The launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery this morning was an incredibly dramatic moment. And the picture- and technically- perfect launch was a joy to watch. But like a lot of other people, I imagine, I turned in to see if something would go wrong. Like watching an auto race in anticipation of one of the cars going out of control, shuttle watching has sadly been reduced to that. No one hopes for it to happen...everyone prays it doesn't.
We've become a fairly chickenshit race of people, unable to stomach the thought of loss of human life in the pursuit of progress. But there can be no exploration of space without that risk. Just as our forefathers (I can see some of you grimace and hit the web browser at this point...I promise this won't turn into a "when I was a kid, we had to walk 30 miles to school--IN THE SNOW--IN JUNE" type of thing) didn't stop at the Mississippi because someone died, we can't let the deaths of astronauts on the shuttle or any other mission stop us. I know NASA is screwed up, I know that the loss of even one life is totally unacceptable.
The previous shuttle disasters are memories that are etched in stone...we all know where we were when Challenger and Columbia went awry. None of us want to see it happen again. But it's all or nothing, and we can't hope to continue this without losing another--or many--lives.
Beyond all this, it's wonderful to see such a beautiful and perfect launch. CBS had a great graphics screen that showed a checklist of what was next, the speed, the duration of flight so far, the miles away from the Cape, etc., plus the ongoing live footage of the shuttle speeding away at, at one point, over 17,000 miles per hour. The view from the fuel tank camera was breathtaking. America is in space again. We never really left, with the International Space Station being there, but once again, we watched a launch, something years of perfect launches made us ignore and take for granted. Hopefully we all went away with what an incredible sight--and achievement--a shuttle launch is and always will be. It's never something to be taken for granted.
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