[meteorite-list] Columbia disaster

From: Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:18:24 2004
Message-ID: <006401c2ca34$76530e60$3a394451_at_HAL>

Dear all,

Maybe it is of -topic, but then, so be it. I, as several other list members
already posting on the subject, am sad of what happened just a few hours
ago, and want to express that sadness.

Coming out of our faculty building and redelivering the keys to the guard in
the main building this afternoon, I was informed of the new tragic disaster
with space shuttle Columbia. At the guards' desk, I watched tv for a
moment, showing video footage of a fragmenting fireball. A thought struck
me, and perhaps some of you on this list experienced the same: I realized
that normally, such footage of a fragmenting fireball would make me, and all
of you, wildly enthousiast. Had it just been a meteoric fireball.....
But not this time. This time, it was not a space rock being deliverd to
earth, but seven people meeting their death up there. This was the first
sickening, instead of exciting, fireball video.

Two tragic accidents in about 20 years of space shuttle flying perhaps is
not much, and almost every month there's a plane crash somewhere which has
more death involved, and the grimm reality is that we got used to that and
usually hardly think it over. Yet, somehow, that realization does not
diminish my feeling that this new space shuttle disaster is something with
an extremely tragic aspect. Of course, it isn't different, as a plane crash
is as tragic as a shuttle explosion. Still this new shuttle disaster makes
me unusually sad and mournfull. My thoughts are with all people affected;
the astronauts' family, friends, and the people of the space shuttle
programm.

In answer to Mark Fox: should manned space exploration stop? I don't think
so. It is inevitable that there will be victims from time to time. It has
always been part of our human urge for exploration; it is not peculiar to
space exploration as such. It has always been part of life that people die,
sometimes too early, sometimes very tragic; it has always been part of life
that people die when trying to reach a particular goal they set themselves.
I think the best tribute to those who died, is to continue the effort for
which they gave their lifes. Otherwise, their death really would have been
unneccesary. Stopping manned space flight, would mean they died in vain.
That is my opinion.

- Marco

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Drs Marco Langbroek

marco.langbroek_at_wanadoo.nl
meteorites_at_dmsweb.org
http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek

"What seest thou else
 In the dark backward and abysm of time?"

                            William Shakespeare
                            The Tempest act I scene 2
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Received on Sat 01 Feb 2003 03:56:18 PM PST