this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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Who Remember This? We Also Broadcasted It Live To Schoolrooms (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 months ago by crankyrebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 134 points 2 months ago (2 children)

We watched it live in elementary school, most of the kids didn't get what had happened right away. Our teacher was just standing there stunned until an announcement came on the intercom asking all the teachers to turn it off. They didn't say anything to us, just tried to pretend like we didn't just watch people blow up live.

[–] punkwalrus@lemmy.world 54 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's the "not handling" part that gets us as kids. We knew better. Adults didn't. In my case, I was in high school, but it was on a "Teacher workday, student holiday" we had each semester. I watched it live on NASA TV, which we had on channel UHF 55 in the DC area. Even the voice of mission control delayed about a minute or two. I remember thinking, "THAT didn't look good..." but then they said nothing but normal speed and temp readings, so I thought it was just the angle of the chase plane. Only when the famous "forked cloud" appeared that the announcer said, "we have an apparent major malfunction," or something.

[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago

I remember that last part from the announcer and we were all like "you don't say...".

[–] mienshao@lemmy.world 44 points 2 months ago (3 children)

You actually didn’t watch people get blown up live. The crew survived the fire blast—it was the crash into the water ~3 mins later that killed them.

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Well they still got blown up didn’t they?

[–] name_NULL111653@pawb.social 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Nope. The survived an explosion, fell a few miles, and got crushed inside the capsule and killed by g forces upon hitting the water...

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

But doesn’t surviving an explosion imply that they did in fact get exploded? Just cause it ain’t kill em doesn’t mean they didn’t go through it

[–] datavoid@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 months ago

So, blown down

[–] bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 months ago

How does anyone about that in such detail?

[–] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

They didn't get blown up. The Challenger did.

[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 months ago

That would surely have made us feel better lmao! Still, that's an interesting fact.