Sad anniversary in America today. Thirty years ago the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift off, live on American television and in person to crew member families watching on the ground at the Kennedy Space Center. "The Shuttle Explodes" was the headline in the New York Times and the shuttle exploded at 11:39 am. I did not hear of the disaster until after work when I stopped into a convenience store near home. The television was on and of course that was all that was on TV. I remember calling my parents that night and sort of sheepishly telling them that this reminded me of the various assassinations of the 1960's. "Oh, us too, Ben," was their reply.

We were told this could not happen, that there was so much "built in redundancy" in the shuttles that something so catastrophic could not happen on the 25th shuttle mission. That it did happen caused some people, like me, to doubt: to doubt official explanations as we came to doubt official explanations during the Vietnam War, to doubt technology, to doubt the mission of the shuttle program, and to doubt America. Those doubts had legs. The shuttle program was put on a thirty-two month hiatus and was eventually ended. Those legs run still, thirty years later.