I was a COTR (Contracting Officer's Technical Representative) for the government, and I was on my way to a contract review in Melbourne, Fla on a bitter cold, clear day. I pulled over on an overpass to watch the launch, and saw the whole thing. I was (and am) a life-long space nut, having grown up in Florida and having experienced the earth-shattering roar of an Apollo launch from a nearby beach. I knew immediately that the Challenger had suffered a catastrophic failure, and there was no hope for the astronauts.

I went on to the meeting, but none of us at the table did anything but listen to the news reports. We were all technically savvy types, and we all knew there was no hope, but we kept listening anyway.

Since then I have watched the USA fritter away any chance it had for continued leadership in space, in a stupid and irrelevant search for 'PC-ness', 'gender-diversity', 'income equality', 'safe spaces', 'micro-aggressions' and other crap. My generation was certainly to blame for much of this, but *this* generation has gone even farther astray. OTOH, this generation has also produced Elon Musk and SpaceX, so maybe you'll do better than us ;-).