I was fortunate enough to have a presentation, when I was in Elementary School (Golden Elementary in Placentia, CA), that featured bringing in Shuttle Tiles in the 80s. They put a blowtorch to once and let us touch it, right after. It was mildly interesting for a 9 year old.
Meanwhile, a bunch of my classmates junior year of high school took a tour of my future alma mater and came back with stories about how the thermite demo went wrong and exploded.
Later I saw black and white video of the same classroom, the thermite set the projector screen on fire ( which for some dumb reason was down at the time), the instructor panicked and pulled the screen causing it to retracted.
This did not put out the fire.
Unfortunately the video cuts out there. The building did not burn down, apparently, but I would have liked to have seen the full saga.
I almost skipped chemistry class the day they did the thermite demo for us. Instead I sat way in the back.
A teacher at my highschool did the thermite demo over a large ceramic dish, it shattered the liquid iron blob burned through the floor into the classroom below
They came to the schools in Portland, OR, as well and did the same blowtorch demo. Loved it.
Came to find out just a few years ago that my aunt, who is retired from NSA/CIA/Rand, was one of the people who translated the Soviet shuttle plans and helped discover that they were stolen from the USA. Apparently she was also involved, somehow, in every stealth program up until she retired. Exactly what she did...don't know, and she wouldn't elaborate.
The shuttle main engines were all tested at Stennis Space Center in southern MS (the same test stands were used to test parts of the Saturn V for the Apollo missions). I got to see a bunch of the tests as a kid, it was really something - always wanted to see an actual launch, but the closet I've come is catching a glimpse of the Falcon 9 from San Francisco in 2018.
