Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the Challenger shuttle disaster. MSNBC has a special page devoted to commemorating the event (thanks to Jack for the info and the link).
I imagine there will be a great deal said tomorrow about this topic, but I won’t be able to join with it. So I’d like now to share my Challenger story, such as it is: on January 28, 1986, my family was moving into a new house. The first thing we did was set up the radio, so there would be music playing to unpack to. Instead, we heard a news report that the shuttle had been destroyed.
We found the box with the TV, and hooked it up immediately. All of this is known to me through being told the story, but here’s what I actually remember: we got the TV turned on, and once we had reception, the first thing we saw was the footage of the tank exploding. This was surely some hours after the event happened, so it must have been a rebroadcast as part of a special report. I had no concept of what was happening, just that something very important was going on. I was only four years old, after all. But I do know that I’ve been obsessed with space travel ever since that day. Morbid? Possibly. But that’s how it went.