Farewell to the Columbia Seven

Posted on February 3, 2003

Americans are growing used to it. The ritual of grief and shock at yet another national tragedy: people standing around looking at television sets, spellbound by the horror unfolding before them. In a horrifying moment, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over North Texas, taking the lives of seven heroes and crushing the dreams of millions of humans who believe that one day man will reach another solar system, even another galaxy.

When Challenger exploded on liftoff in 1986, there was a sense that perhaps the shuttle wasn't safe or practical. Thousands of American schoolchildren watched in horror as teacher Christa McAuliffe's life came to an end. In 2003, our feelings about the shuttle had changed. It had become such an everyday occurrence that planned news coverage of the landing was minimal. Major anchors were all caught away from their posts that Saturday morning: CNN's Aaron Brown was in Palm Springs, California, playing in a Celebrity Golf Tournament, Tom Brokaw was vacationing in the Virgin Islands. Many newsrooms are preparing for round the clock coverage of the impending war in Iraq and most anchors were getting in their vacation days before the real news marathon started. In fact, space travel via the space shuttle has become so commonplace that we've even had space tourists -- people willing to pay $20 million to Russia in order to experience the wonder of seeing the Earth from the International Space Station.

But this tragedy has brought home to us how very dangerous space travel is. NASA's budgets have been cut repeatedly over the years, thereby stifling innovation, and reducing the manpower available to perform needed safety upgrades. The design for escape pods was another program which was halted because of budget cuts, for example.

As the family of the crew reminded us on national television, the astronauts took the risks they did in order to further the advance of science and to pave the way for improvements in the human condition. It is fitting that we take a moment to consider these real heroes and the cause that they felt was important enough to risk their lives for. As Stephen Hawking has said, in order for humanity to survive in the long run, we must reach outward to the stars. It is now time that we took that goal seriously, and give the space program the attention, support and funding that it deserves.