THE SPACE SHUTTLE Challenger blew up. Rockets, even $1.2 billion rockets, blow up. Being strapped to a several hundred thousand pound bomb hurtling through the atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour will never be a particularly safe thing to do.

The deaths of six astronauts, and of the first civilian to leave the earth with the U.S. space program, were certainly tragic. Yet the orgy of media coverage that quickly followed the shuttle's demise seemed far out of proportion to the death of a handful of Americans knowingly engaged in an extremely hazardous activity. The networks replayed the craft's sudden explosion over and over again. Viewers witnessed countless clips of horrified family members and friends of the astronauts as they saw their loved ones disappear in a cloud of fire. No detail was too mundane or too personal or too painful.

Why this obsession with death and bereavement? One would have expected a news extra, a moment of silence, perhaps updates as more information became available. Even a special message from President Reagan did not seem out of place. Americans have grown used to Reagan's expertly executed role as grandfather-in-time-of-grief. His concern provides a rare sense of community for a nation divided by so many economic and cultural disparities.

And cancelling the State of the Union address made good political sense as well; it was not the time to be upbeat. But why wasn't it? People die every day in this country--at work, at home, in the streets. Reagan didn't go on TV to mourn the loss of a worker killed last month at a plant that processes uranium for nuclear weapons. He died for his country, unexpectedly, without media fanfare, with no final streak into the heavens. Or what about the street people who are dying in the cold snap that is sweeping the nation?

BUT THE CHALLENGER was different; it belonged to the ideal world of technology and TV where everything works, not the real world of warts and wounded people. The shock of death where it is least expected was traumatic for a pampered bourgeois culture--a society in which the old and the sick are pushed out of sight and out of mind and to which the unreality of video violence and fatality is but an image, which can be erased with the flip of a switch. Here was full-color, live video death--the real thing, something that did not disappear with the images on a TV screen.

The shock of death alone did not bring Congress and the President grinding to a halt and produce the largest media event since Nixon's resignation--perhaps since John F. Kennedy was shot. The deceased were added to this year's list of heroes, mourned by the nation like other victims of a cruel fate. Only this time we had blown them up ourselves.

That was the kicker, the great unspoken gaffe: our rocket had blown up. And not just any rocket, but the best that ever was. The space shuttle was the United States' claim to the pinnacle of human achievement.

The country was like a teenager with a brand new sports car, customized and supercharged. Our hot rod cost $1.2 billion and was run by a battery of high-powered computers. It was a machine, of course, and we knew machines could break down. But the shuttle had had breakdowns before and the astronauts handled them routinely. No problem. That the shuttle would just explode sometime was unthinkable. Does A.J. Foyt expect his car to just fall apart when he goes into the final turn at the Indy 500?

It was as if the nation's machismo had been shattered, its technological manhood exploded in a terminal affront to complacent expectations. And so, to ease the shock, we grieved over the loss of seven new heroes. Their sudden demise, and most of all the dramatic irony of the nation's first civilian space passenger just going along for a routine ride, triggered mass catharsis.

The pall of grief was understandable, but it hid the most devastating blow of all. When the head of NASA held a press conference, he couldn't say it. He simply refused to speculate about the causes of the events in the morning's media footage. When Reagan spoke to the nation, he refered to the day's human tragedy and canonized new heroes. One simply couldn't come out and say it: our rocket had blown up. The nation was emasculated, bewildered, dumbstruck as glorious pride turned to impotence in a blinding flash.