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Authors: Melissa Falcon Field
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barn fire carried on southwestern winds, reducing the city to ash.â
He placed another sketch of an incinerated city onto the overhead. Only the skeletons of the brick buildings remained after the inferno had been extinguished.
âFire is combustion,â Mr. Barnet told us. He then lit a piece of paper with a Bunsen burner and tossed it the air. It burned to dust before ever touching the floor. âCombustion is the chemical process that makes things burn.â
In the back row, Norwell Jackson cleared his throat and flicked his Zippo lighter, while Mr. Barnet continued his lecture without skipping a beat. âFire isnât matter at all. That flame is an oxidation process, not unlike rusting or digestion, but this chemical process differs from those because it releases heat and light. It makes fire intense, it makes the big ones unforgettable, and it makes all of it sexy.â
I had never heard a teacher use the word âsexyâ before. The rest of the class seemed unimpressed, but I was rapt.
His next slide featured the space shuttleâs engines, fueled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. He explained how the reaction between the two chemicalsâin what appeared to be a very fiery explosion beneath the orbiterâcreated a propellant that launched the spacecraft into flight.
With a yardstick, Mr. Barnet slapped the screen where the combustion burned red.
âThis element, fire, can destroy an entire house in less than an hour, and a vehicle, if ignited from the inside out, in half that time. Propelling a rocket into space takes only T minus 26.6 seconds.â
⢠⢠â¢
That January 1986, the month of my fourteenth birthday and the start of my second semester of ninth grade, had been dubbed âthe year of astrophysical encountersâ by NASA, which had arranged for the space shuttle to launch in time to ride the tail of Halleyâs comet. Their hope was to study the comet with all the technology gathered in the seventy-five years since its prior visit, while hosting a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, from a New Hampshire town two hours north of our own.
But all that enchantment vanished as the Challenger split in two that morning of January 28, a Tuesday, after seventy-three seconds in the air. The explosion seemed not just the symbol of a dream turned to ash, but also became the image I would forever associate with the collapse of my parentsâ marriage.
Arriving late at school that day, I jumped out of Deanâs truckâracing past the office, dodging the tardy sign-in sheetâand sprinted down the hall to our high school auditorium with my model of the comet in hand. I prayed to Mary, Joseph, and all the saints we learned about in catechism, that I had not missed the countdown and liftoff with our New England heroine on board.
I made it in time and scooted to the edge of my seat as the missile ascended under the combustion of the engines that Mr. Barnet had explained to us. The spacecraft arced through the air, a white tail like the cometâs trailing behind it. But shortly after the launch, unexplained dark smoke billowed out beneath the shuttle as the rocket split in two. Our teachers looked at each other, and the broadcasters went silent.
In an instant, the illusion dissolved, and I knew that burning up with the shuttle and our dreams were all the letters we had written to the crew, including Judith Resnik, the second female astronaut in space, and Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who had visited our classroom and to whom we spent much of our first semester drafting and typing up letters.
January 5, 1986
Claire Spruce
290 Willard Street
East Lyme, CT 06333
NASA c/o Christa McAuliffe
Teacher in Space Project
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX 77297
Dear Mrs. McAuliffe,
In one week you will take off from Kennedy Space Center at 11:38 a.m. and as soon as you go, you will become a hero. In fact, you already are a hero to me. Even though I am
He placed another sketch of an incinerated city onto the overhead. Only the skeletons of the brick buildings remained after the inferno had been extinguished.
âFire is combustion,â Mr. Barnet told us. He then lit a piece of paper with a Bunsen burner and tossed it the air. It burned to dust before ever touching the floor. âCombustion is the chemical process that makes things burn.â
In the back row, Norwell Jackson cleared his throat and flicked his Zippo lighter, while Mr. Barnet continued his lecture without skipping a beat. âFire isnât matter at all. That flame is an oxidation process, not unlike rusting or digestion, but this chemical process differs from those because it releases heat and light. It makes fire intense, it makes the big ones unforgettable, and it makes all of it sexy.â
I had never heard a teacher use the word âsexyâ before. The rest of the class seemed unimpressed, but I was rapt.
His next slide featured the space shuttleâs engines, fueled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. He explained how the reaction between the two chemicalsâin what appeared to be a very fiery explosion beneath the orbiterâcreated a propellant that launched the spacecraft into flight.
With a yardstick, Mr. Barnet slapped the screen where the combustion burned red.
âThis element, fire, can destroy an entire house in less than an hour, and a vehicle, if ignited from the inside out, in half that time. Propelling a rocket into space takes only T minus 26.6 seconds.â
⢠⢠â¢
That January 1986, the month of my fourteenth birthday and the start of my second semester of ninth grade, had been dubbed âthe year of astrophysical encountersâ by NASA, which had arranged for the space shuttle to launch in time to ride the tail of Halleyâs comet. Their hope was to study the comet with all the technology gathered in the seventy-five years since its prior visit, while hosting a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, from a New Hampshire town two hours north of our own.
But all that enchantment vanished as the Challenger split in two that morning of January 28, a Tuesday, after seventy-three seconds in the air. The explosion seemed not just the symbol of a dream turned to ash, but also became the image I would forever associate with the collapse of my parentsâ marriage.
Arriving late at school that day, I jumped out of Deanâs truckâracing past the office, dodging the tardy sign-in sheetâand sprinted down the hall to our high school auditorium with my model of the comet in hand. I prayed to Mary, Joseph, and all the saints we learned about in catechism, that I had not missed the countdown and liftoff with our New England heroine on board.
I made it in time and scooted to the edge of my seat as the missile ascended under the combustion of the engines that Mr. Barnet had explained to us. The spacecraft arced through the air, a white tail like the cometâs trailing behind it. But shortly after the launch, unexplained dark smoke billowed out beneath the shuttle as the rocket split in two. Our teachers looked at each other, and the broadcasters went silent.
In an instant, the illusion dissolved, and I knew that burning up with the shuttle and our dreams were all the letters we had written to the crew, including Judith Resnik, the second female astronaut in space, and Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who had visited our classroom and to whom we spent much of our first semester drafting and typing up letters.
January 5, 1986
Claire Spruce
290 Willard Street
East Lyme, CT 06333
NASA c/o Christa McAuliffe
Teacher in Space Project
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX 77297
Dear Mrs. McAuliffe,
In one week you will take off from Kennedy Space Center at 11:38 a.m. and as soon as you go, you will become a hero. In fact, you already are a hero to me. Even though I am
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