Challenger...go at throttle up.
Feb. 2nd, 2003 04:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariI went to bed last "night" at 7AM. And slept like a baby. I woke up, downloaded some maps, cleaned up the house, watched the bird feeder, watched an old public access program I'd recorded, drew three panel of Monday's AWFW....
It's amazing what one misses when you're don't have cable, or a TV that can pick up anything....
I logged onto the Internet at 10pm, went onto alt.fan.art-bell for my nightly usenet fix, and found some posts about a guy who predicted the Space Shuttle Disaster. He was a little late...that was 1986. I kept reading, and then read something about human remains being found in East Texas. After 17 years?!
And then I began to think...did the Columbia have an accident? Couldn't be...it was supposed to land today.
And then I hit CNN.COM.
And then I hit CBSNEWS.COM.
And then I hit MSNBC.COM
And then I hit DRUDGEREPORT.COM
The Columbia disintegrated some one hundred miles north of here, spewing debris all over East Texas, mostly in Nacogdoches. Strangely enough, I was using some new maps I'd downloaded to trace old routes from Nacogdoches to Austin and San Antonio. I'd spenthours meticulously looking over maps of Nacogdoches while FBI and NASA agnets were combing the area for debris.
My thoughts on today's tragedy are the same as they were in 1986, where, at the tender age of 12, I watched the Challenger explode:
We need to launch another shuttle.
We have a shuttle mission planned for March 1st. We need to launch it. Do a good safety check of it, meticulous check...but launch it. The Challenger Disaster grounded the American space program 2 years, nearly bankrupted NASA, soured the agency to Congress so that their budget gets slashed every year. The two year shutdown of NASA nearly killed it. As it is, it was only just NOW beginning to pick up the pace.
The loss of life, while sad, is a known factor in space flight. You're flying a bomb into space, and gliding a train back home. In between you're fighting to keep the vacuum of space and your own internal air pressure from either crushing you like a piece of tinfoil, or turning you into a human baloon. It ain't pretty no matter how you look at it. In 40 years of space flight, we've had 4 major accidents. One every ten years. That's a WONDERFUL track record. Considering what we're doing, it's amazing we haven't lost more. It's part of the equation - launch another shuttle.
For the last few years, I've heard way too many rumblings from Washington about shelving the Space Program completely until we fix our problems at home. Sometimes it's just "Shut it down, we don't need it." And now with the 9/11 attack throwing us into depression, the looming War for Oil knocking our legs out from under us and this, I'm afraid we'll have a knee-jerk reaction and dump the program.
We need to bury our dead, and move forward.
We need to launch another shuttle.
It's amazing what one misses when you're don't have cable, or a TV that can pick up anything....
I logged onto the Internet at 10pm, went onto alt.fan.art-bell for my nightly usenet fix, and found some posts about a guy who predicted the Space Shuttle Disaster. He was a little late...that was 1986. I kept reading, and then read something about human remains being found in East Texas. After 17 years?!
And then I began to think...did the Columbia have an accident? Couldn't be...it was supposed to land today.
And then I hit CNN.COM.
And then I hit CBSNEWS.COM.
And then I hit MSNBC.COM
And then I hit DRUDGEREPORT.COM
The Columbia disintegrated some one hundred miles north of here, spewing debris all over East Texas, mostly in Nacogdoches. Strangely enough, I was using some new maps I'd downloaded to trace old routes from Nacogdoches to Austin and San Antonio. I'd spenthours meticulously looking over maps of Nacogdoches while FBI and NASA agnets were combing the area for debris.
My thoughts on today's tragedy are the same as they were in 1986, where, at the tender age of 12, I watched the Challenger explode:
We need to launch another shuttle.
We have a shuttle mission planned for March 1st. We need to launch it. Do a good safety check of it, meticulous check...but launch it. The Challenger Disaster grounded the American space program 2 years, nearly bankrupted NASA, soured the agency to Congress so that their budget gets slashed every year. The two year shutdown of NASA nearly killed it. As it is, it was only just NOW beginning to pick up the pace.
The loss of life, while sad, is a known factor in space flight. You're flying a bomb into space, and gliding a train back home. In between you're fighting to keep the vacuum of space and your own internal air pressure from either crushing you like a piece of tinfoil, or turning you into a human baloon. It ain't pretty no matter how you look at it. In 40 years of space flight, we've had 4 major accidents. One every ten years. That's a WONDERFUL track record. Considering what we're doing, it's amazing we haven't lost more. It's part of the equation - launch another shuttle.
For the last few years, I've heard way too many rumblings from Washington about shelving the Space Program completely until we fix our problems at home. Sometimes it's just "Shut it down, we don't need it." And now with the 9/11 attack throwing us into depression, the looming War for Oil knocking our legs out from under us and this, I'm afraid we'll have a knee-jerk reaction and dump the program.
We need to bury our dead, and move forward.
We need to launch another shuttle.
