Challenger

[neadods]

Today was my generation's "Do you remember where you were when you heard?" moment.

I was at my first job, in a big open space with four desks in it (I would, over the course of my career there, sit at all 4.) Because this was when indoor smoking was still allowed, I was probably hunched over a fan, which I ran every day to try to cope with the chainsmoker who sat at another of the desks. I was probably wrestling with the office computer, a command-line DOS beast.

All I clearly remember is one of the bosses coming out of the window offices ringing our open area and saying in a hushed voice, "Challenger blew up. I heard it on the radio." (Only management was allowed stuff like that.)

I refused to believe it until I got home and saw it on the news. And then I still didn't believe it. I didn't want to.

Comments

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

I was a freshman in High School...
I didn't even know the shuttle was due to launch that morning... all I knew was that my tiny little Christian school suddenly had a satellite dish in the yard, that was easily as big as any of the buses. (It was planned that we would be one of the schools that Christa taught...)
We went to "Big Chapel" that morning. (The entire school, all 250-odd of us, K-12, gathered once a week that way, to be preached at...) And after sitting there for a long time, Mr. DeJong, the head Coach, came out to the mike and very quietly told us. I never saw that man cry, before or after that- but his voice was cracking as he said it.
Yeah, it didn't sink in with me until that night when I got home, and saw the news... It wasn't real to me, even with the pictures of the smoke trails.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

Even the smoke trails sort of looked like a special effect. When it became real to me was when I saw footage of big chunks dropping into the water.

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

I don't recall seeing that footage, but I was probably in bed by the time they aired that. (Sorry- another 1972 kid, here...:) )
It's kind of scary, when ya sit down and think of the "Where were YOU" moments. Challenger, Lady Di, Columbia, 9/11, those are the first 4 that come to mind.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

That was horrifying, that image. Far more so than the smoke.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

Both Challenger and 9/11 I heard about on the radio at a time when normally I would have been listening to a tape-- just happened to turn it on instead. At first I thought 9/11 was a joke or a hoax, because how could the World Trade Center towers have collapsed...?

A few days after Obama was elected, I was going up to Boston on the train and chatted with the guy next to me. We talked about the election night, how it was something that people would always remember. I said I'd been on the train going past NYC a few days after 9/11 too, and the ruins were still smoking. Challenger was another "where were you" moment, and then I mentioned Apollo 11. "Uh... when was that?" July 1969, I told him. "I was born in 1972." Thanks....

Challenger reminds me of Columbia, and the only good story I ever heard about George Bush: that when he was told about the shuttle having broken up on re-entry, his first reaction was, "Where are the families?"

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I heard about 9/11 via IM of all things, and then we spent the rest of the day huddled around a pirate video feed, waiting for them - whoever them was - to attack us on the ground.

[jennetj.livejournal.com]

I was at work at the blood bank. They had TVs back in the donor room. I came down from my office and the nurse was standing by the reception desk. "The Challenger just blew up." I hurried back to the donor room and watched the trails of smoke and the replays over and over.

Years later I saw the movie Koyaanisqatsi, and the final image of that movie was eerily prescient.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Trivially, my first thought was "I didn't know you worked at a blood bank."

[jennetj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I went from banking to blood banking. Did that for a year. My entre into the world of nonprofits.

[ponygirl72.livejournal.com]

I was in eighth grade. They brought a TV into the classroom and we watched the coverage for hours.

[biichan.livejournal.com]

My kindergarten teacher told us. I remember sitting it a circle around her and feeling very sad for the school teacher that had been on the Challenger.

(At least, I think she was the kindergarten teacher. She might have been the preschool one. It was a long time ago.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

My kindergarten teacher told us.

*suddenly understands the looks I get when I answer "Where were you when Kennedy was killed?" with "Nursing, probably."*

[melusinehr.livejournal.com]

I was home sick from school that day, and was actually watching the live feed when it happened. I sometimes wonder if that could possibly be a false memory, but my mother has confirmed that yes, we were both watching the launch as it happened.

[tealbeen.livejournal.com]

I was in the hospital, the day after my daughter was born, and the TV was on as background. I wondered why they kept showing the same footage over and over. It took me a while to figure out that the Challenger had exploded...

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

I was watching my cousin and her friend - that was
an in-between job - and had to keep the two five
year olds away from the TV for the rest of the day....

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Would the five-year-olds have even understood what they saw?

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

They would have understood an explosion -
especially given the running commentary

(Sorry I didn't answer this before!)

[jo-mako.livejournal.com]

I was in class with the telly set up to watch the launch. Me friend Janet was crying, because she had been so thrilled about the whole 'Civilian in Space' program...and a relative of hers was applying for one of the later Civilian launches, which obviously never happened.

Years later in my senior year of H.S. I would find myself at Keahole airport in Kona Hawai'i, in the Ellison Onizuka memorial space museum, while waiting for a flight back to O'ahu. I'd been with a class group on the Big Island for a week doing fun stuff on a boat.

Yet years later, I would be at an anime convention in San Francisco and learn that a good mate of mine saw it live and in person from her school in Orlando, as she waited for her Mum to come and pick her up that day.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

one of the later Civilian launches, which obviously never happened.

In my mind, the larger tragedy.

[jo-mako.livejournal.com]

It is. Because the first one met with a catastrophic failure...that has since been shown could have easily been avoided, they cancel the whole idea. Even the teacher who was the runner up to Christa has said so.

I saw live, the shuttle launch when John Glenn went back up in 98, and it is truly an awesome and breath taking sight to behold. I remember thinking later that it was such a shame the Civilian in Space program got axed because of the Challenger disaster.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

I was a tech writer at a Burroughs(later Unisys)office in the Philly suburbs. I came back from lunch to see a small group gathered around the cube of someone who had a radio & went to see what had happened. Since I was known as a space geek, I was the one stuck trying to politely answer stupid questions like "Why didn't they just eject?"

I was otherwise pretty much useless at work or anywhere else for the next week.

I went home that evening & played The Phoenix (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGi2Nt-GTF4&feature=PlayList&p=0B23ABE533FE233B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=36) by Julia Ecklar(originally written about the Apollo 1 fire) about 16 times that evening, and many more in the weeks after. I still play it and Fire In the Sky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ryd_p20XEU/) (by astrophysicist & musician Jordin Kare, sung by Kristoph Klover)on the anniversary each year.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

The song that came to my mind-- and I still think of Challenger when I hear it-- was "Icarus" by Welsh folk singer-songwriter Anne Lister. She's not on YouTube, alas, but here's someone else singing a version of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ip2G-BkMgc

I carried the wings for you, up the path to the cliff face,
Kissed you goodbye and watched your eyes, already bright with sunlight.
It was so wonderful at the start, to watch you soaring higher;
There was a pain deep in my heart; the wings seemed tipped with fire, Like a seagull or a lark, rising up to heaven,
Like an ember or a spark, vanishing from earth forever.....
But then I saw the white wings fold, saw the feathers tremble,
Watched you fall like a ball of gold, the waves and waters ripple.
And there are some who are born to rise, some are born to follow,
Some head straight for the skies, some walk in the hollows,
But as I watched your body fall, I knew that really you had won,
For your grave was not the earth but the reflection of the sun.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the YouTube link! I know some of Lister's work; I've performed her Persephone song "Demeter's Daughter."

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

She has a website, http://www.annelister.com/ , with links to hear or buy her music. Many songs related to British legends and traditions, with thoughtful original lyrics.

[not-hathor.livejournal.com]

I was at work. Those were the days before the FCC started breaking up the Radio-TV station groups, so we were still one TV/AM/FM company. The top of the hour news had just finished on the Radio, and the announcer (it was my immediate boss, actually, who was very much a fan of the whole space program, too) had switched from the National news feed to music (we were a Country format at the time), when someone came running up from the TV side, calling 'switch back, switch back! The shuttle....' I think half the station personnel ended up crowded into the TV monitor room in shocked silence for the next six hours.... Some of us tried to work, but I don't think a lot got done. One of the TV Sales guys (Don?) was related to Judy Resnick -- cousin, I think.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I think half the station personnel ended up crowded into the TV monitor room in shocked silence for the next six hours....

That seems to be the standard response to tragedy - that's exactly what we did on 9/11.

[hildy.livejournal.com]

I was a sophomore in high school when Challenger happened. I heard it in one class and discussed reactions in the next. I mostly remember the launch afterwards and clutching the sides of the chair for dear life watching it. I didn't breathe a sigh of relief for awhile after that. More so with every landing after Columbia.

Come to think of it, there are quite a few "Where was I?" type moments in my lifetime from the Berlin Wall to Princess Di to 9/11. And whole generations learning this stuff now as history rather than experiencing it... now I know how my parents feel!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

More so with every landing after Columbia.

I was going to meet my parents and they were watching that on the TV. I couldn't comprehend. No boom, no message, just... suddenly many trails.

[hildy.livejournal.com]

My parents moved down to Florida so they can hear the booms from their house. He had turned on the NASA channel while he was working on the computer in the other room. He looked at the clock, the shuttle should have landed but there was no boom. And then suddenly the channel became very very talkative. I was so blase about shuttle landings I didn't even know Columbia was up and back and returning until I saw the news.

*fighting knitting with cross stitch*

[neadods.livejournal.com]

*fighting knitting with cross stitch*

*comes back with other knitting icon*

[hildy.livejournal.com]

*Barfy defend me against the knitters*

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

I remeber seeing it on the news, I was only little at the time and thought it looked like a massivce firework (it was also the same day that my sister got a shirt vutton stuck up her nose and we spent the majority of the evening sat in A&E waiting for her to be seen).