This
post on the Boing-Boing blog reminded me that today is the
24th anniversary of the Challenger shuttle blowing up right
after takeoff.
I was working at Computervision, and heard about it on the
radio on my way to work. My most vivid memory from that day is
going into a co-worker’s office, where the radio was on, and
hearing about the children in Astronaut Christa Macauliff’s
class having watched it live. The co-worker, a father of three,
was visibly crying at the idea of 8 year old children coming
face-to-face with death in that way.
My memories of the congressional hearings are fairly vague, but
I did really enjoy the chapter about them in Richard Feynman’s
autobiography, What
do you care what other people think?
My third Challenger-related memory is from the Spring of 1990,
when I was standing in line in an airport behind two Republican
women. This was when I thought then-President Bush was going to
be in trouble at the next election, because one of the Republicans
was going on about his lack of leadership, and one example she
cited was that she hadn’t felt anything when he was talking
about the Challenger.
LayMusic.org 