Folks a little older than me have Lennon’s murder (I was six, living with a family that wasn’t necessarily plugged into that area of pop culture, so I don’t remember that at all), but for me, the definitive “where were you when” question happened 25 years ago today.

On January 28, 1986, The space shuttle Challenger blew up a minute or so after liftoff, killing the entire crew of mission STS-51-L, including Christa McAuliffe, the first selectee for NASA’s “Teacher In Space” project.

At that point in time, shuttle missions had already sort of become routine and not worthy of eating up valuable class time, though for this one, the “teacher in space” mission, was a big deal; schools rolled out those big clunky TV carts all over the country so we kids could see a regular civilian teacher go up into space, take part in experiments and such, and teach a few lessons over whatever communication protocol they used from orbit in those days.

I didn’t actually see it as it happened; the launch was scheduled during my lunch hour. However, by the time I got to Mr. Snyder’s sixth grade science class, word had already gotten out via the hallway grapevine. The teacher confirmed the rumor with a bit of sad resignation, if I remember correctly, and filled us in briefly before letting the tv cart take over. Lessons for the rest of the day were tossed aside, and we were pretty much glued to the television solemnly watching the coverage and speculating as to what happened and whether anybody was likely to have survived (our speculation turned out to be correct, although we weren’t happy about it). The tasteless jokes came soon later, but are part of the mourning process. If I ever find myself dying in some horribly public tragedy, I can only hope to inspire a few tasteless punch lines.

This event has stuck with me ever since; I always thought the space program was pretty cool, and had kind of latched on to this project – I liked the idea that a non-astronaut was going into space; it meant that someday I might get a chance. Sadly, this disaster ended up being the first step toward NASA mostly backing off from manned space exploration. We really should have been back to the moon and on our way to Mars by now.

I remember later on writing a middle school research paper on it at one point, and I remember somehow getting what looked like official mission emblem stickers to use for it; not sure if I bought them somewhere or sent off a S.A.S.E. (remember those?) to get them. It was probably the first topic I remember really diving into and learning everything I could about.

Now, 25 years later, we’re a couple of months away from the final shuttle mission before the fleet is retired, and there’s nothing on deck to replace it.

To me, who’s still a bit of a space program geek ( a couple of months ago when I met some of the folks who do the logistics on rocket propellants for NASA and the Air Force, since the project that I’m on right now will end up supporting them, it thrilled me to no end that I am, in some indirect, tangential way, an integral part of the US space program), that’s what’s really sad.