I remember it so clearly. I was almost 9 years old and saw it on tv in the news with my family in Europe. It took forever to calm and comfort my brother, who was 5 at the time. It was one of the biggest (international) shocks of my childhood that I can remember.

I was 4 and didn't really understand what was going on except for that the cool space plane went bang. It sounds stupid but I grew up watching sci-fi, so a blown up space ship didn't really faze me. Took a couple of years to truly understand

It was at 11:39 est. according to Wikipedia. I remember being in school with class well in session in Colorado when it happened. School wouldn't have started by 7:39. It happening a little before 10am mountain time makes a lot more sense. That said, the fact I can remember this so clearly today goes to show how shocking it was.

I had been teaching a class at Johnson Space Center the week before. The students said they could get me a gallery pass for Mission Control. I turned it down because I wanted to go home and I would have had to stay in Houston over the weekend. Had I not gone home I would have been in Mission Control when it happened. Actually I am glad I was not there.

I was in 2nd grade and I’ll never forget the build up to the launch here in America. We spent a week in Science class discussing the mission, reading weekly readers about it, and even watching a vhs video about the shuttle. We learned the biography of each astronaut because this mission was being heavily promoted to children my age. A civilian teacher, Christa McAuliffe had been selected as a way to encourage an interest in science for my generation.

On the day of the launch we all were dismissed to the library to watch it on a TV that was sitting on a rolling cart. It was so unseasonably cold that day in the US Southeast that our library was freezing and uncomfortable. I can remember shivering even though I was wearing my jacket.

We watched the countdown and launch, but when the tradgedy occurred, nobody in the room grasped what had just happened. Then the announcer said something to the effect of ‘Oh my God, something has gone terribly wrong!’.

That prompted a teacher to run to the TV but she could not figure out how to turn it off so she tried to block it with her body and told us all to turn around and go back to our classrooms.

Towards the end of the day, our Principal spoke over the intercom and told us that the Challenger was considered lost and all astronauts were presumed dead. He told us that it was a National tragedy and explained what that meant. He also told us that it was like the Kennedy assassination that he experienced when he was our age. He told us to pray for the Astronaut’s families and to watch the Presidential Address that evening.

Soon after, we spent our science class writing notes and cards to the families of the astronauts, many of us were trying to hold back our own tears while we wrote these notes and drew pictures on the cards. We were not allowed to draw coffins, dead bodies, or skeletal remains and if we drew a flag it had to be upright and waving.

Edit: To this very day, I avoid all articles and documentaries about the Challenger.

Yes, you have the correct time. I was in my 2nd year at American University. I had already had my 9 am Tuesday/Thursday class, and after grabbing a bite, went back to my apartment and heard the launch live on WTOP, the all- news station in DC. And I turned it off probably seconds before the explosion.

Tbh can anyone explain me what was the objective or mission of that space shuttle? I know nothing bout it

From Wikipedia:

>The tenth mission for Challenger, STS-51-L, was scheduled to deploy the second in a series of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS-B), carry out the first flight of the "Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy" (SPARTAN-203) / Halley's Comet Experiment Deployable in order to observe Halley's Comet, and carry out several lessons from space as part of the Teacher in Space Project and Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP).

One of my earliest memories is of 7 red roses for the 7 astronauts on the altar in my preschool's chapel.

I was five days old on the day of the Challenger disaster. My mom always said between that and Chernobyl that spring she worried so much about her decision to bring children into such an uncertain world.

There was also an elementary school friend who was born on the day of the disaster, lost touch but I still remember him. Happy birthday Aaron if you’re reading this!

Yep, I was watching it in the physics classroom at lunchtime - on the east coast. There were about 30 students and about as many teachers in there. There weren't many TVs in the school. That was the classroom that had the sample of a shuttle heat tile that NASA sent to schools and my physics teacher set up a little viewing event. My 4th period teacher (right after lunch) was in the room and she said I could stay there and watch.

There were no mobile phones, no social media, no internet. AV had a few TVs on carts (the red asphalt type safety movies were all on VHS by then, though still a lot of film strips/loops still in use). They set up TVs in the auditorium and let students go watch. Hard to get students to focus after that, and the historic nature of the event wasn't lost on anyone.

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Thing that got me at the time, as someone who vividly remembers the Apollo missions is that Shuttle missions had become so routine by the time of the Challenger explosion There had been ten missions in 85 and early 86 so everyone thought the kinks had been worked out of the system. I was in a college at the time and when word first came out no one believed it.

I was in 5th grade watching with my class. I hardly understood what was happening until the teacher started crying. They opened a new middle school in my town shortly after named Challenger. My class was the first class to go. Everyone talked about a curse on our class claiming that 6 students from our class and one teacher would die before high school graduation. It was a pretty big school, so of course the curse came true.

5th grade math class for me. Mrs. Thompson, can’t remember what she looked like, but remember the shock on her face still today.

I was an engineer for Rockwell on the B1 and was working in the facility just across Plant 42 from where the shuttles were built. Still remember the moment the news hit.

This sounds right. My mom lived in EST. She said she had just got home for lunch when she saw it happen. My grandma (her mom) apparently silently walked over to the TV and turned it off. My mom asked if they were going to me okay, and my grandma just said, "no." And that was that.

I had just had a baby and was in the hospital. My husband came in with the things I'd asked him to bring from home. He said "I have bad news. They lost the Shuttle." My brain couldn't comprehend that, so I said, "W-where did it go? They can't find it?" He said, "No, it blew up." In my overly hormonal emotional state, I had to keep switching channels on TV because I couldn't deal with seeing it. Finally I watched it about 10 pm. It looked like something evil had taken it over, with horns sprouting from it (the solud-rocket boosters shooting blindly upward).

Needless to say, I will never forget that.

I remember seing this on TV. I dont think know if it was the live broadcast or news after.i was like 5 at the time.

The news bulletin interrupted The Price Is Right. I was home from school. Sounds about right.

I was about 12 and devastated.

Nursing a hangover at Ruby's in Eagle-Vail Colorado. Full house went silent in about 2 minutes. Most thought it was a scene from a movie or such. Shuttle launch was not something the community was focused on. But, my best friend's dad was a thermal tile engineer in so cal. Poor guy was just devastated.

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I was in 7th grade science class watching it live. I had a great teacher who didn’t lose it or freak out.

I was home sick from school and was watching it on TV.

My gym teacher was one of the finalists - final 20 or something like that.
He knew Christa McAuliffe and was there for the launch...

Sad day

So many of us with the same lived experience. We watched it sitting on the floor in the hall between two classrooms, with that same TV on a rolling cart. I’ll never forget it.

I was working for Computerland, on 2nd street, in the shadow of the Bay Bridge, San Francisco.

It was one of those moments, like when the planes hit the World Trade Center towers, so many years later.

Everybody just clustered around the one TV in the warehouse, in a bit of a state of shock, trying to glean any bits of information they could get.

Friend of mine was telling me they were at a work training and the person giving the presentation used the iconic Challenger explosion picture to illustrate the point they were making, and you could clearly tell in the room where the age dividing line was, because half the room got very, very quiet, and the other half was asking what they were looking at.

I was 15. I can still picture the classroom with the TV on the rolling cart.

I lived in Europe too! Naples, Italy. We saw it on AFN. I was 13.

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I was in 5th grade.

I live on the west coast so it was all finished by the time school started.

At line-up in the yard before school I noticed all the teachers were talking and some were visibly upset. I asked a kid what happened.

He said, "A teacher blew up!" To a fifth grader that's a funny joke. Obviously teachers don't just blow up. I cracked up laughing and said, "She BLEW ALL THE WAY UP?"

Half a dozen teachers turned to stare at me and my teacher grabbed my arm and told me how unfunny that was. I got detention. This teacher never got mad and never touched a kid but she was hurting then and this really sent her to the stratosphere.

That's how I remember that day.

I remember watching this in school. They wheeled in the TV for everybody to watch. The teacher just kind of stared at the TV for a few seconds before turning it off and telling us there was some kind of accident.

It was otherwise a routine mission but it had the added dimension of having a non-professional astronaut school teacher on board. She was supposed to do live lessons from space or something. There were school activities planned. It was a huge nationwide thing.

Shuttle missions were routine by then but this one had much MUCH more attention paid to it and it was played live in schools across the country.

I was in 5th grade and I remember getting my first early lessons in physics in the days before the launch.

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I watched it live with an ice pack on my face at the ER. Fell off the couch face first into a coffee table. Ended up with my two front teeth pushed out and huge split lip.

Colorado Springs?

Watched it with a pilot and fellow space buff of mine at work. We were both stunned into total silence.
We did a weekly call in TV show and threw out the nights topic and just gave folks a place to call and vent their feelings. Luckily we had a psychologist on as a guest and he stepped in to help people cope. I think we ran over by like 2 hours before the lines stopped ringing.
NASA has a bad track record with the cold, with the anniversary of Apollo One happening just a day or so ago, Challenger and then Columbia in a weeks time. Apollo wasn't necessarily the cold as a cause but the other two definitely were.

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I was asleep on the couch facing the TV. I woke up and the explosion was literally the first thing I saw. Still in a bit of a fog I thought, WTF is that? That does not look good.

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That’s some real trauma, especially as a 2nd grader. I experienced it too. I was in 6th grade and lived in Melbourne, Florida about 30 miles from KSC. I remember going to school that morning and it being one of the coldest days I’d ever experienced in Florida. I usually rode my bike to school but my dad drove me that day because it was so cold. We went outside and watched it live like we usually did, but we all knew something had gone terribly wrong this time. No one could focus for the rest of the day.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |KSC|Kennedy Space Center, Florida| |STS|Space Transportation System (Shuttle)| |TDRSS|(US) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System|

^(3 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 14 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8494 for this sub, first seen 29th Jan 2023, 03:45]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

It's insane. There's a really good book about it called We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly

We also briefly covered it in our 6th grade science class, I believe our teacher applied, but didn't make too far due to health conditions.

My mom tells the story of how they were watching it because the teacher taught in her school district. It's awful to think her teacher may have known the woman who died

It was earlier than 1130 for sure. I saw it out of my office window. The contrails were there until after 3pm est

Wiki has it wrong. I believe by an hour. I saw it out my window. I believe about 1030 ish

I was in US.Navy boot camp. Pretty much shut down for the day. Fn awful.

It was just before I turned 9, too.

I was in 3rd grade on the west coast of the US, so the explosion happened just before school started at 9 AM. They had the TVs on, covering the aftermath.

Not five minutes after the explosion I got a phone call from my jerky neighbor.

Hey--What does NASA stand for?

What?

Need another seven astronauts.

I was in the 5th grade. I'm not sure why we didn't watch the launch live, but we had just come in from recess. Our 5th grade teacher told us to sit down he had some bad news to tell us. We had just had a field trip rescheduled, so I said, don't tell me the field trip is canceled again. He got this stern look on his face and told me to sit down. I felt like shit when he told us what happened. We were then taken to the library to watch the news coverage of what happened. It was a really sad day. We had been following the coverage of the first teacher in space for a while and for it to end up in tragedy, was difficult to comprehend. The teacher's talked to us about how they would never forget where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. They told us we will never forget this day either. They were correct. We didn't have class the rest of the day we just watched news and discussed what happened. Of course there were some kids cracking jokes about it. I didn't understand how they could make jokes about it, and how they came up with them so fast. However joking about tragedy is a copping mechanism for some. So in my life I won't forget this day, 911, and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

I was a senior in high school. I watched the launch live on a small tv in a wardrobe room of the ROTC facility, as at the time I was in ROTC.

I was stunned, so I stepped out and got the instructors who were in their office.

We all crowded in to watch the broadcast as they kept playing what happened over and over. It was definitely a “where were YOU when X happened?” kind of moment.

(It was a 2nd period “free” time slot but I was granted permission to schedule it as I was considered a good student, so I did independent study, hence sitting in the wardrobe room watching the launch while doing some homework.)

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I had just turned 10 and just figured out how to attend Space Camp during the upcoming summer (it took a lot of phone calls and waiting for stuff in through mail back then). We watched in my school's library, Peter Jennings on ABC News. Most of us (kids and teachers) were too shocked to cry. I wound up going to Space Camp 6 months later, as planned. I still have my Space Camp wings, cap, certificate, and flight suit, as well as the bronze commemorative Challenger coin I bought there, "Reaching for the Stars."

One of the days reality hit me square in the fucking face

Omg I was in second grade too! I don’t remember much leading up to it but I remember watching the coverage in class.

I also remember writing notes and stuff to survivors/astronauts families

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGZbuWTzf2mI5yygptxIeTZN6G0hhq3zb

This is a Playlist of songs written soon after the disaster.

Sadly, Americans focus on Challenger rather than the fact that the shuttle program spanned thirty years and sent over 800 people into space in over 130 missions.

I was at Kennedy Space Center that day - the coldest day I ever remember in Florida. Very, very sad.

I had no idea and yesterday I added the challenger hidden tape documentary to my watch list for tonight.

I was too young to remember it, but I know my mom watched it from our yard. Thanks for sharing

I remember it clearly. I was a college senior at the University of Florida. Everything stopped. Classes were canceled for the rest of the day.

My father-in-law was one of the "runners-up" for Challenger when he used to be a science teacher. I suppose in the end, he could be considered more of a winner, though.

The course of events leading up to this was so bizarre.

Morton Thiakol pretty much knew it was too cold.