'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, flaming otters, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
With Christa McAuliffe set to be the first teacher in space, NASA had arranged a satellite broadcast of the full mission into television sets in many schools,
OK, so that's how I saw it. I have mentioned on occasion that I saw that live and people would tell me that wasn't possible. But it was on the tv in the school library and I was checking out books.
Wow, people told you that? They rolled a TV into homeroom for me, too.
I can't remember now if I was watching CNN or a regular network. I remember it caught me by surprise; you'd think if it was a replay, they'd have announced it as "Something just went badly wrong".
I was in the corner store near my dorm picking up the morning Trib and some Diet Coke when my brain finally started listening to bits of the news report that they were playing instead of the usual music. At first, I thought, "Why are they bothering covering yet another shuttle launch?" It took a minute or two before it struck me: "Wait, it blew up!?!" Then, I ran back to my dorm and turned on the 13" B&W TV to watch the endless repeats of that horrible footage.
It was a non-event at our school, so I guess it could have been other places as well. Besides, we only had 5 tvs in the whole school!
I was doing laundry at my Mom' house... I think I was working the evening shift at work. It was horrid.
Sweet zombie Jesus. Big Boss wants me to rewrite an SOP for one of my daily tasks by end of day. 1) Like I have time to do that, 2) The current SOP is five years out of date, and thus completely useless, and 3) Hey, I really don't have the freaking time to do this.
I was in law school at the time of the Challenger disaster. I left Property class and found a group of students clustered around the TV. Asked what was going on, somebody told me.
They rolled a TV into our math class and several teachers and faculty came in to watch as well. It was definitely live for us, because we watched for what seemed an interminably long time (at least it seemed that way to my impatient 11 year old mind) as the commentators rambled on pre-launch. We saw the launch and thought the flames were part of it. We didn't really get it until a teacher started crying and ran out of the room.
Wolfram, you're only a year older than I am?? I thought you were older than that.
I also remember that the whole thing about the astronauts surviving for a few minutes longer than supposed was part of the public record even in 1986, because it's the only detail about which I had nightmares afterwards.
My memories of Challenger exploding are vague. Watched it in class, no idea if it was first run (unlikely in the UK). I mean, I can tell you where I was sitting in which room an that the TV was over there on the cart, but all I can recall of my responses is "Huh. They're dead, right? Huh. But she was a teacher, not an astronaut. That's not fair."