THE UNFORGETTABLE, STRICKEN FACES OF THE CROWD

Once again, a front-row seat to a horror story.

Cape Canaveral, Tuesday morning. On the TV screen is a videotape of spectators anxiously awaiting a space launch. They’re ready to cheer, ready to celebrate. They include the husband, parents and two children of New England schoolteacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe, whose ride aboard the space shuttle Challenger was to make her the first teacher in space.

Liftoff!

Faces look skyward, squinting at the sun in anticipation of a majestic spectacle. Everyone is happy. Everyone is smiling. But . . . something is happening. As you watch the screen, you see smiles fading. There is now bafflement on the faces of McAuliffe’s family, then concern, then disbelief, then terror, all seeming to blur into a single emotion. And only then do you hear the unforgettable cries.

“Oh, no! Oh, no!”

Watching the crowd’s reactions to Tuesday’s tragedy was even more painful than watching the explosion itself when Challenger veered to the right and, after less than two minutes of flight, exploded into a massive fireball that filled two-thirds of the screen.

From Jack Ruby’s nationally televised murder of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 to the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan to Tuesday’s loss of seven lives aboard Challenger, our most violent or tragic episodes have been TV stories, captured on the screen like a dramatic freeze-frame at the end of a drama.

Some day we may learn the long-range impact of all this, whether we’re becoming terrified or desensitized or simply mentally wiped out by the misery confronting us daily.

Who would have thought?

America’s space program has become such a national routine that only Cable News Network and KNBC News locally (with Kent Shocknek anchoring here; see story, below) were airing live coverage of the launch when Challenger exploded shortly after 8:39 a.m. (PST) before disintegrating into twisting columns of white smoke.

But CBS News and ABC News swiftly interrupted their morning programs to join NBC and CNN in delivering barrages of Challenger reports that were to continue through at least the early afternoon.

You had to admire the calm professionalism of all the anchormen and their support teams. However, CBS anchorman Dan Rather, in particular, was a real rock in the early going, speaking almost professorially while using a model of Challenger to analyze the explosion’s possible origins. And it was CBS that also first used a slow-motion replay of the explosion. “You can see the long pencil-line explosion,” Rather said.

But it was also CBS that inexplicably stood alone in rejecting live coverage of a press conference by astronaut-turned-politician Ohio Sen. John Glenn.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Tom Brokaw at one point contributed a refreshingly different slant to the coverage by interviewing a child psychologist about how to discuss the Challenger tragedy with children. After all, with the much-publicized participation of teacher McAuliffe (it seemed at times Tuesday that the networks had forgotten there were six other victims aboard Challenger), children had been part of the story from the beginning.

Yet while the network smoothies were talking to space experts and talking to themselves Tuesday morning, C-SPAN--one of our least-known national resources--was talking to people.

C-SPAN had been covering a House session live when Challenger exploded. After the House quickly adjourned, C-SPAN immediately invited Americans to call in their reactions to the tragedy. It was a poignant reminder that even in this age of technology the human element still matters.

“Thank you, Clearwater,” said C-SPAN President Brian Lamb. “Denver, Colo., good morning.”

One caller worried that the press would have such a “heyday” with the tragedy, that the nation’s space program would be mortally wounded. And from Jacksonville, Fla.: “I just want to say all of us couldn’ t believe what happened. I was watching the countdown, 10, 9, 8 . . . and it was just something.” At that point, the woman became so emotional that she could barely continue.

They called in from everywhere. The man with the premonition “something like this would happen” called. So did the Alabama woman who said: “I’ve always been a naive spectator toward the space program. I’ve never had anything touch me like this. . . . I just have to tell the families, I really feel for you.”

And it was inevitable, in our terrorism-minded world, that a caller would raise the specter of sabotage in connection with the explosion.

C-SPAN showed Tuesday that thoughts and feelings--as well as dramatic pictures--sometimes can be conveyed via TV

Oh, but those TV pictures.

There on the screen was the NASA-supplied TV view of the Challenger recovery area 18 miles off Cape Canaveral, a watery site where rescuers searched in vain for survivors . . . anything. But in explosions like this, someone said, “There is nothing left to recover.”

Space has become one of the nation’s most popular fantasies in recent years. For this mission, though, there would be no Capt. Kirk or Mr. Spock to make things right in the end. There would be only those faces in the crowd at Cape Canaveral, faces you would never forget.