Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckety
fuck.
.
.
.
As you will know
by now, the Space Shuttle Columbia has exploded. There are few things that could
possibly happen in the public world that would upset me more than the explosion of
a manned spacecraft -- it's much more personal when you've spent some years
working on the Space Shuttle and Space Station programs. I'm left with no more
graceful or creative way to express my feelings at the moment than a succession of
repeated expletives.
I didn't even know about until about three hours
after it happened, because I'd gone out for a massage and hadn't been watching TV
and hadn't listened to the radio in the car. Somehow, it seems impossible that
it's possible not to know, as if the news should somehow filter through the
air or beam out to every mind. My first reaction when I walked in the door and was
told the news by Rudder was an unimaginative but heartfelt "Fuuu-u-
uck!"
I've been half-expecting something dire to happen because of
the presence of an Israeli astronaut, coupled with the situation of the world just
now. They're saying that it can't possibly be due to terrorism because nothing
could get to the Shuttle at the altitude and speed at which it was moving, but it
seems obvious to me that if you were going to do such a thing the way to do it
would be to sneak a timed explosive system in before takeoff, or more simply, to
somehow introduce flaws in the heat-shield tiles.
I can't make up my
mind whether it would be worse if this is due to terrorism or just to a mistake by
NASA. Either way, I expect I'll be remembering this morning in the same mental
file as the Challenger explosion. There is no good time for this sort of disaster
to occur, but this is almost the worst time for it -- the most high profile flight
we've had lately, with more contact with schoolchildren than most flights. The
only way it could have been worse would be if this had been the flight to
reinstititute the Teacher in Space program.
Incidentally, the Shuttle
Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. Apollo 1 burned on the lunch pad on
January 27, 1967, killing three astronauts including Gus Grissom, who had flown on
only the second US space flight ever. NASA has been observing a moment of silence
on January 28; that should be a national observance now. Go read
href="http://outrage.diaryland.com/shutl030201.html">Outrage and
href="http://mousepoet.diaryland.com/030201_30.html">Mousepoet; they've
marshalled their words better than I have.