Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.
Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But, we've never lost an astronaut in flight; we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.
For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy.' They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.
We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.
I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."
There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, 'He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.' Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'
Thank you.
Ronald Reagan - January 28, 1986
I was in JSC Building 30 checking tapes out of the SPF to do the next Recon build. I rolled my shopping cart full of tapes into the MCC PCZ and over to the M&O console. No one was saying a word. I had to go around the console to see what was on the video monitor.
Eating lunch in the high school cafeteria. Kid across from me was listening to a radio, got a funny look, and told me what happened. I grabbed the radio and heard “...Christa McAuliffe is dead.” I considered jumping on a table and announcing the news to the room, but figured most would either be too confused or apathetic.
I was in a meeting with our department execs when someone came in and told us what happened. We brought a TV into the room and sat there and watch stunned for I don’t know how long. We dropped the meeting and finally returned to our offices to ponder the magnitude of what we had just witnessed.
OH...I remember clearly....I was sitting in my car prior to going in to teach a college class.....I had to go in there and inform the waiting students of what had just happened.....
I was so nuts about space my mom let me stay home from kindergarten to watch the launch. I vividly remember saying to my mom, “They’re alright, aren’t they. They got parachutes.”
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I was in the USAF at Squadron Officer’s School in Montgomery, Alabama. We were between lectures and milling around in the hallway outside the auditorium when the rumor raced through the crowd. The next lecturer gave us the formal announcement of the disaster.
BTW, my husband is an engineer. The minute he heard that the fuel tanks had O rings as seals he said that that would have been the cause of the leak and the explosian. It was weeks before NASA agreed that that was the case. Of course it was exacerbated by the cold weather that morning. I think that it is a scandal that they made the engineers and the company that produced the fuel tanks the scape goat.
The engineer in charge advised against the launch because of the cold weather, but PR types at NASA over-rode his recommendation because they were embarrassed that the launch had been scrubbed several times that week already.
I was in a primary school with TVs turned on all over because of Christa. They were turned off pretty fast.
Here is a song that mentions them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ryd_p20XEU
I was arriving at C-0 Launch Control Facility to receive the last part of my Alternate Command Post crew training to upgrade to ACP/SCP crew.
A light snow was falling and I got out of the Suburban and walked into the Support Building. I stood by the Security Control Center door and saw the TV in the lounge and the pictures were of the pieces falling into the ocean.
The facility manager told me the shuttle had just blown up. There was dead silence in that support building.
Was working at Bendix at the time and because we were part of STS, we watched all launches and landings.
I will never forget that image. Never. God bless them all.
Those of us in the group could see my sun porch television set through sliding glass doors.
We couldn't see the lift-off this time for some reason....and a neighbor suddenly remarked on the somewhat unusual scenes appearing on the TV. Something didn't seem to be right, he said.
Then the TV showed the painfully-strained visages of the McAuliffe parents and other spectators....their anxious eyes all turned skyward as if they were searching for something they didn't want to see.
To make a long story short, we went inside and gathered around the TV. We shortly learned the bad news. We went outside again and looked skyward. Dark contrails and wisps of smoky puffiness were slowly falling toward earth......starkly marring the clear sunny blue sky of a perfect Florida day.
We must have watched these aftermaths of disaster heading earthward for at least a half hour. The debris and smoke clusters definitely must have been very far up because they took so long to come down.
Our group of neighbors then gloomily disbanded and we all went into our homes to watch TV.....each to deal in our own ways with the tragedy which had horribly played out almost over our heads.
Leni
I was just interviewed for a job with one of the companies that supported NASA on the Challenger mission, started work there on Feb 3rd, 1986 and I am still working for them today. I actually just met Scott Parazynski, a former astronaut and current Chairman for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education today, we had lunch. Nice guy, great sense of humor.
I was a new hire in a corporate orientation class. Someone in the hall stuck his head through the door and announced the disaster. I had a Sony Watchman TV in my briefcase. 30 people crowded around for an hour watching that tiny screen.
I was a 19 year-old receptionist watching the launch with my boss on the t.v. in his office. When the shuttle exploded we were both in shock. I’ll never forget that day.
We were stationed with the 1946 Communicatons Squadron, West Berlin, Germany. It was dinner time and we had the TV on, AFN was showing the Today Show when they started covering the Challenger disaster.
I had worked the night shift, and didn’t wake up until several hours past the tragedy. I flipped on the TV while getting ready for work, and a guy on TV was droning on for a long time about loss of the Shuttle, loss of telemetry, etc... I kept thinking that it had ditched somewhere and they couldn’t find it, because of them using the word loss again and again. And it wasn’t until watching for what seemed like an eternity that they replayed the video and I fully understood the magnitude of what had happened. It was a punch in the gut!
I lived in SoCal and knew many people who were involved with various aspects of Shuttle construction at Rockwell. I’ve still got the original “patch” from the last Challenger mission. Heck, I’ve got all the Rockwell newsletters from the very first (white tank) shuttle launch. Those were proud times to be an American!
I was at the doctor, getting a fractured finger put in a splint.
I found out about it when I got home and turned on the TV. I remember not quite comprehending at first what was being said.
It seemed unbelievable to me.
I watched the Challenger explode live and in person from the parking lot of Titusville High School in FL. We knew immediately that it had exploded when we saw two trails instead of one. Most of us were silent for several minutes. Many of our teachers had applied to go on the flight. My history teacher was a runner-up.
A lifetime later I watched the Columbia explode over the skies of my DFW home. I was taking my daughter to gymnastics class. I was heartbroken. When I told the other parents inside what had happened, nobody even cared. They just looked at me.