• zod000@lemmy.ml
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    23 hours ago

    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.

    • mienshao@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      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.

    • Punkie@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      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
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        5 hours ago

        I remember that last part from the announcer and we were all like “you don’t say…”.