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20 years
Gegarin was the first, back in 1961
When like Icarus, undaunted, he climbed to reach the sun
And he knew he might not make it for it's never hard to die
But he lifted off the pad and rode that fire in the sky.
I'm not quite old enough to remember the earliest manned space flights, but I do remember watching the first lunar landing on TV. I was too young to understand the politics, so I was able to just revel in the "wow, neat!" factor. I wanted to be an astronaut, though by the time I was about 12 I realized that would never happen. But kids are fickle anyway, so that's ok. I was interested in space, but I didn't follow launches avidly.
In 1986 I was a programmer and working in a cube farm. A coworker (who had an office) walked into my cube and said "it blew up". I thought he was complaining about some code I'd checked in. No, he said, the shuttle blew up. He'd been listening to the launch live on the radio.
Most of us programmers went into his office to listen to the news for a while. I remember thinking that this was the end of the space program for a good long time.
And then, three years ago (less a few days), it happened again.
These weren't the first failures and they won't be the last. But these are the ones that I witnessed, albeit indirectly, so they have an impact that other failures and near-misses didn't have. Let's hope we've seen the worst.
When like Icarus, undaunted, he climbed to reach the sun
And he knew he might not make it for it's never hard to die
But he lifted off the pad and rode that fire in the sky.
I'm not quite old enough to remember the earliest manned space flights, but I do remember watching the first lunar landing on TV. I was too young to understand the politics, so I was able to just revel in the "wow, neat!" factor. I wanted to be an astronaut, though by the time I was about 12 I realized that would never happen. But kids are fickle anyway, so that's ok. I was interested in space, but I didn't follow launches avidly.
In 1986 I was a programmer and working in a cube farm. A coworker (who had an office) walked into my cube and said "it blew up". I thought he was complaining about some code I'd checked in. No, he said, the shuttle blew up. He'd been listening to the launch live on the radio.
Most of us programmers went into his office to listen to the news for a while. I remember thinking that this was the end of the space program for a good long time.
And then, three years ago (less a few days), it happened again.
These weren't the first failures and they won't be the last. But these are the ones that I witnessed, albeit indirectly, so they have an impact that other failures and near-misses didn't have. Let's hope we've seen the worst.
A little older than you
I clearly recall January '67, watching Batman on TV when the program was interrupted by a news flash about a fire on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center.
My Challenger memory is much like yours. I was working at Lockheed at the time, and like you it was a co-worker who stuck his head into the tiny office I shared with two others (an office so tiny we had to synchronize our chair movements or we couldn't get up from our desks), and said "The Challenger just blew up."
Columbia's loss we learned of differently. My wife and I were driving around the area running errands, with the radio tuned to the local classic rock station. Tunes all afternoon long. We came home, turned the TV on, and there was the news. The next day, the DJ at the radio station was lamely defending his decision not to announce the news, he didn't think it was an important enuough story worth interrupting the music. I don't listen to that station any more.