It’s been twenty years…I can remember that day as if watching it through a television…
I was seven and in the second grade. I stayed home from school, alone (because in the 1980s, a seven year old staying home alone wasn’t that big of a deal. Besides, my parents had to work. I stayed home from school, faked some illness, so that I could watch the space shuttle launch on television. In the 1980s, it was a big deal, you know? Watching the space shuttle…All the major networks (all three of them!) carried the event live. These days, the President of the U.S. rarely gets that treatment and space launches almost never do.
I was seven and I skipped school to watch the space shuttle launch. Even then, I knew that space held the future for us. Space was going to be home for humans…I thought it would be sooner, though. I thought we’d be on the moon, again, by now. I thought that by 2000, we’d be on the moon, nearer to Mars, the Earth a scarred and scorched rock, left cloudy and smoky from nuclear war. In the 1980s, the Cold War was frigid. ‘Duck and Cover’ was a common event when my parents grew up. When it was my turn, we didn’t bother; we knew that should there be nuclear attack, a plywood and metal desk wasn’t going to protect us.
I was seven and I skipped school to watch the space shuttle launch and, even today, I wish that I hadn’t…I remember watching…I remember everything…I remember watching those brave seven walking to the shuttle, closing the door…The engines igniting, the docking silo breaking away and the shuttle lifting and the crowd cheering…I remember thinking that I’d give anything to be on that shuttle. My heart was racing with excitement and jealousy…And then it stopped. The world, it seemed, stopped. The shuttle exploded. The image of the giant fireball with the booster rockets spiraling away is forever burned into my mind. The world stopped. The fireball frozen is space. The world and my heart stopped. I admit, now and unashamed, that I cried. I cried hard and I cried long. I cried for those seven brave men and women and I cried for their families. Now, I know, that I also cried for the world. Space travel was closed, persona non grata for Americans for many years. I thought, then, that we’d never go to space. We’d never see the moon, firsthand again. We’d never, ever make it to Mars.
Fast forward to February 1st, 2003, seventeen years after Challenger.
I was watching the televised landing of Space Shuttle Columbia. I remember hearing something like fear in the normally calm NASA spokesperson’s voice…They lost contact, can’t find them on radar, they aren’t where they’re supposed to be. The reports came in from Texas and New Mexico…Flaming trails in the sky and debris falling from space. The shuttle was destroyed upon reentry. The crew lost.
And for a moment…I was seven and I skipped school. And even today, I wished that I hadn’t.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — Twenty years ago, space shuttle Challenger blew apart in jets of fire and plumes of smoke, a terrifying sight witnessed by the families of the seven astronauts and by those who came to watch the historic launch of the first teacher in space.
[CNN.com - Science & Space]
