Christa McAuliffe

Yeah.

I, I think one of the things that astronomy does for me and, uh, and working in, in outreach, and I work at this, uh, McAuliffe Shepherd Discovery Center, which is, uh, for Christa McAuliffe and Alan Shepard.

They're both from New Hampshire.

It's a space museum.

The boosters flew off erratically, and the main engine blew apart, with pieces of it flying across the sky and into the ocean.

The picture you were just seeing was Christa McAuliffe's parents watching in horror.

Family and friends of several of the astronauts on board the shuttle witnessed the explosion in person.

Millions more watched it on live television.

Oh, yeah.

And so Krista McAuliffe was on the space shuttle.

Yeah.

But also on there was Ronald McNair.

So it's just, it's like the Kennedy assassination, the demarcation line in your life that you will never forget.

The space shuttle challenger for me as a kid, especially because Krista McAuliffe was a school teacher from Massachusetts.

So we were all sitting in the front of the TV and because on 9-11 those planes came from Boston, it has this weird Boston, New York connection.

Yeah.

Well, you have to start 1986 with the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that shocked the world on January 28th.

Challenger broke apart just 73 seconds after liftoff, uh, unfortunately killing all seven crew members, including teacher Christa McAuliffe.

Uh, the disaster grounded the shuttle program for more than two years.

Do you guys remember where you were at when that happened? Is that one of the...

And the point is, for a lot of people, comedy is how they deal with actual horrifically bad news.

You know, if you were my age when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, you either cried in the classroom or you told Krista McAuliffe jokes in the schoolyard.

My cousin Cindy's listening in Florida.

She knows every one of them, every single one of them.

And I did watch that live on TV because I was in New Hampshire at the time.

And we knew, technically knew, Krista McAuliffe because before she was a teacher at Concord High School, she was a student teacher assistant there.

at Pittsfield High School and that was my small tiny small tiny town that I went to um yeah anyways but yeah my family knew her and everything and so it's always weird to see all the conspiracy theories about all of that stuff and about her and I'm just like y'all are tripping she was literally just a normal person I promise you you know unless they're really really good I mean it's the CIA brainwashing and all maybe they slipped me and my family something.

You never know.

... everyone was saying, "What are you, a freaking..." Yeah, and it explo- I, I had no idea.

I think, you know, it, it was a bigger deal maybe in school because there was a school teacher aboard, Christa McAuliffe.

Right.

Right.