.jpg)
Space Shuttle Challenger crew, with teacher Christa McAuliffe in middle, head to launch pad.
As I was preparing advance coverage of this morning's scheduled launch of Atlantis and the end of the 30-year space shuttle program, my first instinct was to go to You Tube to find footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster, something I had not looked at since the 2003 Columbia explosion.
The first video I looked at was from CNN and it was rather matter of fact. The second
included footage
from the ground and the parents and students of teacher Christa McAuliffe, which was far more unsettling to watch, and a couple more until I couldn't do it any more.
The challenger is explosion is one of those national moments where, when you look back, you remember where you were and how you were feeling. While all but two of the shuttle missions were catastrophic, it's seems natural that we recall the bad ones because they are seemingly frozen in time.
Other nationalist moments that come to mind in my lifetime, at 49 years of age, include the 9/11 terrorist attacks, especially the planes crashing into the Twin Towers and them tumbling down a short time later.
As a college kid, the assassination attempt on President Reagan and the slaying of John Lennon stand out. As a boy, my strongest nationalist memories of disaster were the fall of Saigon and the evacuation of the U.S. embassy, and much earlier, the Apollo 11 moon landing with Neil Armstrong's first steps, and Walter Cronkite reporting the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.
For those of you who may be thinking I was too young for those events, my first-grade show-and-tell was the lineup of candidates for the 1968 presidential election with newspaper clippings.
The shuttle program is one of our national treasures, something we hold onto with pride, especially as we get older and realize our own mortality. It's something that is a part of us, as individuals, as families, as Americans. It's part of our national consciousness.
I pray for a safe and successful launch of the shuttle Atlantis, whether it be today, if the weather cooperates, or in the coming days.
Below are the videos I watched that in culmination upset me greatly (they are in order as I viewed them, especially third third video, far right):