Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of- wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up, up the long, delirious burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never Lark, or even Eagle flew - And while with silent lifting mind, I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
- John Gillespie Magee, Jr, 1922-1944*

I saw Seki’s site and I thought it was a memorial to the tragedy 17 years ago.

I went to TC’s site and he was talking about ‘both tragedies’.

Both? What the hell?

Debris all over eastern Texas, mostly Nacogdoches, being picked over by fucking scavengers looking for souvenirs. Police struggling to rope off the debris and people are just running off with it.

More sickening stuff, linked to from Dave: this isn’t the wrath of God. It wasn’t a damn conspiracy. Such idiotic thoughts should be discounted out of hand.

What’s going to happen to the space program? Well, we’ve got an international space station still hanging out there and those people need support (with just three functional shuttles left — Columbia was never supposed to meet with up the International Station — it’s too heavy for that task, optimally). My hope is that the simple need of the space station’s crew will force the other shuttle’s to keep flying, force everyone to get back on the horse.

That’s my hope. My prayers I’ll keep to myself for now.

(* - First posted at A Small Victory.)

Maybe the Russians can get them down. If not, I'm sure we'll pick the best remaining shuttle and send it up.

Yea, Columbia weighed too much to make it to the ISS orbit. United Space Alliance (Boeing and Lockmart) have wanted to buy it from NASA for a few years.

Recently NASA was talking about mothballing Columbia because it was so old and heavy. In recent years it's been assigned to Hubble and science missions.

ISS has an emergency capusle for the time being, but the Russians lack the funds to replace it when it's batteries die.

As for people that take pieces, they can't sell them, and since FEMA is running the show FEMA can take matters into thier own hands. FEMA isn't bound by any Constitutional limitations like burden of proof or execssive use of violence.

Anything taken by asses will be recovered, one way or another.

I'm going to throw this in.

America, the west, NAFTA, whatever needs to suck it up and keep pushing into space. If not for the thrill of adventure and discovery of the unknown, then to push technology. Materials Science gets a huge boost from the spending involved in aerospace. Defence, space, civil aviation all need the boosts that come from pushing foreward, and the extreme foreward is space because of the extremes involved.

If this ends manned space travel, then all the Americans, Soviets, Russians and (maybe) Chinese that died in the pursuit of space exploration will have been a waste.

Ironic

I ordered an IDF combat engineers badge for my ushanka a long-long time ago, March I think.

I'd forgotten about it completely.

It arrived today, about five minutes after I posted a piece about the IDF officer on Columbia.