 Requiem for the Space Shuttle
UNITED NATIONS Ñ Routine breeds disregard, and routine greatness oft encourages total complacency. So when the Space Shuttle Columbia was in the final hour of its sixteen day, six million mile journey, the only notice most earthlings took was that it was returning Ñ until that frightful moment when mission control lost radio contact on re-entry, and suddenly the specter of fate confronted our consciousness. The imagery of ChallengerÕs tragic demise, jumped into our collective consciousness. America was again soon to be grieving.
While the Wall St. Journal recalled the ill-fated mission as ÒHail, Columbia,Ó and
The Economist editorially dubbed the astronauts ÒThe Magnificent Seven,Ó what Tom WolfeÕs book would call ÒThe Right StuffÓ Ñ pilots, scientists, and adventurers all, they possessed the rare breed of talent, spunk, and audacity which has typically characterized NASA astronauts.
Having grown up in an era when the Russian Sputnik stunned us out of scientific complacency (I saw it in a starry New Hampshire sky), when Project Mercury put Alan B. Shepard as the first American in space and John Glenn circled the earth, I proudly recall these events from a generation ago. The high point of course, was the Apollo Lunar Landing in July 1969. But by the time we reached the Moon, space travel had become routine and past prime time on TV.
Still, NASA to me was always that golden boy government agency that always had the right stuff, but was probably light years ahead in PR too. JFK challenged America to shoot for the stars, and successive Administrations kept the promise. Now despite accusations to the contrary, NASA remains well-funded at $7 billion annually but certainly has lost some of its old cachet and perhaps focus.
Space travel and exploration has been taken for granted for nearly a generation now Ñ even before the 1986 Challenger tragedy which brought searingly poignant images and gruesome reality to viewers what was already painfully obvious to the astronaut community; that risk remains part of the package as much as does the reward. The fact that both shuttle disasters were on live TV Ñ ChallengerÕs liftoff explosion--and ColumbiaÕs fiery no less shocking re-entry, the wall to wall media coverage brought a somber reality check to Americans.
Ron Dittemore, NASAÕs Shuttle Program Director described his work as Òmore than a job, but a passion.Ó Such was a passion the astronauts embraced with vigor.
The fallen astronauts, Shuttle Commander Rick Husband, William McCool, and specialists Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark , and Illan Ramon each possessed that special quality so aptly described in Tom WolfeÕs saga, The Right Stuff. For Ramon, a decorated Israeli fighter pilot, seeing the Holy Land from the heavens, must have had a special meaning.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, commenting on the tragedy added, ÒBecause the exploration of space knows no national boundaries, the loss of the Columbia is a loss to all humankind.Ó
The frontiers of science Ñ passionately probed by the seven explorers on the ill-starred STS- 107 mission included eighty experiments in medicine, biology, physics for both government and private industry. Now the morbid task, no less important, is to pick up ColumbiaÕs pieces scattered over Texas and to reconstruct the shuttleÕs tragic final minutes so as to discover the true cause of the accident.
President George W. Bush assured us, ÒThe American space program must go onÉExploration is not an option we choose, it is a desire written in the human heart.Ó
ColumbiaÕs final signature will be the strange white contrails over the azure blue Texas morning sky, the comet streak from the stricken shuttle. The Space Shuttle will fly again but without the oldest ship in the fleet. That ColumbiaÕs spirit rests with the stars and her crew in the heavens, is assured. For men on earth to look again to the heavens and prepare other missions now becomes the challenge.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
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