Posted on 01/28/2010 7:51:36 AM PST by al baby
Wow...it’s been 24 yrs ago???
I was on my way to lunch in the Green Room next to the cafeteria @ the Unitverity of AR @ Monticello & heard people gathered ‘round the large TV there saying “Ohhhhhh noooo!” & expressing sadness. I had just missed the incident, but that is one day I will NEVER forget!
Sitting at my desk at McDonnell Douglas Astronautics in Houston. I had gotten into a fender-bender on the way to work that morning. Thirty minutes earlier my mom had called to let me know my grandmother had died earlier that day. I turned to a co-worker and commented “troubles come in three, but I don’t know what could possibly be worse.” Thirty minutes later I learned the answer to that rhetorical question.
I had just transferred from Mission Operations Directorate support to Engineering Directorate. 51-L was the first mission since STS-6 I had not supported at Mission Control - and I am not sorry about that.
On an airplane, landed at Dallas to pick up more passengers. One of the boarding passengers told me the Shuttle had blown up. Later the pilot told all the passengers. It was shocking, I couldn’t wait
I was at my desk when our manager called us in to tell us. Both NASA and Morton Thiokol were customers of ours (software company), so we were forewarned that they may be a bit “distracted” for a little while.
This incident, by the way, was a big help 15 years later as I watched the building where my main customer had four or five floors crumbled to the streets of New York!
I was going into Boston to look into jobs at the MBTA and took the subway in from Wonderland. Sunny day but bitterly cold. After my interview I went to a sub shop in Kenmore Sq. and they had the TV on; CNN was showing coverage of the disaster. On the way back, I heard someone on the Blue Line say “They won’t be getting that lesson in space...”
Of course very cold weather down in Florida led to the disaster...I think CNN was only network covering it as it had become “old news” (shuttle launches) by then?
Then around 2002, Feb 1 I think, I turned on the TV on a Saturday to see if they had details on weather for the next day, and the headline on the bottom of the screen said “Space Shuttle Apparently Disintegrates Over Texas” and I got the same sick feeling.
The 3 space tragedies were all roughly in the same week;
I think yesterday was the anniversary of the 1967 launch pad fire that killed 3; 1/26/86 and 2/1/02 shuttle explosions
oops...continues,
couldn’t wait to get to my motel.
Not just the speech, but a great man indeed.
Working in the bowels of a ship at a ship yard in San Diego, with my headphones on, listening to 91X. The DJ comes on and says he is getting reports the shuttle had blown up. He sounded stunned, and said he thought it was a sick joke. He played one more song and came back, saying it was fact. Got home that night, it was the first thing I saw when I switched on the tv. I felt like somebody slugged me in the gut.
Watched news broadcast of the explosion on the TV in the student center at Furman University.
Coincidently I was going to Chemistry class during my Junior Year in High School. We did not have class but watched TV.
(in other words same time of the yr but diff years)
a couple yrs back I visited the planetarium in Concord NH that is named in Christa McAuliffe’s honor
Watching it on a cold, clear day from just south of Cape Canaveral. Was going to lunch with co-workers in Melbourne, FL. Saw the launch and pulled off the road to watch. A truly terrible day.
I was still thinking about the computer exam and really wasn't paying much attention to either of them and walked across the campus to the newspaper office and as soon as I walked in, I spotted the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor and News Editor huddled around an old radio that had been lying about the office for years.
That's when it hit me. "It's true?", I asked.
I had a walkman on my belt and the headphone around my neck. I immediately flipped them on. Strange that I hadn't thought to do that before I started walking across the campus.
I was sitting in the high school cafeteria. It was my birthday and a friend had just jokingly proposed a toast with milk cartons to “many happy returns” when another friend entered the cafeteria, came straight to the table and told us the shuttle had blown up. He said he saw it happen on a TV in a classroom he was passing. We didn’t believe him. A couple of minutes later the principal announced it over the PA system.
Went home, had some cake, but certainly didn’t feel like celebrating.
And last night Emperor Zero took a whiz on their graves.
I was having lunch with my mom and watched the whole thing on TV, stunned.
Surreal. Hit me hard, and everyone at school was very somber for days. We could barely function for the remainder of THAT day.
Bureaucracy kills!
In the first grade trying my best not to come down with a bad case of cooties, and was happy that Reagan was the President. As a kid, every time I watched him speak on tv I could see the love he had for this country in his eyes as spoke straight from his heart, unlike the current occupant who has nothing but disdain and darkness in his eyes.
I was at work ... totally wrapped up in writing FORTRAN code on a VAX 11/780. “Came up for air” in early afternoon and got the bad news. Totally shocked ...
I remember riding up Mercury Blvd., Hampton, VA to work that morning around 7:45 when I had heard for the first time that this was to be the flight that the teacher, Christa McAuliffe, was to be on. I was thinking of how awesome that was, for her, her family and the country. Then later that afternoon, I remember driving back down Mercury Blvd., heading home, crying my eyes out all the way. I was balling like a baby, devastated over the news.
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