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of the Concord elementary school, home of Christa McCauliffe.He communicated a sense of outrage and anger that the people had been sacrificed for the sake of the space program. The prevailing emotional association of the children was to the loss of a mother. After seven months there was no noticeable overt effect on the children whose responses were characterized by fear, sadness, and a desperate search for some reassuring explanation. It is pertinent to quote the following letter which records the words of a third grade teacher: "The day the space shuttle blew up! My third grade class didn't realize what was happening. I started to cry - They got so quiet - almost scared! I think they were reacting to my crying more than anything. I showed them the booklets and plans we were going to follow with the teacher in space. We talked about it for the rest of the day. We kept the TV on and would go back again and listen. "It wasn't supposed to happen", they said. Why  (?) was asked so often. Human error, bad weather conditions, we all came up with answers of one kind or another.

One little girl kept saying how she thought about the teachers children. They were so little. Her son and his class were there. We talked about how they felt - how he felt. His mother was gone forever. They all had personal thoughts how they would feel if they lost their mother.

My emotional state was terrible for weeks after. Why did God let this happen to her and the other Challenger astronauts? Perhaps the country will never get over it. I know exactly where I was when John Kennedy was assassinated! I feel I'll always remember the time and place when the Challenger blew up in space."

One can further assume that the witnesses were watching with a mixture of awe and pride, whatever fears dispelled by the well-planted illusion of the reliability and safety of the enterprise - an illusion affirmed by the civilian in space program - the citizen everyman, in this case the innocent feminine

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