One of the very few days that I remember where I was, and when.
I remember someone I knew was watching it live, and then told me the news. It was depressing and sad. The failures of the U.S. space program were rare, but still must be remembered.
I reminder it well
I was in grade school in the lunch line
Video
Crowd Reaction: Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion January 28, 1986
https://rumble.com/vsc4il-crowd-reaction-space-shuttle-challenger-explosion-january-28-1986.html
I remember the room I was sitting in.
That was way back when you had to buy newspapers to learn anything. The San Francisco Examiner published an early afternoon edition that day with pictures. I remember it was a rainy day and after leaving work I had to hide the paper with the cover story under my coat after buying it from an outdoor newsstand.
I was living in Arcadia CA and working in Orange CA. I stopped in a 7/11 on Baldwin ave in Arcadia for my coffee and everyone was watching the TV monitor. I had no idea what had happened until I started watching what they were.
Very sad day indeed.
“Obviously a major malfunction,” said Stephen A. Nesbitt of Mission Control. “We have no downlink.” And then, after a long pause: “We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded.”
I was in IBM BLD 9 across from JSC. I had been assigned that flight as a tester.
No Capsule Escape Propulsion System
I was doing CQ duty at unit I was stationed at in the army. I heard a radio report from one of the officer’s offices. It sounded like a live report of major news.
I followedd a couple officers into the day room. They had the TV on and they were just starting a repeat of the launch. After the spacecraft exploded, one of the officers looked at me and said my face had gone completely white.
Too soon?
I was involved in a plane crash/accident at JFK airport that day believe it or not. I worked on the ramp for Fedex, back then it was known as “Federal Express” and my job was to unload the planes of all the cargo but before that as the plane taxied in, I had to stand by the edge of the left wing and hold up a torch/flashlight so the guy marshalling the plane in at the front knew where the wing limit was.
Well lo and behold, our ramp was near El Al, the Israeli cargo company and no offense to Israel, but that damn company was run by slobs. All they time they would leave their equipment all over the place.
Well all of a sudden as the Fedex plane was pulling in this snow storm came in, real heavy snow making visibility practically zero. You could probably find a weather report talking about it in some weather record website for NYC. And guess what happened next?
All of a sudden in front of me was an El Al loader lifter which is a machine that elevates to the height of the aircraft and takes off cargo containers. So I started yelling, waving my torch like crazy, and too late. CRAAAAACK.....The wing hit it and cracked in half...ooops
The rest of the day we were filling out reports with the pilot going bananas, really pissed off. And in the office they had the TV news on and we saw the report of the Challenger blowing up. Not a good day for flying.
I was a young engineering student and was devastated by this.
It was only after working a few years that I realized that NASA had already turned into a pointless bureaucracy and the that the shuttle program itself was not nothing like what was originally intended.
At the time I was working for the company that built the Shuttles (as was my father and my [then] brother-in-law). As we always did, the whole plant was gathered around TV sets to watch the launch. At first there was a gasp of shock, a second of unbelieving silence, then lots of crying and grim faces. It was a terrible day for us, almost like 9-11.
“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God,’” - Ronald Reagan
My wife and I were looking at news TVs at sears watching the launch. Soo very sad.
I was standing on the stairway between the VAB (Vertical Assembly Building) and the LCC (Launch Control Center). That was the first Shuttle launch from Pad 39B. We had spent the previous 3 years designing the modifications to the pad for the Shuttle. It was “our pad”. I took the last picture on my roll of film seconds before the explosion. We spent the rest of the day watching the video over and over again trying to figure out what happened. We spotted the plume coming from the solid rocket booster in the video and knew that was the cause before the day was out.
NASA knew they were burning through O-Rings as they had done it on previous missions. They knew it was not if, it was when it burned through at the wrong angle and impinged on the LOX tank.
Dad was never one to talk about work at home, but he came home early in the Shuttle program one day and said “mark my words...” He was part of the team early on that was trying to find out if it was a seal or metallurgical issue.
The push to get the first teacher in space on time killed the entire crew, most of whom lived until they hit the water.
Inexcusable
I had just left work to go out for some lunch, the news was on the radio in my car.
I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. I was painting our daughter’s room and my dad called and said the Shuttle blew up...I didn’t believe it and turned on the TV....Oh my gosh it was like the assassination all over again.