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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
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Saturday, February 1, 2003
08:03 - Well...
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/01/shuttle.columbia/index.html

(top) link
Another one of "those days" for NASA. The kind of day that changes the course of the space effort-- and at least for a long time, not for the better. Unless we can use this as a reminder of the importance of properly supporting the space program at the ideological as well as the financial level, the whole idea of a space "shuttle"-- an unsexy, utilitarian mode of space travel, a space bus-- is going to be at odds with any desire to afford it the appropriate attention to prevent accidents like this.

The big question is going to be "Well, Ilan Ramon, the Israeli, was on board. Was there any terrorism-related sabotage?"

Nobody's making that claim yet; nobody's saying word one in that direction. They're explicitly denying it over and over. And that's all to the good; the circumstances (the point at which the accident occurred, after all the mission objectives had been completed; the "debris hit wing on launch" thing; and the fact that the breakup happened at the single most dangerous place in any given space flight) are such that sabotage just isn't an issue.

However... I dare anybody to dance in the streets over this.

We'll just see.

Contextual oddity: Just last night, I was watching the MST3K of 12 To the Moon, a 50s B-film about a moon shot where twelve of the World's Finest Ethnically Diverse Scientists banded together to symbolize Earth's unity in spaaaace. Now, the plot points themselves were laughable, but there was a subplot involving an Israeli scientist and a German whose father was a Nazi higher-up. The two nearly came to blows a number of times, but eventually had to reconcile and give their lives together in a maneuver to save the Earth. Clumsy writing, but a nice sentiment-- and one you probably won't see in movies made today.

(On top of that, the French astronaut turned traitor and tried to get the German to join with him and condemn the North American continent to being frozen by the Moon people, so the old European powers could have their glory back. The German refused and the American helped subdue him. Wait, when was this movie made?


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