The Space Shuttle Columbia
You've probably heard about it before now. What happened. The shuttle lost a piece of its wing during take-off. It was considered to be not a big deal by the engineers and the mission continued. Then the shuttle fell apart upon reentry, debris flying off onto Texas. Here's a breakdown of what happened on Spaceflight Now, for those who caught on late, like I did (start from the bottom--they've been tracking the shuttle from the beginning of the mission, so it was just their misfortune to be the ones to track the accident from the begining of the breakup in California).
This wasn't a terrorist attack, so don't get started. They were too high up for missles. Yeah, there was the first Israeli on board, but this was the engineers making a mistake, not a malicious act. How do I know it's the misjudgement of the engineers who gave the okay to the mission? Well, nevermind they were something like 200,000 feet up and going 17, 18 times the speed of sound. What missle could hit that? How could someone hoping to plant a bomb on board get past the heavy security of every mission? It didn't blow up, it fell apart. I've watched the tapes enough to see that.
I remember Challenger. A couple of days over seventeen years ago; January 28, 1986. I remember hearing about it in homeroom in middle school and going home and crying all night watching the tape over and over on the afternoon and evening news. I'd really thought they wouldn't let something like that happen again. (I'm numb today. I can't believe this actually happened this morning. Watching certain events on television is like that for me. Unreal.) Travelling to and from space is still very risky. But this horrible, horrible accident is still unexpected and somehow unbelievable. Hubris, I guess. I can't believe our scientists can't get past the danger of it, make it safer than driving. And now seven of the very brightest and strongest of humanity are gone.
The worst part is that this happened slowly. They were alive in that cockpit while the shuttle was breaking apart around them as a shooting star over Texas and they knew what was going to happen. What kind of hell that must have been. (Their pilot's name was Willie McCool. That is a very good name. Very Irish cowboy. The Entry Flight Director at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida is Leroy Cain, which strikes me as ironic, like the Palestine, Texas, thing. What Mr. Cain and the rest of Ground Control must be going through right now. My heart goes out to them when I see them on C-SPAN.)
More information:
-The New York Times coverage.
-Space.com, which followed the mission all the way through, as it does every mission.
-Time's photoessay.
-William Gibson's touching post.
-Post and following discussion on Patrick Nielsen Hayden's blog full of useful links and thoughts.
-Moby makes a good point about what we've lost.
-A copy of the poem former astronaut and moonwalker Buzz Aldrin read on NBC before breaking down in tears.
And here I was, planning what my Chinese New Year post was going to look like. For those of you celebrating, I hope you have a happy new year and lots of good food and lots of very fat little red envelopes. And that you didn't find out about this until well after the celebrations were over today.
This wasn't a terrorist attack, so don't get started. They were too high up for missles. Yeah, there was the first Israeli on board, but this was the engineers making a mistake, not a malicious act. How do I know it's the misjudgement of the engineers who gave the okay to the mission? Well, nevermind they were something like 200,000 feet up and going 17, 18 times the speed of sound. What missle could hit that? How could someone hoping to plant a bomb on board get past the heavy security of every mission? It didn't blow up, it fell apart. I've watched the tapes enough to see that.
I remember Challenger. A couple of days over seventeen years ago; January 28, 1986. I remember hearing about it in homeroom in middle school and going home and crying all night watching the tape over and over on the afternoon and evening news. I'd really thought they wouldn't let something like that happen again. (I'm numb today. I can't believe this actually happened this morning. Watching certain events on television is like that for me. Unreal.) Travelling to and from space is still very risky. But this horrible, horrible accident is still unexpected and somehow unbelievable. Hubris, I guess. I can't believe our scientists can't get past the danger of it, make it safer than driving. And now seven of the very brightest and strongest of humanity are gone.
The worst part is that this happened slowly. They were alive in that cockpit while the shuttle was breaking apart around them as a shooting star over Texas and they knew what was going to happen. What kind of hell that must have been. (Their pilot's name was Willie McCool. That is a very good name. Very Irish cowboy. The Entry Flight Director at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida is Leroy Cain, which strikes me as ironic, like the Palestine, Texas, thing. What Mr. Cain and the rest of Ground Control must be going through right now. My heart goes out to them when I see them on C-SPAN.)
More information:
-The New York Times coverage.
-Space.com, which followed the mission all the way through, as it does every mission.
-Time's photoessay.
-William Gibson's touching post.
-Post and following discussion on Patrick Nielsen Hayden's blog full of useful links and thoughts.
-Moby makes a good point about what we've lost.
-A copy of the poem former astronaut and moonwalker Buzz Aldrin read on NBC before breaking down in tears.
And here I was, planning what my Chinese New Year post was going to look like. For those of you celebrating, I hope you have a happy new year and lots of good food and lots of very fat little red envelopes. And that you didn't find out about this until well after the celebrations were over today.
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