Do you remember where you were when you heard that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded? I can remember that day like it was yesterday. I seriously don’t remember a lot of things, but this day I remember.
The day went like this : because we are talking 30 years ago the opportunities for having a fast food restaurant is pretty slim in our area. So when a Hardee’s opened up in the town where I was working, we would take turns heading that way to grab a sandwich and to bring back about 5 more for the others. Well it was our turn to make the food run and when we came back everyone was really quiet. Now when I mean everyone, I mean that I was working in a factory and it seemed like they were more stunned than anything. With a couple of quick questions to try to find out what was going on, they said that the Space Shuttle Challenger just blew up. This in my mind was catastrophic. Everyone was following this flight more so than the rest because of having the first teacher going with them into space. With it being the 30th anniversary today there has been a lot of coverage of it and I saw that back in 1986 within an hour of the explosion that 85% of the people had heard of the tragedy. Back in 1986 you have to remember there were no cell phones to send a text or stream the launch and for sure no one was sending snapchats of it either. So when you think about that 85% that’s kind of a lot don’t you think?
So here is a picture that was on the internet of the explosion of the Space Shuttle that day to remind us all on how terrible this accident really was and all because of a O ring.
That was the year we took our five kids and drove ahead of the coming ice storm across three states to Florida, to spend Christmas with family and go to DisneyWorld. We got there, the ice storm hit, and we had no power. Orange groves froze. Our children had told their teachers we would be in Florida when Challenger was to launch, and we were going to videotape it for them. But it remained so cold that Challenger didn’t launch in December, and we drove back home. I remember reading about the O-ring manufacturers calling the Shuttle people and telling them the O-rings weren’t capable of functioning after freezing. But they launched Challenger anyway.
Kinda crazy isn’t it? And it’s amazing how much it effected everyone when it exploded