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Post by jarddavis on Dec 30, 2008 12:49:18 GMT -8
On February 1st, 2009, it will be the 6th anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia being destroyed.
I was on a bus on my way to work at what is now my current job.
On January 28th, 2009, it will be the 23rd anniversary f the Challenger diaster.
2nd day of Navy boot camp. If I'd had stayed in, I would have retired 3 years ago.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Dec 31, 2008 10:56:45 GMT -8
Feb 1st, 2003.
Taking my St. John's First Aid and CPR course in the Pub next to where I was living at the time.
Jan 28, 1986
I was six. So, that would be Grade 1? Probably fighting some jerk in the playground.
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Post by K-Box on Dec 31, 2008 14:52:48 GMT -8
On February 1st, 2009, it will be the 6th anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia being destroyed. I was on a bus on my way to work at what is now my current job. Deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I was in charge of the shipboard TV schedule of movies from Navy Motion Picture Service, and by complete coincidence, I'd scheduled The Right Stuff to play that day. I'd already scheduled Titanic to play on a day when we wound up having the worst sea storms of our cruise, so people were starting to get a little freaked out by my seemingly psychic choices. My PAO told me not to play The Sum of All Fears when we got it in. On January 28th, 2009, it will be the 23rd anniversary f the Challenger diaster. 2nd day of Navy boot camp. If I'd had stayed in, I would have retired 3 years ago. Grade school. Heard about it in class. Even back then, it felt like a turning point, when space travel went from being a point of national pride to a seeming boondoggle. |
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Post by jbhelfrich on Dec 31, 2008 18:27:56 GMT -8
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Post by jasonlatta on Feb 2, 2009 22:39:00 GMT -8
I was sick with vast gastrointestinal distress when I got word that Columbia was destroyed. Everybody gets it from time to time, I suppose, but that's an unusual place marker for that memory in my life...I had the shits at the time and I'll never forget it, now.
When the Challenger exploded I was in English class; they came on the intercom and relayed the news feed to us. I doubt I'll forget that sinking feeling of doom and grief. My first adult feelings...
Edited to add: I wanted to clarify what I meant instead of being lazy and writing half truths about the Challenger incident.
That day fucking devastated me as a child, at least in the sense that that really was the first day that I understood even people I vaguely visualized as unimpeachable heroes could be brought low by the vagaries of simple catastrophe, the same as anybody I knew in person. Years later I would encounter the poetic line "...the center does not hold" and I would think of the Challenger explosion...
It was years after THAT that I realized just how much I idolized the astronauts, even if I didn't know their individual names in the way that I know the names of Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, Neil Armstrong, etc...
What more noble profession is there than that of a Challenger of the Unknown? To me, sirs, there are none...
And Astronauts, Cosmonauts, Taikonauts, whatever, these men and women are indeed that, Challengers of the Unknown, and worthy of the highest honor and respect.
Even now, years later, we should honor them with our highest honors, along our social warrior class, and our greatest intellectual achievers.
These are the people trying to make the world "a better place to abide" and I have all the respect in the world for them.
I did as as a child, hence my great grief at the news of the Challenger explosion, and I do now...
Forward, I say, forward.
God bless ye all.
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Post by jessebaker on Feb 4, 2009 20:54:54 GMT -8
Was at home when Challenger exploded (I forgot why but I remember there was no school for some reason that day) and watched it on TV.
Was home for the weekend from college when the I saw, on a tv at the pizza place where I buying a pizza, that the Columbia spaceship exploded. I remember it in particular because it was one of the last weekends I spent at home before I made the decision to stay full-time on-campus for the remainder of my college career (I had been alternating living on campus during the week/going home on the weekends up to that point).
The former was one of those "once in a life-time" tragedy things as far as the fact that the media (back in the days when there was NO cable news save for CNN and even that was a pale shadow of what now passes for "Cable News Network") was all over it covering it for days on end. EVERY channel was pre-empted to cover it, which kind of pissed me off as a kid because I wanted to watch Transformers only to find that it had been pre-empted for coverage of the shuttle explosion.
Columbia on the other hand? I remember thinking at the time how wierd it was that the whole thing pretty much faded from the headlines within a week. Challenger was a major world-changing event (pretty much killing off the American space program, for better or worse) and yet when Columbia exploded, it barely made any sort of splash in the news cycle as far as the media moving on to the next thing within a matter of days.
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