I will never forget this day as long as I live. We all thought it was so cool that a teacher and more so a female was going up in space so we were glued to the tv. Its almost like time stopped when that explosion happened. All the hope and confidence that had been built up in the success of the space shuttle reminded man once again how small he or she is and how little control we actually have.

I was in school.. Catholic school and it was about 6th grade, I think.. We weren't watching it on television for some reason - but some kid told me and the whole class and we were all pretty shocked. It was a wierd day...

I was at school also..Catholic School....UUUUGGGGHHH! LOL

I was in 3rd grade. My teacher was a heavy supporter of the space program and had met the teacher who was going up into space. I lived in FL, so around 5 minutes til takeoff we all went out into the parking lot to watch the shuttle take off. We saw it go up...it was right after our lunch was over. We saw a huge flash of light and smoke and my teacher screamed out and we all ran after her into our classroom where we turned on our TV. On every channel was the news broadcast with baffled news reporters and chaos at NASA. We all started to get scared and didn't really understand what had happened. My teacher was crying. She turned off the TV and told us all what had just happened. She had us call our parents to come pick us up to go home. We all left early that day, in silence. We never talked about it again in school that year. But my mom cried for days at home. It was her dream to be an astronaut, and she was a teacher as well. She couldn't believe what had happened. She bought a challanger license plate to support NASA and we took a trip to Washington DC shortly after that to see the mural that was painted for the challanger inside the Capitol building. I will never forget that day. I can still see it vividly. It was a bright sunny day and we never expected anything like that to happen.

I had just finished running the snowblower and come inside and my father told the space shuttle had exploded. I didn't believe him because I thought we had perfected space flight. I saw the replay of the explosion and it hit like a ton of bricks. :(

Wow, that was a sad story.. You may need to write books. :|

I was in school, taking my Driver's Ed. final, and the principal came on over the loudspeaker to announce to the school that the Shuttle had exploded. I had a paper route at the time, and since I delivered the evening edition, photos of the explosion were all over the front page.

GOD you guys are so much younger than me! I was in the frount room changing diapers when it came on T.V.

Yeah but Blaziegirl your the biggest 80s child of us all ; )

Oh, don't you worry about it, Blaziegrl. We're all in a world where the only numbers that count start with an 8. :)

I was at work "on the board" so to speak. I work in TV as a Master Control switcher, kind of like a radio dj but I'm not on the air. I remember the special report interruption in programming for the launch. The station manager, chief eng. and several other people were standing behind me watching and I clearly remember wanting to cry and being in disbelief that the people on the space shuttle were gone in an instant before our eyes. Blaziegrl, I've noticed that I seem to be a bit older than everyone else on this board, too. Oh well, you're only as old as you feel. I'm 34 (gasp!) but I certainly don't feel like it.

I'll be 32 in May, so I'm not that far behind you Bonster :) Ayla

34 hehe Real old. Bah! Hey. Slowly, but surely, I'm noticing we have some pretty technical, skillfull media-related people around here.. Ehhhhxcellent... Veerrry ehhxcellent... One day we will take over the world! muahaha! hehe

I didn't want to tell anyone how old I am, but since you're all spilling the beans, so will I. It's...well........um.......it's the big 40 for me! :'(

Allright!!! There's some 60's babies around here!

I'll be 31 in June - I have to say turning 30 was great for me : ) It was a relief to be done with my 20s : ) Happy Birthday Blaziegrl!!!! : )

Thanks Zel it was back in September. For about 2 weeks before it I became depressed, but selective reasoning solved that problem lol.

I was a Senior in High School in Moravia, Iowa. Sitting in Art Class, and my Art Teacher had a TV on. We had a Science Teacher, Mrs. Ward, who almost won Christa McCulluff's spot on that shuttle! It didn't sink in for a few minutes... I wasn't really paying attention to the TV.

Hey, what's up, Jammin Johnny? Welcome to the community. :) What did your Science teacher say about the whole thing? Especially since she could have been on that shuttle... Blaziegrl - You know 40 isn't old! ;) I wouldn't start feeling old yet!

I don't feel old yet Sal, Ijust don't want to grow any older. If I could stay 40 forever that would be just fine with me! I've been having a lot of fun the last few year's LOL.

I'm glad to hear you've been having fun! Cool! Well, I know what you're saying.. Just keep enjoying yourself and everything will be fine. :) :)

Just keep telling people your 39 : )

I was in 10th grade and saw it on TV during my World History class. It was one of the most sad days of my high school years. I think everyone in the class cried . . .

I was in the 7th grade...catholic school in Montgomery Alabama. We were all watching it right when it happened. I remember we just watched t.v. the whole day and didn't do any work. It was a pretty sad moment and I remember how they just kept replaying the whole incident over and over.

I was also changing diapers when I heard about the shuttle. It was also a time when the Chicago Bears were about to play in the superbowl. GO BEARS

I was in my living room. It had snowed & school had been cancelled. I remember it like it was yesterday because my Mom & her friend were sitting there w/me & we were all talking about how beautiful it was & how we wished we could have been there to actually see the launch happening.

Then, the explosion. We all just sat there for a few seconds, stunned & silent. Then I asked my Mom what had happened & she just stared at the T.V. Being young at the time, I asked my mother if she thought anyone would survive. Of course she told me 'no'. I still have a hard time watching it when they occasionally show it on t.v., like on the anniversary or something.

I couldn't even imagine what her family, friends, & students, not too mention the families of the others, must have thought or felt at that moment.

I was in 4th grade and the principal made an announcement over the intercom. My teacher started crying because a friend of hers was a candidate to be the teacher who went on the Challenger. A few days later we had a "thing" about (I don't remember what it was) and I brought in a thing they had on the radio about it playing "Rocket Man" in the background.

i was also in the 3rd grade when the shuttle exploaded. that was just so shocking when it happened. i at this time attended catholic school too!

i was at st.cecilia's catholic school in the 2nd or 3rd grade. i found that event very shocking and sad.

I was at St. Bernard Catholic school and it was like 7th or 8th grade...I was confused by the whole thing actually, because we saw the explosion and our teacher freaked and yanked the plug out of the wall. Didn't figure the whole thing out 'til I got on the bus.

Do you notice now when the space shuttle goes up - people barely blink an eye at it - space station smacsch station. I wonder if people have distanced themselves from the whole wonderment of space because of the complete and utter shock over this explosion. What do you think?

Well, I'm new to this forum, but since I worked for Grumman Aerospace at the time and actually built Space Shuttle wing components, this seems like the appropriate place to introduce myself.

I was at work in Grumman's Plant 1, in Bethpage, Long Island. As usual, whenever a Grumman product was in the news (in this case the wings, some fuselage and flight control surfaces), there were TV sets all over the place, tuned to the launch. I didn't realize what had happened at first. But I will never forget the statement "Mission Control, launch director reports major system failures" and "Houston reports down link lost" The entire plant went silent. You could hear a pin drop, or at least a few wrenches and power tools as people went into shock. A lot of people left early. Nothing much more got done that day.

Like everyone else in the country, it made me reflective. I had always had the utmost faith in NASA. They were perfect. Infallible. Being a child of the 60's, I remember Apollo mission launches and watching men walk on the moon.

I guess actually having worked on the program made it feel a little close to home.
Wow, have not thought about that in quite a while.

Peace
Phalanx

Hi Phalanx! Welcome to 80sXChange. I'm living on Long Island. Are you still here as well? Hey, listen.. Come over to our new forum. Okay? If you go to the main website at www.80sxchange.com (http://www.80sxchange.com) you will see a link (the first link) named "Public Message Forums". Click on that link and it'll bring you to our new system. I just leave this one up as an archive because it's how we started. The message forums are arranged the same way as this one! So go in there and post this message if you haven't already! It's a really interesting one! Thanks! And welcome again! :)

I was in highschool. I remember i was never in to the new or anything like that at all, but when another student told me what happend and i saw it on t.v. in the guidance office it was like my heart just dropped to my stomach. That was the first news issue that affected me in anyway. I think I (we) had kinda gottin to the point where we where viewing Space Shuttle flights almost like an everyday accurence. It realy hit home to me that we are just a small speck in the big picture.

I was a junior in high school. I lived in a small town and about 30 of us had gone to a neigboring town to sell advertisements in our yearbook. As my friend and I walked into a satellite television (big 8 ft. dishes...this was the eighties, remember) dealership, we saw half a dozen people sitting, stone-faced. We asked what was going on and the owner of the business solemnly said, "The Space Shuttle just blew up."
At that moment, on probably 30 tv screens, the replay of the event was etched into our memories. Talk about a surrealistic event.

I KNEW this would be a thread in here. I was in 4th grade and I still live in Florida. I remember how bitter cold that day was. We ALWAYS used to watch the launches on tv or run outside to see them. We were in music class and for once didn't have the TV on. Science was always a big thing at my school, and it was odd we didn't watch it. Then someone told us what happened and the whole school ran outside and saw the cloud with the two smoke trails from the rocket boosters. I won't forget it ever. I will also never forget that rare footage no one seems to have anymore of the parts raining back down into the ocean.

Des

I was in school. We were having a break for the class so we could all watch the space shuttle go up...The whole class was gathered around the TV and we had turned off all of the lights. We watched it go up and then when it exploded the teachers practically collapsed and then started crying hysterically.. it just horrible..it was totally silent except for the crying..