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· General/DDJ office
#Background Muzak?
5 messages in this thread
I'm surprised that you didn't find the shuttle explosion to be a disaster,
and that you're willing to write it off as a military exercise that went
afoul. I can't get over in my mind the joy I saw in the faces of each of
the astronauts as they prepared for the flight, particularly the ones who'd
flown before and who wanted just to be able to fly in space again. I simply
don't buy that they were military flunkies, motivated out of a desire to
implement Star Wars or any other military objective. Certainly they may
have been used by the military or by Reagan for these purposes, but I doubt
that any one of them was any less than thrilled at the prospect of flying
through space for the pure adventure value and excitement; certainly
Chrissie McCauliffe wasn't in it for any other reason than perhaps the
sense of taking part in history.
I'm also surprised that a writer would fail to appreciate the symbolism
inherent in such an event. You may call it a distorted sense of priorities
in light of more significant numbers of deaths in other, daily, contexts,
but that misses the point entirely. The assasinations of President Kennedy
and John Lennon are striking examples of other moments in world history
when the single death of one man caused the world to pause, even as
thousands were dying elsewhere. This is not a perspective problem, it's a
human condition. While the death of Kennedy represented to many the quiet
smothering of a fresh new hope for change in the way things were (realistic
or not), and the death of Lennon represented to many others a very real
passing of youth, the Challenger disaster caught me offguard in much the
same way, and hurt me in a way that took me a long time to understand. I'm
still not sure why I (or the rest of the world) was so affected; perhaps it
had to do with the bitter irony of Christine's participation; maybe it was
sight of her skeptical mother on television; maybe it was the confirmation
that all things we take for granted can, under the right circumstances,
kill us very dead. Whatever it was, it was a disaster worthy of the
attention it merited (and still does).
What I found most painful was the child of one of the astronauts crying
"Daddy, you promised you'd never get hurt". Contrary to Allen's statement,
only two of the crew could possibly be viewed as test pilots. I don't feel
that the Challenger explosion was blown out of perspective at all. It has
implications, both politically and technologically, that will be felt for
many years (unlike the average car crash). And to me, having had a
somewhat peripheral involvement in a shuttle mission, participating in the
SIR-B experiment as a subcontractor and sitting in Houston watching the
monitors every day for an entire flight: all of the crew of any shuttle
flight qualify as modern day adventurers and heroes, if anyone does.
That's one of the major reasons to keep on in space. If the politicians,
bureaucrats and bean counters had their way, we'd never have stayed in space at
all. We NEED a space station and a lunar colony setup, if for no other reason
than the industrial advances and resources to be exploited. The fact that many
idiots want to see a guaranteed return in five years is indicative of the
cultural slump we're in. The only way you'd see a guaranteed return is if you
poured in about $50 billion into the two projects I mentioned and made them
mostly private industry invements.
That's one of the major reasons to keep on in space. If the politicians,
bureaucrats and bean counters had their way, we'd never have stayed in space at
all. We NEED a space station and a lunar colony setup, if for no other reason
than the industrial advances and resources to be exploited. The fact that many
idiots want to see a guaranteed return in five years is indicative of the
cultural slump we're in. The only way you'd see a guaranteed return is if you
poured in about $50 billion into the two projects I mentioned and made them
mostly private industry invements.
What I found most painful was the child of one of the astronauts crying
"Daddy, you promised you'd never get hurt". Contrary to Allen's statement,
only two of the crew could possibly be viewed as test pilots. I don't feel
that the Challenger explosion was blown out of perspective at all. It has
implications, both politically and technologically, that will be felt for
many years (unlike the average car crash). And to me, having had a
somewhat peripheral involvement in a shuttle mission, participating in the
SIR-B experiment as a subcontractor and sitting in Houston watching the
monitors every day for an entire flight: all of the crew of any shuttle
flight qualify as modern day adventurers and heroes, if anyone does.