff streaking across the sky. I knew something was terribly wrong before hearing reporters talking.
mfwright@batnet.com
if talking about Thiokol, need to mention Roger Boisjoly who argued to not proceed with launch. I remember shortly after he became well known for being the engineer who objected to proceeding with launch. A manager told him "Take your engineering hat off and put on your management hat" or something like that. I read back then Roger tended to be type of guy that many people just wanted to slug him in the mouth. He had his reasons but unfortunately lacked the tact skills, but maybe it didn't really matter as the entire STS program was a machine set on launching that day overriding human common sense. A movie was made about 51L with Peter Boyle portraying Boisjoly, one part where he argued they should raise lower limit for no flight of 50 deg F to 55 (something like that). A management class I took said that part of the movie used actual transcripts of that MT launch review meeting for the movie script, and showed that clip as part of the class. Important take is while Boisjoly and managers argued over 55 vs. 50, the pad temperature was 32. Which brings up why are they having that discussion? Note that all these guys haven't slept in 24 hours, that much lack of sleep decreases the IQ level.
mfwright@batnet.com
I talked to someone who worked for MT before and after they changed to ATK. He said ATK was ridding the Morton-Thiokol name from all their paperwork as if it were a bad word. Maybe not the best in the business but getting rid of history? I guess someone will repeat those same mistakes.
mfwright@batnet.com
Cities are man-made, complex, and they are way less fragile than a human body, or a brain.
...because I was suspended, as was often the case. I didn't watch the launch live; I heard on the radio that it exploded.
I was in German class, listening to a person from the Concordia Language Villages in Bemidji Minnesota. He was talking about their (long since abandoned :( ) German college in Bemidji. He was just about done showing a video when the announcement came over the P.A. Our teacher said that we needed to listen to the rest of the presentation and then he would let us take over the T.V. to see what we could find being broadcast.
Relatedly, I was actually the one who told my dad when he came home from work that day. As he came in the door I asked him if he had heard the news.
This was a few years after I'd graduated with my engineering degree. I was working on a robotics project, and I would often bring my lunch and eat it in the lab/office that we had. So I was at my desk when the tragedy occurred.
My co-worker came in from the mall where he'd gone to get lunch, and said something like, "The shuttle blew up, eh?", and I was stunned. (Yes, I'm Canadian.) When I got home, I watched the explosion on the news, but after the first few times couldn't watch it any more. And for probably twenty years afterwards, that piece of tape was a trigger -- I would see the image of the flame leaking out from underneath the craft, and have to look away, with tears in my eyes.
I was most saddened by the excellent Time magazine article that detailed the arguments between the engineers "It was too cold overnight -- we're not sure the vehicle is safe to fly." and the managers "NASA going to lose a lot of face if we don't launch and postpone again." So NASA launched, over the objections of the engineers. And we know the rest.
Exactly this -- the vehicle wasn't safe below a temperature of X, and it had been 15 or 20 degrees F below that overnight. They were arguing over ridiculous points.
I watched live on NASA's internal tv network, surrounded by co-workers, all of us part of the Shuttle Program.
We built the tanks and shipped them by barge to the Cape for launch. I was recently graduated mechanical engineer working on robotic welding processes for the Shuttle External Tank. I watched as our pride and joy blew the Shuttle and its crew to pieces. (The External Tank is the piece that actually blew up. The starboard SRB caused the anomaly, and the two boosters continued off on their own rogue paths until the range safety officer destroyed them by command).
NASA had live TV monitors in the office corridors and on the plant floor at the Michoud Assembly Facility, where the tanks (and before that, the Saturn V) were manufactured. At launch time, employees were encouraged to watch their handiwork make the nine minute ascent before it was tossed away for destructive reentry over the Indian Ocean. We were on an ambitious plan to reach 60 tanks per year, corresponding to more than one Shuttle flight per week. After over twenty missions, launches were becoming routine and we were less compelled to see every one. I had already missed a few, but on this particular morning the skies that day over Michoud were crisp, cold, and crystal clear. I knew same air mass was over the Cape. That meant the television optics would be clearer than usual. With this unusual weather in mind, I planned to watch the launch.
General NASA and company policy encouraged employees to take a break and watch launches, but I unfortunately had a new boss who had come from some other non-NASA Martin division and he saw no point in the watching launch video. He kept us sitting around his office in a meeting as the launch started. When I asked if we could be excused to watch, he huffed and griped, but finally relented and agreed to pause our meeting.
I walked down the hall and could see that the launch vehicle had already lifted off and was well into its ascent. I came up upon the cluster fellow employees watching the monitor just as the vehicle trajectory was somewhere near or just after Max Q (maximum aerodynamic pressure, always a moment of concern for the External Tank team).
As I had expected, we had an unusually clear view of the vehicle. A flare of vapor emerged briefly--interesting, as I'd never seen that. Suddenly the image was all smoke and fire. I said "wow, what a spectacular SRB sep, it's not usually that clear." One of my co-workers said quietly "I think we're a little early on that". As he was speaking, the NASA camera pulled back. The SRBs were spiraling off on their own. Debris was raining down over the Atlantic. The audio was momentarily silent and then the announcer said "obviously a major malfunction". I can still hear that in my head as though it happened yesterday.
We stood there in shock for about ten minutes, watching the smoke trails with the cameras zooming in and out as the camera operator tried in vain to find the orbiter. Some employees began crying. A few minutes more and the screen cut to black abruptly, without comment. I walked back to my work area. My new boss said snarkily, "Once you're finished grieving, we can get back to work." To this day, that remains the coldest thing anyone ever said to me at a job. Many employees left at mid-day. In the afternoon, our division president appeared on the monitors looking forlorn. He cautioned about speculating or talking to the press. At day's end I passed out of the gate where local news crews were jockeying with microphones, hoping one of us would chat. I went home to flip between CNN and the big news channels, the 1986 equivalent of Google News and Twitter.
A "tiger team" was immediately convened and two train car loads of manufacturing records were brought in for forensics. A tank failure was the suspected culprit, so every weld x-ray and component flight certification would need to be reexamined. It seemed obvious the tank had exploded, and indeed the failure of the hydrogen tank and the collapse of
I was in the Navy at the time and had just finished briefing for a late AM flight and was getting ready to go start the aircraft pre-flight checks when the news of the explosion came on the ready room TV.
I kept thinking, "at least it was quick." It was only later the world learned they didn't die instantaneously.
Second year university, just got home for lunch.
Bright sunny day with high snowbanks all around. Remained sitting in the rapidly cooling car to listen to the news on the radio.
Shocked, absolutely shocked. I didn't think that this kind a of things happened anymore.
I was sitting in my 6th grade class watching it with my classmates when it happened. Sad day.
I believe I was in a PA elementary school, and didn't know about this accident until the TV news at home. I wasn't into space stuff back then too. :/
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
18 years old, watched the whole thing, from 20m before lift-off, right up until the explosion... Walked down to my father's office, stunned, and went, "The shuttle just blew up." He thought I was joking... Dark ages for the space race...
There is always someone saying no to launch.
They say every generation has a defining moment where everybody remembers where they were. Pearl Harbor. Kennedy. Challenger. 9/11.
I was home sick that day from 6th grade; my parents trusted me to stay home alone. As it was, my mother was a teacher and called to tell me to turn on the news. It was horrifying, but what strikes me today is that I didn't share this with my classmates. I wasn't at school watching the launch live like nearly everyone else in my generation.
I was kid in 6th grade I felt sorry for the US astronauts. I was on the other side of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War was still on. So they were showing this on the news countless times. Just to show how US had failed.
I just found out last week that I also went to school a few miles from Coco Beach (20 miles from Canaveral). I was only 4-5 years and knew I went to kindergarten in Florida, but never bothered to look up exactly where (Melbourne) on a map before. I later grew up to be an engineer and worked on various parts of the space program.
P.s. freaking Slashdot. Tried to sign in for this comment, I long ago forgot my password, and in my laziness I grew accustomed to signing on via my Google plus account. Well, as luck would have it, I clicked the wrong account this morning and Slashdot, in it's infinite wisdom, has decided not to let me sign back out, so apparently I'm signed into this account forever. Thanks for nothing, slashdorks. ~jsh1972
Elementary school as well. It was hot dog day. All of the students had their bought meals if their families gave them money. I typically didn't have money and ate a home brought lunch of PB & jam which had soaked into the bread, making it all soggy. (ew!) That day I think I managed to procure a hotdog.
I remember being disappointed but knowing that it was a possible outcome of strapping people to rockets and sending them up into the sky. I felt sad for the astronauts and the teacher.
Would have been grade 2 I think.
I was in school, but was too young for them to show us in class. It's likely that students elsewhere in the school were watching. However, there was an episode of Punky Brewster that covered it.
He effected a bored affect.
As I remember it, Boisjoly and a couple other engineers told their management "if you launch lives will be lost." The Mormons (which is what we called corporate upper management after Morton Salt bought out Thiokol) called NASA and said "our engineers say you mustn't launch" to which the NASA boys replied "we know what we are doing, don't worry about it". The Mormons told the engineering staff "we talked to NASA, they say it's OK, they will launch". Boisjoly, believing that the Salt Boys (another nickname for corporate) hadn't conveyed the severity of the situation to NASA, then called NASA himself and said "if you launch lives will be lost". At which point NASA said "sure, sure, thanks for calling" and then immediately called the Salt Jockeys and said "You have a loose cannon and you need to tie it down immediately, shut this asshole up". Then they launched and killed seven astronauts, which ruined the President's speech celebrating the first teacher in space, but luckily Peggy Noonan was able to quickly plagiarize John Magee's poem High Flight to provide a new speech in response to the disaster.
Of course it was a long time ago, but that's how I remember it going down. I was working at the Elkton plant, so I wasn't directly involved with shuttle SRBs.
We used to say that when Morton Salt took over Thiokol, they stripped away our diversified holdings, our best upper management... and our reputation.
I left decades before the Alliant merger, though.
I remember the Challenger very well. I was in U.S. Navy Nuclear Power school in Orlando. Our class was so distracted by the fact there was going to be a launch; our instructor took us out to the quad between buildings, put us in formation, and faced us towards Cape Canaveral.
We were all watching as the rocket went up and exploded with the radio commentary of the launch playing over the P.A. system.
NRRPT/RCT
Thanks for additional input. Another thing this ex MT/ATK employee said everyone that worked at the company was a pyro geek of sorts i.e. bombs, rockets, throwing sodium in water, etc. in their youth.
mfwright@batnet.com
I was a COTR (Contracting Officer's Technical Representative) for the government, and I was on my way to a contract review in Melbourne, Fla on a bitter cold, clear day. I pulled over on an overpass to watch the launch, and saw the whole thing. I was (and am) a life-long space nut, having grown up in Florida and having experienced the earth-shattering roar of an Apollo launch from a nearby beach. I knew immediately that the Challenger had suffered a catastrophic failure, and there was no hope for the astronauts.
I went on to the meeting, but none of us at the table did anything but listen to the news reports. We were all technically savvy types, and we all knew there was no hope, but we kept listening anyway.
Since then I have watched the USA fritter away any chance it had for continued leadership in space, in a stupid and irrelevant search for 'PC-ness', 'gender-diversity', 'income equality', 'safe spaces', 'micro-aggressions' and other crap. My generation was certainly to blame for much of this, but *this* generation has gone even farther astray. OTOH, this generation has also produced Elon Musk and SpaceX, so maybe you'll do better than us ;-).
Somehow I had gone from this to AP Literature in high school. Through this, I learned that student assessments are highly subjective. Anyway... Mrs. Morrissey said that there was going to be a rescue mission save the astronauts. She was just parroting the news. Then she turned on the television perched in an upper corner of the classroom. Just as with the towers of 911, we all watched in horror. No one was going to be saved. Mrs. Morrissey cried. It was Christa McAuliffe's last ride. Within a week jokes were already circulating: "How do we know that the teacher had dandruff?" The joke went. "Because her head and shoulders was found on the beach ."
Oh, childhood... So innocent. So sociopathic.
Not the original naysayer, but I can answer those questions. I'll do half so others can prove their own inside info.
1) Charlie Murphy, self-taught electronics genius, designed nearly all the DIDACS hardware that plugged into the NEFF. So mostly likely him, working with Mark Momcilovich on the software side.
2) Doug Sprout, because it was on the PDP and not on Leonard's SEL system - but I don't know which PDP, probably Ernest?
If you were there, you'll know who I am by my slashdot username. :)