Why am I getting teary watching Atlantis launch?
Partially, because I still remember where I was when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. I was in 7th grade Lit Class with Mrs. Mickelson at Lake Hazel Jr. High, when the principal announced over the PA system that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded. We were excused from classes to go sit in the cafeteria and library to watch the news coverage if we wanted to.
I remember sitting in the library watching it blossom into flame over and over, while newscasters with, I felt, inappropriately calm voice talked about what could have done it and the death of Christa McCauliffe.
That’s all I got right now.
ETA: A reader shared his own journal entry on this with me on our Facebook page, and I thought it was worth posting here as well.
I would like to invite everyone to share their thoughts on the last Atlantis launch and the Challenger Disaster here. If you have links, let me know, I’ll add them.
Geek Girls Rule!!! 
Thanks so much for sharing this. People the world over were affected by this event, and it changed a great many lives.
I’m still healing in my own way. I subconsciously avoided any future launches, but not ever again. I’m watching every single one that is to come, and every single launch of whatever we figure out after the shuttle.
I was in Home Ec baking. I thought it was a hoax. This wouldn’t be such an end of an era for me if we had a new generation of spacecraft ready to go. But we don’t. Just some heavy boosters and a barely LEO “commercial” vehicle that we had to sell to the Brits and Dubai because we’re more worried about birth certificates and denying health care to people.
Ending like this make me hate humans because we get to a point then cry, “This is hard work! I’d rather throw poo at that group over there!”
The astronauts on the Challenger gave their lives to open a door for us and we turned away.
My mother was almost on the Challenger, however, she became pregnant with my brother beforehand.
Personally, I want a return to the Saturn rockets. They worked, they’re scalable…
I was not quite four. And I had a very beloved and very, very battered Norman Rockwell ABC book. A was for Astronaut and I wanted to be one.
We watched the launch of the Challenger live in my elementary school class. The teacher who died had a little girl about my age, I remember.
Venus was high and bright in the morning sky over Oregon as I finished my night shift at the nursing home and bicycled toward home. I’d just heard the news on the radio.
Got most of the way home before I had to stop and stand, looking at that beautiful spark of light, and weep for those who died along the way.
I was standing on the playground, watching the launch. They used to do that in that part of Florida, stop school and everybody’d go outside and watch. It was all over and we were back inside and just starting to sit back down, and the principle came on the intercom and announced what had happened. We didn’t get anything done for the rest of the day.
It was the Space Coast. Everybody knew someone at NASA. I had a cousin who was, at the time, a fully rated astronaut just waiting for her first ride, and friends of my dad worked at Mission Control. It was bad for all of us there.