Florida, two weeks ago
Feb. 2nd, 2003 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerTwo weeks ago yesterday I was at Kennedy Space Centre, standing in front of the Astronaut Memorial. In the background, the PA was broadcasting an audio feed from Columbia, launched only two days before. As I contemplated the names scattered across the granite slab I could not help but wonder when more would join them.
Little did I imagine how very soon.
Earlier that day, as we stood on the Launch Complex 39 viewing stand, admiring the twin launch pads, one of my colleagues had asked about Shuttle safety. I chatted a bit about the post-Challenger redesign, but noted that despite all NASA's efforts there were still hazardous elements to any flight. A realistic assesment of the Shuttle's reliability, I noted, was probably one failure in a hundred missions, and there had been about eighty-five since Challenger. I left him to draw his own conclusions from that.
But Columbia had launched successfully, had dodged all the bullets the safety engineers fret about, had emerged from the first four minutes of ascent where NASA discreetly admit that there is no realistic abort option. This one had got into orbit; from there it was just a case of coming back, and that had been done flawlessly on a hundred and eleven previous flights. No, Columbia would be OK.
I remember another day clearly: April 12th, 1981, watching Columbia take off on the first flight of the Shuttle programme. I was twelve years old, and the way to space was open.
I want to say more, but it's hard to know what to right now.
MC
Little did I imagine how very soon.
Earlier that day, as we stood on the Launch Complex 39 viewing stand, admiring the twin launch pads, one of my colleagues had asked about Shuttle safety. I chatted a bit about the post-Challenger redesign, but noted that despite all NASA's efforts there were still hazardous elements to any flight. A realistic assesment of the Shuttle's reliability, I noted, was probably one failure in a hundred missions, and there had been about eighty-five since Challenger. I left him to draw his own conclusions from that.
But Columbia had launched successfully, had dodged all the bullets the safety engineers fret about, had emerged from the first four minutes of ascent where NASA discreetly admit that there is no realistic abort option. This one had got into orbit; from there it was just a case of coming back, and that had been done flawlessly on a hundred and eleven previous flights. No, Columbia would be OK.
I remember another day clearly: April 12th, 1981, watching Columbia take off on the first flight of the Shuttle programme. I was twelve years old, and the way to space was open.
I want to say more, but it's hard to know what to right now.
MC
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
The way to space was open.
Date: 2003-02-02 10:19 pm (UTC)Or, as we might say, elected people with power and prejudices.
Re: The way to space was open.
Date: 2003-02-02 11:08 pm (UTC)Re: The way to space was open.
Date: 2003-02-04 12:28 am (UTC)April 1981
Date: 2003-02-03 05:54 am (UTC)I feel great sympathy for everyone who was close to the astronauts but -- perhaps shamefully -- it's the loss of Columbia that moves me most. It was the space shuttle as far as I was concerned, the symbol of the space programme for my (our) generation.
I remember Challenger far too well, beauty turning to horror, the story unfolding on the afternoon news just like the beginning and the end of Columbia. But now I have another mental image of a shuttle dying in the sky, heading this time in the other direction.
I can only articulate any of this because I'm writing it down. Two days on, I'm once again too choked up to speak.