25 years ago today: the Challenger explosion

[RGMike]

A friend and former ABC co-worker, Karl Zuk, remembers the day:

http://www.musicradio77.com/wwwboard/messages/380245.html

I happened to be off that day, was hanging around the house with a cold on a typical NYC winter day. I was listening to alt-rock WLIR, which *never* did news after 9am, and when they interrupted the music with a bulletin I knew immediately that something truly earth-shattering must've happened.

[Gazoo]

I had skipped school that day and was watching game shows instead of the Challenger lift-off, which didn't pique my interest.  I remember being annoyed when they cut away to the shuttle ... until I realized why they'd cut away to it.   

[SFGuy]

I was a senior in high school and in class. I remember the Principal talked over the intercom (which he rarely did) so I knew it was something really important.

[mshray]

I remember I was working & heard it on the radio right after it happened.  My former roommate Dave was (& most likely still is) a huge NASA buff, he'd taken a trip to FL a couple years earlier to see a shuttle launch firsthand.  So I immediately called him & broke the news to him.  He knew the names of everyone on board.

[Wayback]

I was in NJ then, it was a very cold day up and down the East Coast (as evidenced by ice on shuttle rocket at launch).  I had gone to a hardware store to get some lock de-icer for my car door (those of you who've lived in snow country know what I mean), and heard the breaking news over the radio in that store, went home to watch news coverage.  Surreal then, but a reminder that each space launch since the '60s is not without risk.  It's actually amazing we didn't have more accidents aside from Apollo 1 in '67, Apollo 13 in '70, Challenger in '86 and Shuttle Columbia in '03.

[RGMike]

I'm reminded of the rumor (at the time) that NASA wanted to postpone because of the ice, but that the White House pressed them to launch because Reagan wanted to talk about the shuttle in his State of the Union that night. Never been proven, afaik, but I remember being riled up about it then.

[urth]

I remember I was working & heard it on the radio right after it happened.  My former roommate Dave was (& most likely still is) a huge NASA buff, he'd taken a trip to FL a couple years earlier to see a shuttle launch firsthand.  So I immediately called him & broke the news to him.  He knew the names of everyone on board.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, PBS is airing the first part of a 4-episode doc on NASA and the space program beginning tomorrow (Tuesday) night and continuing for the following three Tuesdays. Looks pretty cool except it's making me feel just a tad aged, in that things that happened during my childhood are now the subject of historical PBS programming.

And as for where we were when the Challenger blew up, I was working my post-collegiate slacker job as a gardener in Sacramento, and our boss drove up and told us about it. Didn''t get to see any footage of it until later that day, but it was pretty mind-blowing when I did.

I was in Paris when the Columbia accident occurred, and it got as much saturation coverage there as we'd have seen if we were at home.