That was a creepy event for me. I was going to college at the time. I dreamed that would happen the night before lift off. Then here I am in the morning, watching it live on TV. I was sick over it for a long time. Makes my skin crawl each time I think of it.
Man that brings tears to my eyes watching it again.
We were in a campground near Orlando, Florida. From where we were, you couldn't see the actual liftoffs from the pad; but once the Shuttle cleared the tower you could see it and follow it out of sight with binoculars. I figured it would be my only chance ever to see a shuttle launch.
So a bunch of us space nuts were in the parking lot by the central lodge, on a little hill with the best view easterly. There was a boom box plugged into the lodge and we were listening to NBC's coverage of the launch. We heard the countdown and the announcement that Challenger had lifted off and I started counting second in my head. We saw her rising on a pillar of flame, heading for orbit. I kept counting.
At 86 seconds into the flight, there was an explosion and the two solid rocket boosters went spiralling crazily away.
"Something's wrong!" I said immediately.
""Nah, that's just the boosters separating," said a golfer type.
"Can't be. That doesn't happen until two minutes into the flight. We were only at 86 seconds by my count," I said. "Dear God, I think she just blew up!"
"That's impossible!" said a grandmotherly type.
And then we heard something I'd read about happening in the Golden Age of Radio, but that I'd never heard before, or since:
"This is NBC New York. We are taking control of the network. All affiliates release control to us in five - four - three - two - one -"
And then an NBC announcer, Roger Grimsby I think, came on the air and announced that Challenger had blown up. All hands on board were missing and presumed lost.
We went into the lodge and turned on the big projection TV and started watching the replays of the launch. One of the other campers was a retired aerospace engineer, and he and I saw it at the same time.
"What's that? That doesn't look right," I said, pointing to a little yellow spot between the right SRB and the main fuel tank.
"No, it doesn't" he agreed, standing up and walking to the screen for a better look. They replayed the footage. "Oh, shit. That's it. That's what killed them."
"What?" we asked.
"A fault in the starboard booster. There's a flame playing on the main tank. It must have melted a hole in the tank and then - BOOM."
Less than half an hour after the disaster, he'd solved the mystery NASA would take months to make official. A faulty O-ring allowed burning booster fuel to play on the liquid fuel tank that held the liquified gases that powered the main engines. It burned through the tank and detonated the fuel. End of story.
Personally, I lay the blame for the catastrophe at Ronald Reagan's feet. He leaned on NASA to launch Challenger or else, because it had been delayed 4 times already and it was carrying the first American civilian to go into space, Christa McAuliffe. He wanted that launch to go as scheduled despite being warned by the NASA engineers that the abnormally cold weather the night before at the Kennedy Spaceflight Center might have compromised the seals on the segments of the SRBs and they needed to be checked before proceeding to launch. His desire to show the Russians who had the bigger balls in the space race killed the Challenger's crew.
One reason I didn't panic when I saw the Twin Towers come down a mile south of my office in New York City on 9/11 was I'd already lived through a disaster that "couldn't happen" once before. It was all too easy to believe it could happen here after Challenger in 1986.
Too many events, too many tragedies, too many memories. I try to maintain my sanity by putting them in a safe, secure place, but occasionally they pop out and bring tears to my eyes. When something horrific happens, I haave to sit down and watch the replay of all that I've lived through and experienced. The list has grown as I've aged, and sometimes it feels almost unbearable to have to recount the horror of our times. But I believe that I've survived this long for a reason, so I try to put each event in context, and understand that there was nothing I could do to change it. It's life, and we have to live with it, or go over the edge.
I was just a kid when JFK was assassinated but was out of school that day helpng on roundup and shipping calves on the ranch.
I was working in a Chevy dealership at my tool box when I heard about the shuttle blowing up.
And I was comuting in to work when the radio announced that a plane had struck the WTC and at first it sounded like a normal accident. By the time I got into work we knew it was a full blown attack.
The Low Points and Sad Days as an American 
