January 28, 1986 was one of those dates where everyone remembers what they were doing when they heard the news. Conversational Spanish class at the University of Illinois. No English allowed. So one of the students relayed the shocking information thusly: “El Space Shuttle explotó!” We all looked at each other. “Explotó?” asked a classmate with incredulity. “Estás tratando de decir lanzado?” [Exploded? Are you trying to say ‘launched’?]. “No,” the distraught student insisted. “Explotó.” More uncomprehending stares. Finally in exasperation he blurted out: “IT BLEW UP!”
That was how I learned the Space Shuttle Challenger had been engulfed in a calamitous fireball nine miles over the Atlantic Ocean, a mere 73 seconds after lift-off. The shock of this event, the national trauma it induced, cannot be adequately understood today. It came as a bolt from the blue. And so much more so because among the seven highly intelligent, accomplished crew members was a high school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire. Chosen after a national search for an educator to ride the Shuttle, Christa McAuliffe was to be the first “regular person” to go into space. She was one of us. A decent, hardworking, affable sort, who was not only a beloved teacher but also a devoted wife and mother of two young children. The implication behind her trip on the orbiter was that space travel had become as routine as hopping on a commercial airliner. It had to be, right? Otherwise there was no way NASA, an acronym which by that time had taken on mythical qualities of competence and excellence, would ever put one of us into that thing. Would they?
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