30th Anniversary of Space Shuttle Challenger loss.

[Mike Abberton]

I grew up in southern New Hampshire (Christa McAuliffe was from Concord, NH) and the flight was a really big deal. I was in High School at the time, and I remember hearing between classes a student say the Space Shuttle blew up. I thought he was crazy, until I got to my next class. They had a TV set up there, and we all watched stunned for that entire class period to the news coverage.

[mako88sb]

Hard to believe it's been 30 years already. I was looking over some blueprints with a draftsman and heard on his radio the breaking news. I went into the main office and told everybody about it. One guy just laughed as he put his walk-man headphones on. He thought I was joking but his face transformed instantly when he heard it as well.

[Rockin Robbins]

A friend of mine worked at KSC on the shuttle. He was one of those who processed the SRBs after they returned from the water, bashing them round again, cleaning them out, putting new propellant in the segments, rejoining the segments and readying them for flight.

I stood in my business' parking lot and watched the flight naked eye and wondered about the three separate plumes which clearly indicated solid rocket boosters had detached from the main launch vehicle. It was 40 miles away so no explosions were heard.

I'll never forget as he sat beside me watching a replay of the explosion carefully a couple of times before standing up, pointing at the TV set and shouting "IT WASN'T OUR SRBs! IT WASN'T OUR SRB's!"

Oops......

[mapuc]

I saw the whole thing, the launch and the disaster(explosion) and the Presidents speech later in the evening.

And as some of you, I have seen some documentary on NCC and Discovery about the accident and the aftermath that came after the disaster.

Markus

[Platapus]

30 years? Crikey!

I was shift supervisor working swings on Offutt AFB when that happened.

I remember going home after my shift and watching the news for about 5 hours where they just ran loops of the video.

Wow 30 years...

[james_nix]

I was in high school in Florida and we were watching it live, then all ran outside to look at the sky.

I remember a piece separated and we all thought maybe that was an escape pod or something.

I always thought that the event would be our generations "JFK being shot" moment, whereas we all remember where we were and what we were doing.

What a tragedy.

[razark]

I was in 4th grade. I remember one of the other teachers coming in the room and saying "The space shuttle blew up over the ocean!" After that, I remember endlessly seeing the footage on TV, and my father putting in long hours. He had to provide drawings and photographs of the radio equipment he was responsible for so it could be identified.

Ellison Onizuka was a family friend that my father knew quite well. He coached the soccer team his daughter and my sister played on.
to you and your crewmates, sir.