35 years ago today 7 brave men and women lifted off at 11:38 am from Kennedy Space Center launchpad 39B. 73 seconds after lift off the Shuttle experienced catastrophic structural failure that resulted in the loss of the vehicle and crew. One of the 7 was Christa McAuliffe, a social studies teacher, who would have been the first Teacher in Space under a new NASA program of the same name. The program was ended after the failure of this mission. The tragedy resulted in the Shuttle Program being shutdown for 3 years as a committee investigated the reasons behind the failure and NASA worked to fix those failures. Sadly, tragedy would strike the program again in 2003 when the Space Shuttle Columbia would disintegrate on orbital reentry. Interesting fact I learned a few years ago was that there were talks going on for a while before the launch that Big Bird would be on the mission and Caroll Spinney was going to be the puppeteer. I can't imagine what it would have been like had that plan gone through.