I was a newly commissioned 2LT in the Air Force, just on station here in Colorado Springs for a few weeks. While attending a meeting at Raytheon, they broadcast the news that the Challenger had exploded. The meeting continued. At lunch, I went to a store that was playing the video of the explosion over and over. At first, it appeared to me that one of the Shuttle main engines had exploded.

That afternoon, we stopped trying to continue with business as normal at the meeting because we'd all seen the explosion footage and couldn't concentrate on anything else. A colonel who'd worked the Shuttle program got up and discussed what he'd seen on the footage. We went home early that afternoon.

I remember watching the footage over and again that evening on the news, feeling somewhat stunned (similar to how I felt on 9-11 seeing the footage of the planes hitting the WTC and the towers coming down). I remembered the many delays in launching the Challenger and how NASA was being ridiculed, then I learned how groupthink caused them to go ahead with a launch in dangerously cold temperatures. Of course, none of the people who'd been ragging on NASA for the delays ever said anything about how their ridicule might possibly have contributed to the pressure to launch despite the cold.