Time Surfing: Experience History.
Historical Backdrop
Sharon Christa McAuliffe was a 37‑year‑old social studies teacher at Concord High School in New Hampshire, chosen from more than 11,000 applicants in July 1985 to be NASA’s first “Teacher in Space.” She was married to attorney Steven McAuliffe and had two children, Scott, 9, and Caroline, 6. After four months of training at Johnson Space Center, she was assigned as a payload specialist on STS‑51‑L, Space Shuttle Challenger, alongside Commander Dick Scobee, Pilot Mike Smith, and mission specialists Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, and Ellison Onizuka, plus Hughes engineer Gregory Jarvis. The flight had already slipped five times. On the night of January 27, 1986, a record cold front pushed into central Florida, dropping temperatures at Launch Complex 39B to the mid‑20s and hanging icicles from the launch tower. That same evening, engineers at Morton Thiokol in Utah argued in a teleconference that the solid rocket booster O‑rings would not seal properly in the cold. Management overruled them. Nobody told the crew. The next morning was clear, brilliant, and freezing — the coldest shuttle launch ever attempted.
Date/time and location: January 27, 1986 — 9:42 p.m. EST — Crew quarters, third floor, Operations & Checkout Building, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
You sit on the edge of a narrow single bed with the phone cord stretched across your knees, listening to Scott argue with Caroline over who gets to talk next. The room is small and beige, the air dry and over‑warm from the vents, and outside the sealed window a wind you can’t feel is dropping the temperature by the minute. You tell them you love them. You tell Steve the weather people say clear and cold, and cold is fine, cold is New Hampshire. You hang up and sit a minute in the hum. On the dresser your flight suit hangs pressed on a wire hanger, and beside it a manila folder holds your lesson notes, a Concord High banner folded in a Ziploc bag, and two photographs curling at the corners. You brush your teeth, set the alarm you won’t need, and lie down in the dark listening to somebody’s television murmuring through the wall.
Date/time and location: January 28, 1986 — 1:34 a.m. EST — Crew quarters window, Operations & Checkout Building, KSC
You wake without knowing why and go to the window in your socks. The glass is cold enough to feel from a foot away. Nine miles off across the black scrub and water there’s a smear of xenon light where the pad is, and the tower stands lit up like a Christmas ornament, white and hard. You press your fingertips against the pane and hold them there. Somewhere out there men in hard hats are walking the levels with flashlights, and you don’t know that yet, and you don’t know about the phone call from Utah either. You think about your students setting their alarms in Concord, where it’s colder than this. You go back to bed and lie with your eyes open until the heater cycles again.
Date/time and location: January 28, 1986 — 6:19 a.m. EST — Crew quarters bathroom and bunk room, O&C Building, KSC
The knock comes at 6:18 and a voice says good morning through the door. You shower fast because there’s no reason not to, and the water runs hot enough to fog the mirror. You wipe a circle clear with your palm and look at yourself and say something out loud that you won’t remember later. You dry your hair with a hand dryer and work it with your fingers the way you always have, no time for anything fancier. Then the flight suit, which still smells faintly of the dry cleaner and of Houston. You zip it, tug the sleeves straight, and touch the mission patch on your chest with your thumb. Your hands are steady. That surprises you a little.
Date/time and location: January 28, 1986 — 6:44 a.m. EST — Crew conference room, O&C Building, KSC
Seven of you around a laminate table with coffee in Styrofoam. A man from the weather office runs through it fast: clear, calm, a hard freeze overnight, twenty‑four degrees at the pad, temperature climbing through the morning. He passes around Polaroids from the 1:30 inspection. You look at them and see icicles hanging from the water lines, a foot long, maybe more, white and clean like something out of a New England barn. Somebody down the table makes a joke about ice fishing. Dick Scobee studies the photos a long moment and hands them on without a word. You wrap both hands around the coffee cup for the warmth and think that at least you know how to dress for cold.
Date/time and location: January 28, 1986 — 7:08 a.m. EST — Crew dining room, O&C Building, KSC
The table is set with a white cloth and there’s a sheet cake in the middle with the mission emblem drawn in frosting and all of your names. Steak and eggs, because that’s the tradition, going back to the Mercury men. You eat almost none of it. You have a piece of toast and a cup of coffee and you laugh at whatever Judy Resnik is saying about somebody’s hair. A NASA photographer moves around the room, flash popping, motor drive whirring. You look at the cake and think it seems early to be celebrating, and you say so, and Ron McNair says that’s why they do it now, in case there’s no time later, and everyone laughs at that too.
Date/time and location: January 28, 1986 — 7:36 a.m. EST — Suit-up room, third floor, O&C Building, KSC
A technician kneels in front of you and tapes three biomedical sensors to your chest, the adhesive cold, the wires threaded down through the suit. Someone checks your name off a clipboard. They hand you the white launch and entry helmet, and you turn it in your hands and look at the visor and the oxygen fitting and the soft pad inside. They plug it into a test box and you hear your own breathing, amplified and strange. On the counter sits your personal preference kit, already sealed: photographs, your children’s small things, the school banner. You sign the last form. A tech says, “Have a good ride, Christa,” and you say thank you, and you mean it more than you can say.
Date/time and location: January 28, 1986 — 8:03 a.m. EST — Ground floor exit, O&C Building, KSC
