Columbia - A terrible loss...

THis is a very sad occasion...

Well, at first when I heard about the Columbia accident, it was mentioned quickly on the radio news at around 9:30 AM, they were just saying it was reported 'lost'. My first thought was "How the hell do you lose something that big?", and my second thought was that they'd had some kind of communications failure.

Then the reports of debris being found across Texas began coming in, and I suddenly knew it was far worse than that.... :(

I don't really know what to say....the news brought forth a sorrowful, aching, mournful feeling in me, partly because of the lives lost, and partly because Columbia was no more. I remember getting up at 6:00 AM - and in those days, that was a major accomplishment for me! ^_^ - to watch the first Columbia launch on TV. It was an incredible feeling to see her finally launch into the air, and out into space....to ten year old eyes, it was beyond awesome and fantastic. I kept everything I could find on the shuttle - National Geographic had a special issue that I almost wore out from re-reading it.

Well, that was 22 years ago....and shuttle launches, even despite the Challenger disaster, had become somewhat routine. You saw them in the news and went "Oh good, they had another good mission", and then went on with your day. Somewhere in the interim, we lost the sense of wonder that the shuttle used to evoke, and I think that's sad, myself. I think we take far too much for granted in this technological age of ours, and we forget that a lot of what we do has a cost.

Maybe not immediately, but eventually, it has to be paid.

Unfortunately, the cost of expanding our frontiers into space will sometimes be lives of those braver than we are.

Of course, now the naysayers are saying that manned space-flight is too dangerous, that we should abandon it. (Well, after they get the folks down from the space station, anyway. ^^;; ) That would be wrong; although costly in many ways, we wouldn't have advanced as far as we have if it wasn't for research for the space programs. (Tang, anyone? Velcro, perhaps? Oh, and of course, smaller and faster computers and microchips... ^_^ )

And I would also point to the past as proof that we shouldn't stop the shuttle program. If the risk to life and limb had prevented exploration of the seas centuries ago, we wouldn't be here now. IMO, the best memorial to the Columbia would be to build another one, stick a plaque on her commemorating the lives of the astronauts who were aboard when she made her fateful final flight, and continue to strive for the reaches of outer space.

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