In 1986, on January 28, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
By then, space missions were no longer a big deal. They had become routine, and mainstream America wasn't paying much attention. To remedy some of that apathy, NASA had implemented the "teacher in space" initiative.
Christa McAuliffe was chosen to be the first teacher in space. As a result of her being on board, many school TVs were tuned to the 25th space shuttle flight that morning. Thousands of children watched the shuttle explode in real time.
I was on my way to work, having finished an early morning class at Virginia Western's Roanoke campus. I worked part-time at a law firm then. I knew the shuttle was launching so I turned on the radio to hear it.
I was on I-581 when the announcer said the shuttle had broken apart. I started crying and was crying when I reached the office. The other secretary was somber, having heard the news, but I had to pull it together and work. My first chore, as it was every day, was to drown a poor plant that one of the attorneys said had to be watered every single day. That day I watered it with my tears.
The space program today is nothing like it was when I was growing up. We don't send people to the International Space Station anymore - we send our folks up in rockets from other countries. Private companies have taken over what used to be government-sponsored work. The private companies are harder to root for. They are, after all, in it for money in some fashion or another.
The government was trying to beat the Russians. However, back then we were not so fearful, so terrified, nor so lazy. Back then, people wanted to explore new worlds, to reach out to others, to see and understand that we live on one great big blue-green world that we all must share, together with an infinite number of other species.
We don't think like that today. Our space efforts now are militarized; we want to shoot the aliens, not embrace them. We fear our own shadows and can't tell right from wrong any more. Live and let live is no longer the slogan of the day.
We lost a lot when we lost Challenger, but in the last 34 years, I think we've lost more than a space program.
I think we've lost ourselves as human beings.
I was actually living in Orlando when the Challenger went up. All the employees and customers in the store where I worked went outside because we could see the shuttles when they launched. We saw that explosion, though we didn't know what it was at the time, and then the splitting off of the smoke trail. We all just stood there for a moment and then someone said "Something's wrong." We all ran back into the store and drug the TV from the breakroom up front to the counter to watch the news. Such a sad, sad day.
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