Space Shuttle Challenger

    It's been 30 years now since that fateful day, January 28, 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after take off. Remembering those lost on that day:

• Francis R Scobee, Commander
• Michael J Smith
• Ellison S Onizuka
• Judith A Resnick
• Ronald E McNair
• Gregory B Jarvis
• S Christa McAuliffe

   One of those moments where you "know where you were at that moment". I was living with my mom. Out of school, but not working. My best friend had just been killed a few months earlier. I was in a constant state of depression, either crying or sleeping. I was sleeping at that moment. Mom was at work, a kid's clothing store at the local mall. There was an electronics store just across from them. The launch had been playing on all of their televisions out front. Mom saw it and called me. I will never forget that phone call. "Wake up! The Space Shuttle just blew up!" I couldn't believe it. Turned on the tv and watched in disbelief. I was obsessed with the Space Shuttle. Did a full science fair project about it in like 3rd grade, had the models, photos of myself with one of them when they flew through and stopped in Houston. It was pain on top of pain.

   This is the memorial for the Challenger astronauts at Arlington National Cemetery, taken in June 2003.

  We will never forget them, not the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'tough the face of God'