On this day, twenty-five years ago, the world changed.

It is one of those "Where were you when..." moments.  Where were you when the planes flew into the World Trade Center?  Where were you when Kennedy was shot?  Where were you when...

Challenger blew up.

I have written about Challenger before.  In many ways, I'm not sure I can add to what I wrote then. But January 28 has a resonance for me that the other notable dates in what a friend of mine at Goddard Space Flight Center calls "dead astronaut week" don't.  I was too young to be affected by the loss of three astronauts in the Apollo 1 fire.  When Columbia disintegrated over east Texas, I was saddened, and worried about the impact, both professionally and personally, on people I or my husband knew, or on NASA in general, but its impact on me was more removed.


Challenger's destruction, though, terrified me.  Those twin spirals of smoke trailing off into the deep blue Florida January sky would crop up in nightmares off and on for years.

I was the wife of a man whose sole mission in life was to reach outer space.  The Rocket Scientist had wanted to  be an astronaut since the age of about four.  I have not met many people who have been so single-minded about a goal.

Even though I knew about his dreams, and knew at an intellectual level that spaceflight was dangerous,  I had not internalized exactly how dangerous an undertaking it was.  I was not alone: the fact that civilians  were being taken along shows how blasè we all had gotten about this space business.  (Senator Jake Garn* may have been a pilot, but that was not what got him his gig as the first sitting member of Congress to fly on the shuttle.) Christa MacAuliffe was on Challenger precisely because at some level it was thought a safe place for a teacher to be. 

Challenger changed all that.  As I looked at the television, and then looked over at my husband staring in horrified fascination at the smoke trails, I couldn't help but think "that could be him, in a few years time."  Even before asking him, I knew that nothing had changed.

I had a decision to make.  When someone you love desires danger, the time to figure out whether you can cope with that is not when they get what they want.  The time to decide whether you can stand watching your husband and best friend be strapped to a rocket and shot into the atmosphere is not when he is selected for a mission, or even when he is chosen for the astronaut corps.  It is before he even begins the application process.  

You decide to deal with it, or you leave.  Those are your choices.  Trying to change someone who has their eyes on the horizon, for whom the dream of space is and always will be their first love, even above you, is hopeless and cruel.  For both of you.

I stayed.  All through the years of applying.  There was a callback, which in itself, given the numbers of people who apply, is pretty good -- but in the end, my husband didn't become an astronaut.  And through all those years, every once in a while, the nightmare would return, with the smoke trailing off into the sky -- but instead of seven strangers in there, it was him.  The end of that dream brought its own issues -- he had to find a way to channel that first love into other avenues -- but at least the Challenger nightmares ended.

The day after Columbia disintegrated, I asked the Rocket Scientist (who at that point had passed the age where being selected for the astronaut program was realistic) if, having seen what had happened to Columbia, if he would still have gone in to space.  "I would go tomorrow," he answered without hesitation.  I mentioned this online to my friend at Goddard, who said "Of course.  We all would.  This doesn't change any of that."

And if my husband had that chance, even given Columbia, even given Challenger, I would do what every loved one of every astronaut or every astronaut want-to-be must do:  I would swallow hard, smile, and say "Vaya con dios, love.  The kids and I will be waiting for you when you get back."

So I find myself thinking today not just about the astronauts, but about their families.  About what it would be like to have experienced such a tragedy.  And about all those who send the ones they love into danger with a hug.**  And about the courage and conviction the families of those seven men and women showed in response to such heartbreak.***

And I salute them.

*Jake Garn was so spacesick on his flight, that a scale of spacesickness is named after him. [pdf. p. 13-35]  "One Garn" is the highest level of spacesickness an astronaut can experience.

**Not just astronauts: the families of soldiers, cops, and firefighters face this on an everyday basis.

*** The families of the Challenger astronauts founded The Challenger Centers for Space Education, a remarkable monument to their loves ones.