>>30095257I am not an american mate, I am just old enough to remember what happened and how it affected the contemporary people.
To give some context, it was the first time regular folks, instead of just airforce pilots, were being allowed into space flight and it was supposed to mark the end of the military era of the space age and the start of a much more enlightened civilian age.
The reason it shocked Americans as muich as it did (as opposed to Discovery) is because across America schools put it on their TVs for their students to watch the first regular ass teacher to go to space, a person that could be just like the one in the classroom with them.
A whole generation of kids in the US watched her, instead of going to space, to die in a burning inferno. That was one of those "I know exactly what I was doing when X happened", like JFK getting ganked for the generation before theirs or 9/11 for the generation after theirs.
