drwex | Today is a day like many other days

Today (28 January as I write this) is the anniversary of the Challenger disaster. I've thought about writing this entry for a while because it's also the 30th anniversary of the accident, but I find I have nothing more to say on this anniversary than I've said on others.

I will probably always remember where I was when I saw the television for the first time. I will probably always have that Y-shaped smoke trail etched in my visual memory.
I remember it as the day I understood that I, personally, would never go into space. As a kid who dreamed (like so many other kids) of being an astronaut, as a kid who'd written his first grade-school fiction story as a first-person account of Astronaut Me landing on Mars, this was harder than you'd expect.
I remember it as the thing that led me to discover Feynman and to enshrine him as one of my idols.
I teach it to design students, when I teach, as an example of how (bad) design can kill.

I am bad with anniversaries and I forget my own kids' birthdays. Some years I even forget this specific date. But I do remember.