Saturday, February 01, 2003

This is an interesting article ... people in California were seeing material coming off of the orbiter as it passed over. 7:18:03 PM

Isn't this special ....The Iraqis call the disaster God's judgement. It's amazing that people can rejoice in a tragedy such as this. 7:11:50 PM

If you know me, you know that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was growing up. Back in the days when I would wake up at 4 am on the West Coast to watch Gemini and Apollo launches, it was generally accepted that the astronauts were taking risks, especially after the fire on Apollo 1. As everyone has been saying, we tend to treat the Shuttle system like a UPS truck - of course it will return safely. These people that died today gave their lives doing cutting edge pioneering on the frontiers of space, and like many pioneers before them, paid the ultimate price for the things we learn when we push the envelope. The main thing I hate to see will be the questions that the Luddites will raise questioning why we are in space in the first place - "Why spend all of this money putting people in danger when we could spend that money reducing human suffering?" and so forth. If we stop reaching out into the unknown, a part of us dies. We will always have human problems here on earth - from what I understand, Health and Human Services spends the equivalent of the annual NASA budget in a matter of days. 6:28:12 PM

This is a weather radar image that shows the debris shower from the breakup of the orbiter Columbia. 6:11:55 PM

A good discussion of the risks. We've got to remember that anytime you move something through the air at mach 18, you've got a risk of problems. 6:07:02 PM

Lots of data, but no clear answers... 6:03:59 PM

A tragic day for the United States and its space program. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the crew of STS-107. 3:38:54 PM