30 years ago today, Christa McAuliffe was to make history and become the first teacher to go to space. Instead, the death of the entire Challenger crew was disastrously shown on live television to millions of kids watching in classrooms around the world. The event grounded all space flights from NASA for two years while they reviewed all the collected data to determine what went wrong.

It was such a terrible event that affected many. Where were you 30 years ago, on January 28th, 1986?

RIP

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

It was such a terrible event that affected many. Where were you 30 years ago, on January 28th, 1986?

I wasn't quite three years old.

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I was in high school.


It's a sonnet written by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. published in 1943 titled "High Flight". It became better known when President Reagan ended a speech about the Challenger Disaster by saying this...

"The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God'."

- President Ronald Reagan The Oval Office, January 28, 1986

Here's some information about the author and the origin of the sonnet:

John Gillespie Magee was a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of nineteen on December 11, 1941 during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick.

The sonnet was written on the back of a letter to his parents that stated, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed. " It came to the attention of the Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, who acclaimed Magee as the first poet of the war.

Copies of `High Flight'--sometimes referred to as "the pilot's creed, " were widely distributed and plaques bearing it were sent to all R.C.A.F. air fields and training stations. The poem was published in 1943 in a volume called More Poems from the Forces. Here it is in its entirety ... taken from the original manuscript in the Library of Congress:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,--and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew--
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

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I was at Diablo Valley College, (a community college), I had finished classes and raced home to see what I hoped would be the news repeats of the shuttle launch. Due to classes, I had missed the actual launch.

When I got home and saw - well what I did see, I was shocked and dismayed. I couldn't believe that Challenger had exploded and killed everyone aboard.

I called all of my friends, none of us could believe it happened.


TL

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TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

30 years ago I owned a house in San Gabriel that was a money pit, My uncle had given it to My Mom and Me...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Has it been that long ago now? :-O

Where do the years go?

R.I.P.

Rest in Peace.

As for me, I was living on a boat in the Channel Islands Harbor and had my own law office in the Ventura Harbor.

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I don't remember where I was or what I was doing.
My memory gets worse every day.
I can tell you that I do remember that I saw the terrible sight live.
Because I was so excited about the launch.

And then I cried for a long long while.


God bless those who were so brave to attempt what minor mortals would never seek to try.

And shall they forever be remembered.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I was underway on USS Buffalo SSN-715, operating off Oahu. On of the radiomen knew I was a spaceflight fan, and passed me the news as soon as it came over the wire.

I met Col. Onizuka and Judy Resnik at a National Space Institute/L-5 Society meeting in SAn Diego in 1983 or 84 (details fade). To this day I cannot watch that video, I have to turn away.

This month we also remember the Apollo astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grisson, Roger Chaffee, and Edward White, who died in the Apollo 1 fire; and the crew of Columbia, which broke up on re-entry due to damaged thermal tiles on its wing causing burn-through and structural failure.

God holds them all in His hands.

"For the Star Road's paved with the lives of men......"

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

I was underway on USS Buffalo SSN-715, operating off Oahu. On of the radiomen knew I was a spaceflight fan, and passed me the news as soon as it came over the wire.

I met Col. Onizuka and Judy Resnik at a National Space Institute/L-5 Society meeting in SAn Diego in 1983 or 84 (details fade). To this day I cannot watch that video, I have to turn away.

This month we also remember the Apollo astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grisson, Roger Chaffee, and Edward White, who died in the Apollo 1 fire; and the crew of Columbia, which broke up on re-entry due to damaged thermal tiles on its wing causing burn-through and structural failure.

God holds them all in His hands.

"For the Star Road's paved with the lives of men......"

May I say........
AMEN.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I was a senior in high school, walking down the hallway on the way to my locker to get ready for lunch when I saw it happen on one of the tv sets hanging in a corner of a classroom. I walked past that room, and continued seeing it on the next tv set, and the next...

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place