Home video of 'Challenger' disaster surfaces after 24 years

www.cnn.com/video/?/video/tech/2010/02/0...enger.home.video.cnn

This is home video footage taken from the front yard of a man's house in 1986 showing the Challenger disaster he caught with a BetaMAX video camera. He died not long ago, but just a month before that happened, he resurfaced the video.

Take a look,

Seanie.

I saw that on YouTube the other day - a fascinating insight into the time - a portable camcorder was a pretty new invention in 1986. More to the point I remember exactly what I was doing that day - I had been up to London to put a deposit on my first flat and was listening to Steve Wright in the Afternoon on Radio 1 who had mentioned the shuttle mission, and as I returned home as I walked in the door my mum told me the "The Space Shuttle has exploded". I still have the "Newsnight" Special on a piece of videotape somewhere. Half my life ago and it seems like yesterday - some memories never fade.

Paul.

A unique view of the accident, I'm surprised the guy didnt cop straight away that something major had happened.

Dave_Lillis wrote:

A unique view of the accident, I'm surprised the guy didnt cop straight away that something major had happened.

He did, but not STRAIGHT away. If you have volume, you can hear a female voice saying that "inside they're saying something bad happened", probably on the live news channel.

I remember sitting on the floor in my living room, in Canada, watching the launch live on television. My mother called me into the room just as it was about to launch. I didn't really understand at the instance the explosion happened that it was something catastrophic, as I was only 7, but I was aware that something bad happened. "Obviously a major malfunction" were those immortal words on the news broadcast...

Seanie.