…that this was already thirty years ago:
I remember I had been working at KSTP for about a month; I’d finagled my way into a couple extra hours a day working in the control room during a couple of syndicated talk shows before the Vogel show. I was on the board during the “Michael Jackson” show – the talk host, not the singer or the beer expert – when network news alarms started going off in the studio, and ABC Radio’s anchor broke in to announce the explosion.
And over the next minute or two, everyone in the building piled into the control room, and I – the lowliest person in the building – had to tell everyone to shut up and get out so I could concentrate on all hell breaking loose. And, since the board operator is the bottom line in the control room, everyone – the general manager, the news director, everyone – promptly did.
I spent a chunk of the rest of the day trying to track down an astronaut to comment on the air with Don Vogel – and i found one (a guy from my hometown, an old student of my dad’s who eventually did one or two Shuttle missions).
And it was one of those days I figured that broadcast news was what I really liked doing.
Without all the national tragedies, of course.
I think we carried Reagan’s speech live.
Thirty years? Yow.
I was working a “remote” at the Rice County Fair for KOWO-AM (Waseca), the day Nixon resigned. My job was to talk to local pols about their upcoming elections (schmoozing them in the hopes they would buy time on our station, of course).
Needless to say, the topic got much analytical than usual.
I remember the announcement–I was in German class. Wow, what a difference then to now.
I was in class at my elementary school in Melbourne, FL. We went outside to watch the shuttle launch. From 40 miles away and through a child’s eyes, it was hard to comprehend what had happened, but I knew right away something wasn’t right. I remember later on hearing the radio broadcasts talking about how debris rained down over the coast for about 45 minutes, and how beachgoers were advised not to pick up debris, since the ceramic tiles that comprised the heat shield could be very hot.
My first job after graduation was working as the SID (sports information director) for my college and one of our work-study students came in to the office and told us what happened. No one could believe it.
I’m still not convinced Harry Reid didn’t have something to do with the explosion.
Swiftee; Reid didn’t, but Orrin Hatch and other western lawmakers did. To get the votes for the shuttle program, it was decided that the boosters would be made in pieces in Utah instead of in one piece in Texas or another state along the Gulf/Atlantic. That made the infamous o rings necessary.
Now it didn’t ensure the disaster–they could have actually tested the material at cold temperatures and whatnot–but it did make it possible.
I was at my job in downtown Minneapolis; my unit had only recently received PC computers (replacing Selectrics) at our work stations, and they had a variety of monitors. One of my co-workers had a monitor that could pull in a TV signal. I can’t remember how we heard about the disaster initially since no one had “Internet” back then, but soon everyone on the floor was crowded in front of that monitor. At that time we actually expected that more information would be available in the next five minutes, or the next, or the next. Of course there was only the same replay over and over, or Dan Rather holding a model shuttle in his hands and trying to demonstrate it’s roll.
I was in 10th grade, and the 11th grade class clown went running all over the school braying about “the shuttle blew up! oh my god! the shuttle blew up!” and got in trouble for causing a disturbance. Most classes were cancelled for the rest of the day and every TV in the school was turned to the news, with hundreds of kids just sitting around watching all the TVs.
On a side note, a friend of mine is a big space/astronomy nut and has done copious research into the disaster and the causes and who’s to blame. It’s all fascinating. It’s been a few years since I talked to him about this, so with a large “if I remember correctly” disclaimer:
The darkest aspect of that event, that didn’t get a lot of publicity? The explosion didn’t kill the astronauts. The impact with the ocean did. Forensic evidence showed that they were engaged in lifesaving procedures all the way to the time of impact. They KNEW they were going to die, because a detachable crew compartment that was in earlier designs was not built into the craft’s final revision. They might have survived if it was.
Bill C:
I remember reading an article that also stated that the impact with the ocean killed them, not the initial explosion. Further, I believe that same article stated that two of the crew had water in their lungs and may have drowned.
I had just been concieved (literally) by my parents when this happened.
Prince: No news in the womb? Slacker.