Where were you when Challenger exploded?

[anon6955837]

Sixth grade free period outside looking if we could see the launch (on clear days we could see the plume, and night launches make out the flame from the engines). Too much cloud cover that day for us to see it.

[Max_Blancke]

In college. A housemate came in and asked “are you watching it?”

[crashproof]

In high school. The first I heard of it was some asshole kid joking at lunchtime about “the teacher who blew up.” Later there was an announcement over the PA system, and I turned on the TV as soon as I got home because I still didn’t quite believe it.

[Mindysan33]

Out of school for the day (which we were supposed to watch on TV that day in class) because my great grandmother had passed away.

[Medievalist]

Y’all are so bloody young. This thread needs @d_r!

[cameronh1403]

High school. The librarian told us about it. My “friend” who was a prick laughed about it. Glad he is out of my life.

[Nightflyer]

In class, in eighth grade, if I’m remembering correctly. We were told about it, but it didn’t really register until I got home and I heard a report about it on the radio. I still remember hearing the teacher’s students crying in the background of the news. That’s when it really hit me, and I started crying too.

My mother had actually seen the launch, and the explosion, live on television. After that she never watched another shuttle launch or landing. She couldn’t bear it.

[gellfex]

@M_M

Asleep/out of it. Or trying to get to that point. Honestly can’t remember much about that year and at the time this sort of thing seemed a long way off and not all that important.

Me too. Given that it was in the AM, and I was 24, I must have been asleep. I was self employed freelance, then as now, and tend to be nocturnal. Had someone not called to tell me I would have slept through 9/11 too, though the sirens might have woken me.

[Wayward]

During dinner, high school exchange student in Germany. I left the table. NASA is and the shuttle program was a big presence in my hometown. It felt simultaneously very close and very remote.

[awfulhorrid]

I was a junior in high school. I was in the library, naturally, when one of our librarians came running in upset crying out “It blew up, it blew up …” Once she was calm enough to tell us more, we got a TV out of the AV room and spent the rest of the day there in the library watching the coverage and being solemn.

For a variety of reasons, I’ve blocked most of my memories of that year of my life (plus a few months on either side), but that memory remains clear.

[d_r]

@Medievalist

Y’all are so bloody young. This thread needs @d_r!

Thanks.

I was working in England, only my 2nd job post-PhD; still a youngster.

[anon63581570]

I was four. So probably at home?

Edit: I remember seeing something in school about it, but that was probably the '88 Discovery flight that was the first post challenger shuttle flight.