|
|
Today is a tragic day for the United States space program, as the Space Shuttle Columbia
disintegrated over the Texas sky. I found out about it fairly late, as I slept
in till about 2:30 and when I woke up I had about 3 IM's telling me it had
exploded and to turn on CNN. So needless to say I've been watching the news the
rest of the day. I missed Bush's
speech but caught the hour and a half long press conference on CNN.
There was also a ghostly radar image showing the trail of the shuttle over Texas.
Hopefully there will not be a huge delay in space flight like after
the Challenger explosion, and space travel can continue quickly once again.
There are still three people in the International Space Station that need to be
replaced eventually.
This tradegy has also reminded America that space flight is still incredibly
dangerous. It's amazing that such an complex machine doesn't fail more often,
and it's a mark of true engineering achievement that the space program has had
so few accidents, the last one being in 1986 with the Challenger explosion.
Space is still a frontier that is never truly routine.
Personally this is really saddening to me because I've always dreamed about
being an astronaut and these people are now martyrs for science. They died doing
what I would love to do, and they accepted the risks of space flight for
scientific progress.
As Gus Grissom said, shortly before he tragically died in the Apollo 1 fire, "If
we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that
if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space
is worth the risk of life."
|
