I reflect on the space shuttle tragedy today.
I watched Columbia "slip the bonds of earth" early in my formative years in school. I remember the Challenger tragedy the way a different generation remembers the Kennedy assasination. The launch mishap is burned into my mind in the same way the Sept. 11 events have.
Still space flight is dangerous business. We can't gaurantee that any plane will get from location a to b on a given day. How can we be sure that the shuttle will make it to space and back 100 times without injury. I expect the manned travel to space requires injury. It's amazing that it ever works.
Although, no consolation to loved ones, I am sure that astronauts would rather die doing the thing they love than any other way. Maybe ... maybe not.
I hope that this is not another case of contractor/NASA incompetence like the Challenger explosion. I'm really not sure that the pieces that have fallen to earth will allow for a genuine answer to why this happened.
High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space...
...put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
