Remember the Great loss 28Jan1986 Challenger

[kramer714]

I remember the day too...


I was in College year 4 of my engineering degree, wanting to build airplanes and rockets. To help pay for school I took a job selling T.V.s at a shopping mall. Picture standing around 50-100 televisions all showing the image over and over.

It was a strange moment being early in the day (Chicago) the mall was quiet. Our store became a focal point, there was a crowd that formed in one of those strange times when you feel connected to the strangers around you without actually talking to them, a shared feeling.

Over 20 years later, as an engineer I still think of the series of events that ended in the failure. As a student (I was 20 at the time) seeing the failure over and over, knowing that it wasn't some experiment in school but the shuttle and the astronauts that was disintegrating on 50 screens all morning changes your perspective.

I wonder if some of the lessons learned have been forgotten over time. I have hired a number of engineers over the years, many of them right out of college, do they understand the consequences of simple decisions? I have to 'teach them' that they have to assume that what they do can have dire results (are you sure about that?) and not to assume that someone else will catch what they don't.

 

[mv1371]

I was in the 8th grade and we were in art class. We did not have any real assignment at the time other than just drawing since we had a television tuned into the launch to see the school teacher go into space. Needless to say, there was a stunnned silence in the room. Several kids drew pictures of their interpretation of what they saw on t.v. Years later when I seen kids pictures of the 9/11 events I always flash back to that day in art class.

 

[judo]

I was in Pensacola working as a delivery driver for a large office supply company. When I first heard the news I did not believe it. Then I made my next delivery to a TV and appliance store. Like Kramer said, it was on every television.

 

[SteveA]

I was in Augsburg Germany, 218th MP Co. A bunch of us were hanging around the CQ desk when a kid came running out of his room screaming the 'Shuttle blew up"! What pit in my stomach. We watched stunned as they played those images over and over. I remember that day well as I do the loss of Columbia.

 

[luke strawwalker]

I was truly shocked. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the construction adhesive and the popcorn that someone had been making in the microwave.

I actually prefer butter on my popcorn instead of construction adhesive... LOL Just tastes better that way.

To each his own... :roll::roll::roll:

Forgive, but I laughed out loud when I read that...

"Laughter does good like a medicine." (that's in the Bible). Returning the thread to the proper respect now.

OL JR

 

[CoyoteNumber2]

Challenger is my first memory, it was a month before my 4th birthday, I don't know if it was all the news time or what but it is the earliest thing I remember. Right now I can turn and see the pads 39A and 39B from my office window, it set me on the path, to be an engineer.

These are two of the pictures I took at SLC 34 last Feb. SLC 34 is the site of the Apollo 1 fire as you can see there isn't much left, the structure has been torn down and the concrete parts abandoned in place. I did get a shot of a nearly full moon rising between the legs of the remaining launch pad structure, (hard to see shrunk down this far though).

Touching photos. I'm hoping to see this site when I'm there in a week for STS-130.

Do you work at the Cape?

 

[SCE to AUX]

I was in my senior year of HS, watching the launch with a couple other students who were actually interested in such things. We were in the electronics shop, which usually had a few TV sets around in varying states of operability. We managed to find a station that was actually covering the launch , and we saw it happen live.

Needless to say, we didn't do much else for the rest of the day but watch the coverage. Our shop was about the only class that had a TV in it, so lots of folks were drifting in and out to shear the latest.

A couple of us from the electronics shop were involved in running a pirate FM radio station on the weekends, and our next broadcast was a tribute to the Challenger crew, playing stuff like "Major Tom" by David Bowie, and "Countdown" by Rush.