[X] My Assistant

[Bill Harris]

...the Challenger distaster occurred.

I was at work, we heard the news and rushed upstairs to the Administrative Hearing Room and switched on the TV. There were replays of the explosion, and I fully expected the Shuttle to pop out of the fireball and glide to Earth. It didn't, and we grew up a bit more that day.

A moment of silence, please.

--Bill


http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missio...ssion-51-l.html

[dvandorn]

January 27, 1967 -- I was 11 years old. My brother and I were watching TV, waiting for dinner, when the network interrupted local programming (something they didn't do all that often) to read the initial report of the Apollo 1 fire -- which stated that "at least one member of the crew has died." To my everlasting shame, my first thought was that I hoped it hadn't been Grissom or White. To my 11-year-old mind, it seemed somehow that the second American in space and the first American to perform an EVA were somehow more important than a rookie who had never flown. I still feel bad about that.

January 28, 1986 -- Just the previous day, I had exulted in the triumphant return of my Chicago Bears from their Super Bowl victory. This was the very first time in my life that a sports team I followed had won a championship. It felt really good. And then, after I had spent a few days feeling *so* good, I was at work when a friend called me. She asked if I knew that the Shuttle was supposed to fly today -- I said yeah, I knew they were going to try again, but that I wasn't all that sanguine on the chances for this, the sixth attempt to launch this mission, would actually get off the ground today. Then she blurted out, "Doug, the Shuttle exploded." I took an early lunch, ran home, and watched the coverage, over and over again. By running the network's super-slow-motion version of the event at a fast scan, I got a speed-of-event that let me actually see the orbiter rip off of the stack and spin away from the fireball. It was a traumatic day.

February 1, 2003 -- I was scheduled for a driving shift at my Pizza Hut, starting at 11 am. I had spent the night sleeping on the couch, with NASA-TV running on the tube, so I would wake up when the voice chatter got thick, since Columbia was supposed to land at about 9:15 a.m. my time. I was listening to the chatter, half-asleep, and then nodded off a bit -- until waking up about five minutes after the vehicle ought to have landed, and still just seeing the image of the MCC on the screen, knew something had to be wrong. Just about then I heard Leroy Cain talking the flight control team through the data captuire and archive process, and knew something had to be terribly wrong. I switched over to CNN, and the first thing I saw was a bright re-entering star breaking into multiple pieces, each leaving its own contrail, and I knew exactly what had to have happened. I quite irrationally felt guilty -- as if, had I not nodded back off to sleep during the entry, I could somehow have changed the result.

I have known many triumphant and glorious days. These three were not.

-the other Doug