“To the schoolchildren who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it’s hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of exploration and discovery. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.” -Reagan 1/28/1986
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I played hooky that day and watched it at home.
“Which is also why we decided that for you students, nutritionally, Ketchup was a vegetable.”
‐— also Reagan.
That was a confusing day in first grade… quickly remedied by a game of musical chairs.
Reagan was always bravely sending people to their deaths
I watched it at home, age 4. Still remember it. I have a hard time watching any sort of shuttle or rocket launch to this day. Anxiety just goes through the roof.
“I know it’s hard to understand, but sometimes painful things happen (like the mass incarceration of African Americans in penal institutions for minor drug crimes that I’m responsible for beginning). It’s all part of exploration and discovery.”
My school gathered several classes of kids together into one classroom, and we were all watching the launch together eating popcorn. The teachers, whom were all women, had been building up the event for weeks because of Sharon McAuliffe.
When it exploded all three of the teachers gasped, and one immediately burst into tears. She had to be escorted out of the room, and the teacher, the youngest of the three, had to explain what had happened.
The NASA space program was a big deal in popular culture back then. The movie Space Camp had come out earlier that summer. The Challenger failure was shocking.
Watched it during PE class on a tv on a rolling cart.
My MIL best friend was the switchboard operator at Kennedy. She could watch from the front yard. On the phone with the friend. “I have to go something is wrong. The board just lit up”.
i had been up partying all night, was lounging on the couch at some random dude’s house watching the countdown with some other party-friends & strangers
everybody got up to go get a beer or blow some more rails in the bathroom and left me in front of the tv by myself – then it happened and i sat there alone watching it high af
everyone came back in a few minutes later and someone was like “did we miss it?” and i said something along the lines of “nah, i think it blew up…pretty sure they’ll show it again”
I was an adult and had been in the Navy for about 2 years. I was stationed with an F18 squadron in Lemoore, California, working the night shift. I remember that morning perfectly. It started out like every morning. I was living in the barracks on base. I got up around 9am, went to the bathroom down the hall to shower, shave, and brush my teeth. Went back to my room to get dressed, and then to the lounge at the end of the hall to watch the Muppet Show, as I always did. As usual, I had yet to see another human being. I turned on the TV expecting to see Kermit, but they were running a news special. That’s when I remembered there was a shuttle launch that morning. I wasn’t really listening to what they were saying, but I watched intently as the shuttle ignited and started to lift off. I watched it soar through the sky, and I watched it blow up and disintegrate. My mouth dropped open, as my friend Marty stuck his head in the door. I told him, “Holy shit, the shuttle just blew up.” He said, “Yeah, that happened a couple hours ago,” and left. I just started at the TV for the next couple hours listening now to the reporting. It was so shocking. One of maybe 4 or 5 events in my life that I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. They include 9/11, when Princess Diana died, when I was on a volcano as it erupted, and while on safari in Kenya and hearing a lion do a full roar from about 50 feet away (by far the most frightened I’ve ever been in my life, and he wasn’t even roaring at me).
We had a school assembly to watch it on the “big screen” in the cafeteria. It was a couples hundred students, k-6. I was in first grade. I will never forget how quiet that room was.
Good thing AIDS wasn’t a real thing around that time, right Ronny?
Actually Reagan’s idea of the future belong to the rich as they stepped all over the poor.
In a reading class at the time. The live coverage was playing on some old color television, the kind with fake walnut wood grain, dutifully sitting on a green dusty pushcart.
I and my class and even the teacher weren’t paying much attention.
It being a reading class was in a quite moment dedicated to reading.
A moderately quite weirdly un-alarmed, “No, oh no” awakened everyone’s attention as in the brief moment it was about the only sound.
As we stared at the twin paths where sections of the shuttle violently parted ways the teacher quietly moved over and turned off the television.
The class was quite. No sounds. No shuffling.
The teacher stood in place. Did not move. She looked like she was sorting herself out as if she was taking an inventory of her self.
She left the television off for about a minute. Then she sighed. Looked down, reached out and up to the dusty old cart and turned the television back on. With that the events of the day continued to unfold the instant that old television winked back on.
I was in high school and a small group of us in the science club were gathered in the library’s media room watching it live. It was a sobering welcome to the real world and adulthood.
Was watching this live in computer class. It was traumatizing.
I was in 6th grade. I recall it well, and felt sad about it. But, our recovery and return to space showed me determination. That’s what I’d like America’s message to be, in 2022.
Such an iconic picture.
— Matt Damon, probably
I was in third grade. I remember exactly where I was sitting.
I was 11. Home from school sick, watching from the living room couch, sipping 7up and eating crackers.
I remember the President’s National address, especially this part directed to my generation. It was a great comfort.
Confused redditor? Where’s the “cool” in this pic? It’s just depressing
I was working as an “office aide” in 8th grade. I had just finished running some papers to a teacher, walking through silent, empty halls. Another aide came tearing through the hall, screaming “It blew up, it blew up”. I arrived at the office to see every adult crowded around a small TV watching the coverage.
In 2001, I was one of the grown-ups watching reality horror.
I remember watching this and thinking….that’s not right is it? That can’t be right.
I vividly remember going to the school library to watch the launch. The teachers were all very excited because of Christa McAuliffe.
Fortunately I was too young to really understand what had happened.