On my 12th birthday, I watched the Challenger explosion happen right in front of my eyes. Me and the rest of the kids from Indian Harbour Beach watched the pieces of the shuttle slowly fall out of the sky. Some speculated that one of the pieces was an escape pod, but one of the kids whose dad worked on the shuttle said there wasn't an escape pod. We just couldn't believe it. It didn't seem possible that with all that focused attention on getting those 7 astronauts safely into space that such a thing could happen.
It was not the best experience for a kid who loved space and science.
However, it didn't turn me off from it, far from it. I ended up going to college for Aeronautical Engineering, before switching to Physics. I ended up as a nuclear physicist and doing a nuclear fusion startup. I still live within sight of the VAB.
If you want your kids to be interested in science, its more important that they be exposed to rockets, science, etc. than that they see it always be successful. Just showing them that it's cool goes a long way. But its much easier if you don't have to mix in questions about life and death, especially at such young ages.
Did you know that the shuttle was mostly intact after the disintegration [1]?
"The crew cabin, made of reinforced aluminum, was a particularly robust section of the shuttle. During vehicle breakup, it detached in one piece and slowly tumbled into a ballistic arc. NASA estimated the load factor at separation to be between 12 and 20 g; within two seconds it had already dropped to below 4 g and within ten seconds the cabin was in free fall. The forces involved at this stage were likely insufficient to cause major injury."
On my 12th birthday, I watched the Challenger explosion happen right in front of my eyes. Me and the rest of the kids from Indian Harbour Beach watched the pieces of the shuttle slowly fall out of the sky. Some speculated that one of the pieces was an escape pod, but one of the kids whose dad worked on the shuttle said there wasn't an escape pod. We just couldn't believe it. It didn't seem possible that with all that focused attention on getting those 7 astronauts safely into space that such a thing could happen.
It was not the best experience for a kid who loved space and science.
However, it didn't turn me off from it, far from it. I ended up going to college for Aeronautical Engineering, before switching to Physics. I ended up as a nuclear physicist and doing a nuclear fusion startup. I still live within sight of the VAB.
If you want your kids to be interested in science, its more important that they be exposed to rockets, science, etc. than that they see it always be successful. Just showing them that it's cool goes a long way. But its much easier if you don't have to mix in questions about life and death, especially at such young ages.