...slipped the surly bonds...
 

Jan 28, 1986..sitting in a classroom with all my classmates, watching TV as the teacher goes into space when it all goes so horribly wrong. I can't believe it's been TWENTY YEARS.

God rest ye brave travellers.

edit: Challenger -- 26 years.
Apollo 1 -- 45 years.
Columbia -- 9 years.

Apollo 1 (204) crew

Challenger crew

Columbia crew

hmmm, that means 20 years ago I was home from high school with the chicken pox.

Challenger was the first "I remember where I was when it happened" moment of my life.

I too was in high school and will never forget them.

As a matter of fact, 15 years ago TODAY, my father passed on from colon cancer. I was very young and it affected me deeply. My health habits are much different today because of it. Not many people can say this but my father was my hero in life and spread joy to nearly every single person he ever met.

God, I don't need to see that video again.

In terms of non sports moments, same here. I didn't get to watch it in class, I heard about it on the way home from school and then I saw on the floor in my parents bedroom watching the news that evening. I was in the 3rd grade.

Wow! That was 20 freaking years ago. I was a freshman in high school when that happened and it was really surreal watching it as it happened. I kept thinking that it was some kind a movie at the time and my mind wouldn't compute that is was such a tragic event.

That is the first major news moment I remember also...the kind of "where were you when (blank) happened?". I was in 6th grade and we were watching it on TV...none of us (the kids) really understood what was going on until the Principal came on the loudspeaker and made an announcement a couple minutes after the explosion. So awful. Can't beleive it's been 20 years!

I was a junior in high school watching the Challenger on TV like many others, and it just didn't register to me what had happened and that those people were gone. I thought that there would be some sort of escape plan or something. Silly kid thinking I guess.

I work for Boeing now and when the Columbia went down a few years ago all of the memories from the Challenger experience came flooding back. We take for granted that these people are risking their lives when we send them up on these things, and forget how dangerous it really is.

If we had more people that thought like this the world would be a better place.

Cheers to your pops.

8th Grade. It was the day before my birthday.

Gus Grissom was my maternal Grandmother's cousin. I remmeber she had some neat NASA memorabilia in her house when I was little, but who knows what happened to it.

I was in 4th grade.

I also was in 4th grade. I was in my science class at the time, but we didn't have a TV set up or anything. My teacher I guess had stepped out to watch the launch in another room and then came back to announce that "the shuttle just blew up". Oddly, she wasn't emotional about it or anything. I didn't really grasp how dramatic and horrible the event was until I got home that afternoon and saw that all the networks were wall-to-wall with the news about it. It was only then that I saw what had happened.

I was getting out of bed I guess about the time Columbia came apart because when I came downstairs and turned on the tube, it wasn't but maybe a half-hour after it had happened. At that point they weren't totally sure what had happened, only that things had gone wrong on re-entry.

I was in 5th or 6th grade, I don't remember. I do remember the announcement, but classes continued on...when I got home, it was on all the tvs. It was rather stunning, more amazing was that now, we assume they survived the initial explosion and were possibly alive (and conscious) the entire drop down.

Of course, I was singled out and told to watch the next take off to witness and report to my principal if it would be successful, kind of innoculous when you think about it, but it would have been pretty traumatizing had it happened again.

I was stunned with Columbia but it wasn't the same way because I was older and more aware of the risks that go into space flight.

I think I was either in 1st or 2nd grade at the time. I was just a tiny little astronomer at the time (always had a big interest in space), plus we talked about it in class the days before the launch since a teacher was going into space. We watched the news coverage of it all day. The only actual class we had for 2 days was gym class. But it's not like we all happy about not having class. We were all pretty much glued to the TV.

Definately my first "everyone remembers where they were when (blank) happened".

I remember I was in an Applebees when OJ got off. Whole work crew went over to participate in the festivities.

You had gym class in 1st or 2nd grade? We only had recess at that age.

Yeah, from 1st grade on.

I was only 2, so I don't remember it as it happened. I remember Columbia rather vividly, as it was the morning after me and ex-girlfriend of 3 years first hooked up.

I was in 5th or 6th grade when the O.J. verdict was read. They pulled us all out of class and brought us to the teacher's lounge to watch it. Looking back, I can't believe the mania that that trial created.

Applebees was packed to overflow for the OJ. Huge reaction from the crowd. It was like Justin Leonard sinking the Ryder Cup putt.

Yay...the OJ trail was crazy. I was living in Los Angeles at the time and working for MTA. I remember a number of people making bets on whether he was going to get off. It seemed that every other cubicle had a radio or small TV on, and after the verdict was read, I remember a number of women who just stared at me with disgust whenever I passed them by. It was as if I were the one getting away with murder. Very, very strange to see a whole office get polarized in a matter of seconds. It took about two weeks for things to get back to normal again.

Antmeister, did you get your OJ prize in the mail?

lol....no I didn't.

I too was in first grade, watching the shuttle on TV.
I remember that as things started going bad and everybody started to realize that there was a MAJOR problem, they quickly shuffled us back to our classrooms (we had been in an "open area" in the middle of all the classrooms, as the classrooms were all arranged in a circle for each grade).

I was at home recovering from hand surgery for Columbia. Columbia was in the middle of my grad school career, where I was studying aerospace engineering, with a thesis of using robots in space to examine and fix problems with satellites. That definitely frustrated me a lot. Maybe even more because I'd actually been in that shuttle and seen one of its launches.

/tk

challenger: 8th grade...
sitting in math class, i believe .. when..
the audio-visual/supply lady came bursting in and said, "The shuttle just blew up."

we spent the rest of the day watching the news coverage...

I was actually in the school hallway playing Parsec (of all things) on the TI. The first few grades in our school always watched the liftoffs, and my neighbor came out in the hall and told me what happened.

I was sitting in Chemistry class, we were spending the class watching the launch live. We were all really excited, the teacher went over the inumerable chemical processes taking place throughout everything, then....poof....it just vanished in a huge cloud....

We never changed classes again that day, the whole school just stayed where theyw ere or got ordered down to the auditorium.

One of many days in my life that I will never ever be able to forget.

For shame - for shame. They died pushing the final frontier. Lets not forget them.

19 years ago TODAY: 2 Live Crew

The term "threadjacking" just took on a whole new meaning.

That is inappropriate, especially in this thread.

Yes, extremely inappropriate, please remove your post lighthousekeeper.

I remember I was in 3rd grade when the Challenger exploded. They wheeled the TV into the classroom and the class watched.

I don't remember the impetus, but for some reason I was laughing (don't remember whether it was because of what was on TV or some other thing going on) but I do remember the teacher scolding me, telling me that it was inappropriate. Being a shy, do-gooder type kid, I never wanted to do anything to upset the teacher, so I was a little embarrassed. But I also felt at that moment a little defensive and although I didn't say anything, I thought to myself (in whatever way a 3rd grader frames these thoughts): "people are dying every second all over the world. why should these deaths be more solemn than the others? if we can't laugh when someone dies, then we can never laugh". don't know if those were the exact thoughts, but it was something along those lines.

I guess I haven't really matured/learned much since then. :)

Bump -- 2 more years (meant to bump last year, but forgot).

Friday is the FIVE YEAR anniversary for Columbia.

I don't remember where I was when I learned about Challenger. I would have been 10, so elementary school, but I don't remember if we got to watch it on TV or not.

I think the first "I remember where I was for that event" thing for me was when Kurt Cobain killed himself, I was at home and I remember watching Much Music for hours.

The most vivid one is 9/11 though, because I was working from my apartment in Montreal and got to watch CNN while I explained to all my former co-workers back in Winnipeg what was going on (they were at work). I actually remember typing to a buddy (whom I now work with again at a different company) that one of the towers looked like it was 'leaning' or something strange, and then it collapsed a couple minutes later. I wish I had saved the transcripts of those IM's, it would be amazing to re-read exactly what we were talking about throughout that morning...

I was in 4th grade when this happened. They had gathered several classes (100+ kids) in the library to watch the launch. Right before lift-off one of the kids said "I hope it blows up". After it exploded, people were in shock for about 10 seconds then a handful of girls started beating the kid up. The teachers couldn't react, they were still watching TV. The gym teacher finally woke up and yelled "knock that shit off" and everybody started watching the TV again.

I love that game. And I just recently finally climbed Mt. Everest in Alpiner via emulator, have struggling for years as a kid with that. It's kind of sad how easy it was.

I was in 2nd grade, but didn't see it at school, which is quite odd in retrospect because I was just south of the New Hampshire border and Christa Mcauliffe was a pretty big deal there, even before the launch. I heard about it on the walk home, but don't remember it having any effect on me.

I remember hearing probably my first ever really tasteless joke just a few days or weeks later. "NASA stands for needs another seven astronauts". A teacher overheard one kid saying it and he had to "stay in for reccess" - the worst punishment at the teacher's disposal back then.

Then I remember hearing all these crazy rumors about one of them surviving or their body parts washing up on beaches. The schoolyard was truly the 80's equivalent of the internet in terms of crazy rumors.

I remember the Head & Shoulders joke. I guess I was in 9th grade at the time. I remember finding out while I was at lunch, but that doesn't seem like it would jibe with the timing of events. Maybe I was in study hall in the lunch room.

I was in the first grade, but I don't think we had the capability for live TV in the classroom.

I sure don't remember watching any shuttle launches, for sure.

my parents swear i wasn't watching this live, but i have absolutly VIVID memories of watching it live in school. Would have made sense too, as McAuliffe was a local.

Can't believe it's been that long since Columbia either. I have a poem that I wrote 5 years ago about Columbia. Let me see if it's on my phone next to me here.

Bluebonnets

The fireball burned the sky like crimson tumbleweed
cartwheeling across the Texas prarie.

We will always wonder when you knew,
if there was an instant for thoughts,
of home and loved ones;
before your ship began to shake, and shed
like petals of a bluebonnet blazing through the sky.

Nothing remains now, but to etch your names
in granite on that Houston monument.
Lines in stone are all that will remain soon,
when your names have been forgotten
as the ink and pulp of the papers
bleeds into new headlines.

dola

that poem was written day-of...probably within a few hours of the disaster, and hasn't really undergone any significant revision, as I never included it in any compilations i was working on or whatever, so it's still quite "raw." but...in some way that seems sort of fitting too.

I'll always remember Columbia for a different reason than most... I think it was about 4am Sydney time when my mobile phone starts ringing. I wake up, answer the call, and it's my brother, drunk as a skunk:

"Turn on the news, terrorists have shot down the space station!!!"

Usually I hate reading poetry, as it reeks of ugly pretention...but this is actually pretty good.

well thanks

Columbia almost gets me more than Challenger, and Challenger got me bad when I was a kid. Columbia was when I was an adult, and it happened basically right on top of my head. I flipped on the TV that morning, when 'Holy crap, they can't get the shuttle on radio', when outside and say the streak across the sky. I was in Dallas, and it was very prominent. That image is burned into my eyes I think.

Reagan being shot was the first 'Where were you' moments for me.

Makes me feel pretty old. I was a freshman at UF, coming home from morning class on my bike to my dorm. Someone said there was something on the TV about the shuttle. I had always grown accustomed to watching launches (grew up in central Florida and watched most of the space launches from '70 on...only had to go to the end of my driveway to watch them). I didn't get a chance to watch for the shuttle that morning because of class. I remember it was a pretty cold day in Gainesville: beautiful with clear skies. Of course, that seems to have been the death-knell for the shuttle. Spent the rest of the day in the dorm kitchen, watching the small 15" TV.