

Challenger: The shuttle disaster that shook the world - JacobAldridge
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12306318

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bradleyland
I lived in Florida at the time. It was 6 days after my 9th birthday. I was in
4th grade, and because of our proximity to the cape, the teachers always took
classes outside to watch the shuttle launch first hand. I remember the
teachers first being confused, but then immediately becoming distraut after
realizing something went wrong. They tried to hide their reactions from the
kids, but everyone young and old knew that the launch wasn't "normal".

It was a big dose of reality for a 9 year old. Watching the shuttle launches
was always a highlight for me, being the little geek that I was. That was the
day that the fairy tale of infallible science propaganda ended for me and the
reality of failure hit me square in the face. Fortunately, it had a positive
effect on me, rather than negative. I recognized that I shouldn't take
anyone's word at face value. I should aways seek to learn for myself.

~~~
binarymax
I was 7 years old at the time, watching it in my classroom with two other
rooms merged into ours. The teachers had different reactions than what you
describe - they all started crying. I remember my teacher specifically was
inconsolable for awhile.

~~~
clojurerocks
I was in school as well and i think we were given a half day or something. I
came home and i think it was on the news and they were showing it and talking
about the fact that the astronauts might not have died in the explosion but
might have been conscious while they fell to earth.

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TomOfTTB
The article only touches on it but I think a lot more has to be said about the
young children angle.

What makes the Challenger disaster so relevant even today is many of us were
young and had studied this shuttle and its crew for weeks. The plan was for
Christa McAuliffe to conduct a class from space. So many teachers (mine
included) had their classes study everything about Challenger.

At 7 years old I knew these people's names when that rocket exploded. I knew
how many children they had, I knew how many missions they'd flown and so on. I
knew more about this crew than I knew about my own parents. And I, along with
children around the country, watched them die on live TV.

That has a significant impact on a generation (as you can see from the other
comments here from adults who were kids at the time)

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logjam
"Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open."

This was the quote by Sir James Dewar that Morton Thiokol engineer Allan
MacDonald put in the foreword to his book "Truth, Lies, and O-Rings" -- highly
recommended if you enjoy pondering organizational banality and how human
decision-making works (and often doesn't).

He goes on to say in the foreword: "I wasn't recommending not launching
because of what I knew, but because of what I didn't know."

