Space Shuttle Discovery is go for launch at this hour...and it started me thinking about the Challenger explosion.
I was in the seventh grade at the time and sitting home watching TV. I was home...and not at school...because the Oakland Public School teachers were on strike at the time. They went on strike right after our two week Christmas break...for four weeks. I got six weeks of Christmas vacation that year...AND I WAS STOKED!
Anyway...I was watching the shuttle launch and when it exploded in mid air...the magnitude of what had just happened did not register. I sat there listening to the commentators and it didn't occur to me that all those astronauts were dead. I don't remember when I figured it all out...but looking back...was I stupid or just naive?
I was at work when Columbia blew up two and a half years ago. It was a Saturday morning. It was supposed to land in Houston I think that day...and was to fly over California. At the time...they said the shuttle could be seen flying through the sky with the naked eye. Sometime after 5AM...my colleague Jennifer and I...walked out in the dark onto Battery Street to look for a bright light streaking across the sky. We stood there...in the middle of the street...necks bent backwards...looking and looking. We never saw anything.
It apparently had not yet exploded...we learned later...but to me it was a sign that there was trouble. Not long after we returned to the newsroom...we found out what happened.
1 comment:
you know, you wouldn't be able to see the shuttle streak across the sky, cuz they glide when they come back. So i'm not sure if you are psychic.
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