The HabForum

I would have been in constant tears that day if I had been surrounded by it.

I watched CNN from the moment I found out about it until I went to bed. Before I found out what happened I was on a Canadian channel and Mark Garneau was talking but I had missed what the question was and then he started talking in French so I switched to CNN. I saw what was happenening and was almost instantly in tears.

Well aparently CNN had mentioned before i turned it on that they had lost communications with the shuttle but i didnt know that when i turned it on to watch the landing. Well i knew it was supose to land at 9:16 and there had been no word of a delay to a later time. Then 9:16 came and went with no coverage starting. I knew something was wrong. Then Miles Obrien came on and said Mission control had lost contact at 9 am est and i knew they werent going to make the landing and that something had obviously gone wrong. But when he said they had film coming in of the orbiter over Texas i was hopeful maybe they had gone down in the gulf and could have bailed out. Then they showed the film and i saw one trail break into several and all hope was lost.

There was no way I could have watched it constantly, but I had a video in the VCR just about all day recording when I was too upset to watch.

Well i watched whatever i could at the museum between NASA TV which the museum gets and CNN which we had on upstairs in the administrative offices. I also started recording CNN before i left the house that day and have continued to record news stories and other TV programs as well as i've been creating a scrap book of newspaper clippings.

I've collected most of the news stories from the first few weeks after the accident.

Well i'm sure i dont have every article on the accident and investigation but i do have most of the, Unfortunately ,my dad dosent get the local paper so i have to rely on my grandmother to send them to me but i'm pretty sure i have gotten most of them. I also have an STS-107 launch program a friend of mine who goes to Embry Riddle University got me from KSC and a copy of the Embry Riddle school newspaper that covers the accident.

I have several of the articles as well. I used to get NASA TV at my house, but all of a sudden one day I didn't.

Well York County is the only place around here that gets NASA TV through cable. Anywhere else you have to have a sattelite dish which the space museum here has.

I think we were getting it through cable, but you had to know it was there and hit 18 or whatever because your tv would normally skip over it. I've gotta study for finals tomorrow so that's about it for me.

Well the hab has been slow all day i guess its going to continue tonight. You have finals and spacecampaddict is sick so i guess it will be a slow night tonight.

If you live inside the city, you get channel 20, which is a Spanish channel. During shuttle missions, it is NASA TV. Unfortunatly, I live a block outside of the city, so I don't get it. I may get it soon on digital cable, but I;m not sure.

I hated having to tell my grandmother. After they had LOS for way way way too long, she didn't understand that that meant something really bad. She kept hoping that they would just come home, when I knew that that wasn't going to happen.

Well most people really don't have any idea about thinge like that. Heck sometimes i don't think CNN's space reporter knows much anout alot of things i've heard him make more than a few mistakes over the years.

They try to explain space things in really simple terms and sometimes they make mistakes. I have heard CNN over simplify things to the point where they are wrong...and sometimes they are just wrong anyway.

I hate it when they oversimplify things because most of the time they break it down to the point that they're just wrong.

I agree. Sometimes it is so simple that the rest of my family will get it, but I will notice the error and get really really confused and then try to explain it and confuse them.

Well one thing you learn as a tour guide and ive had to learn over the last 10 years of being one is you have tolearn to explain technical stuff in a way that kids can understand and at the same tinme not talk down to grownups and reporters seem to forget that sometimes when taklking about stuff.

After trying to explain why the shuttle keeps moving in orbit (in simple terms) to my mother (I thought inertia was a simple enough concept), I've given up explaining anything to my family.

Newscasters just weren't prepared for an event like this. Even when they don't oversimplify, they haven't studied the shuttle in so long that they get confused and start reporting things wrong. Thus is the nature of breaking news.

Try having a ten-year-old sister who wants to be interested in everything you're interested in. The explanations can get pretty hard sometimes.