OT: Challenger, What were you doing 25 years ago today?

As most of ya'll realize its been 25 years since the Challenger accident.

I had just walked into a Korean language class in college. I had lived in Korea for 16 months as a teen and had picked up quite a bit of the language so it seemed sensible to take a few language classes. It was a small class and we met in a room around a large conference table. It was a somewhat informal setting compared to the usual lecture halls. I sat at the end of the table opposite the instructor. As I sat down my classmate to the right of me leaned over and told me the shuttle had exploded. I was shocked, and then a second later I realized that this was the flight with the teacher on board. The professor cut class short so I walked over to the student center where a big projector TV was showing news on the event. It funny how vivid the memories can be on certain day. One image that I'll never forget is the reaction of Christa's family.

I was in grade school watching it on the Television w/ the rest of our school. I was young enough to recall that most of my peers didn't quite realize what had happened till some of the teachers started to cry.

I was sleeping, but listened to the news when I woke up to go to work night shift at Farm Fresh Bakery. I remember how somber and quiet it was at work compared to the usually frolicky attitude there.

We were in the gym at Junior High school. It was a large event at our school. When the shuttle exploded it did not regester for a bit then the teachers started shutting off the TV's and told everyone to go to their next class. It was real shocker because that was the first time we had seen anything go wrong with NASA. The rest of the day everyone was kind of a daze.

I was home sick from grade school, and since I was a space nut, my Mom turned on the TV so I could watch the shuttle launch. I remember it took several hours before it really sank in.

At the time we had a satellite dish and could watch the launches directly from NASA. My wife didn't work at the time so she fed the VCR with a fresh tape every 2 hours starting a couple of hours before scheduled lift-off. Her and my 5 year-old daughter were watching. She called me at work within a minute of the explosion so I was the first to know at the plant. We didn't have access to a TV, but every radio was quickly turned up to listen. I left work early just to get home to watch the recordings. It's very different hearing the narratives directly from NASA without some TV commentator putting his 2 cents in.

That day made a lasting impression on my daughter. By the time I got home she had drawn a picture of the shuttle exploding. I still have it....

I was in 7th grade. The teacher setup a TV in the classroom and the class was watching it live. This was a big deal for teachers since it was the first time one was going along on the shuttle. That excitement didn't last long.

I can still picture perfectly the "205" label above my high school geometry classroom because the PA speaker was mounted next to it. I stared at it a long time when Brother Ryan interrupted the chaos of second period class change to tell us Challenger and her crew had been lost over the Atlantic.

danny.michael said:

At the time we had a satellite dish and could watch the launches directly from NASA. My wife didn't work at the time so she fed the VCR with a fresh tape every 2 hours starting a couple of hours before scheduled lift-off. Her and my 5 year-old daughter were watching. She called me at work within a minute of the explosion so I was the first to know at the plant. We didn't have access to a TV, but every radio was quickly turned up to listen. I left work early just to get home to watch the recordings. It's very different hearing the narratives directly from NASA without some TV commentator putting his 2 cents in.

That day made a lasting impression on my daughter. By the time I got home she had drawn a picture of the shuttle exploding. I still have it....

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Wow, how old was your daughter at the time?

dmroeder said:

Wow, how old was your daughter at the time?

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She was 5.

I'm on the west coast it was early in the morning and I was watching on TV while playing with my computer.

I was in my 2nd or 3rd grade class. Our class was one of four in the school selected to have one of the TVs rolled in to watch the historic event live. When it exploded our teacher calmly unplugged the TV and rolled it out, then tried to resume class and keep everyone calm. They took the entire school into the auditorium a little later to explain what happened

I was in my high school at Lunch when an announcement came over the PA

I was on site at a wastewater treatment plant doing the start-up on the very first control system for my own company. We watched the replays on a TV the plant had. Needless to say the rest of the day was somber indeed.

I was 5 years old at home playing and watching it on TV with my mom.