Sputnik, somewhat related...

But first... oh sure, I remember the Challenger disaster well. I was watching live here at home.

Sputnik.... I was fortunate to have a grade school teacher who was VERY into space exploration; so we were always kept aware of the latest happenings. Hence - I saw the Sputnik mission live.

No, of course I didn't .... but it 'felt' live... in those days. No internet. No satellite live TV broadcasts. You waited in those days.

I was very young when Sputnik went up so I don't know how soon I heard about it. I DID, however, hear about it in class as soon as my teacher received the news and then school began. So.... for us, back then, that was "Live".

Also... being so young I was completely unaware of politics... that there was a space race in progress and the fate of the free world was at stake. For me it was simply an amazing bit of sci-fi news and as far as I knew is was us, the USA, who had did it.

Always with an overactive imagination I knew for SURE that soon following Sputnik we'd all be in space shortly..... by 2023 we'd be living on other planets and each have our own spaceship gallivanting about the galaxy and probably the universe.

I was a bit off in my prediction. - JamesJM