FF:NZ News: Another Space Shuttle destroyed

The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry last night (NZ Time). It was the oldest of the Shuttles, but not the most used one.

 

7 Died. 3 are left in the space station that the shuttle was suppose to go back to get or something. Shuttle was doing about 7 time the speed of sound.


1 word: ouch.

And I guess if oxygen lasts - I'd be glad I stayed back in the space station.

 

RIP crew of the SS Columbia.

I'm always touched by that sense of unity which comes out in the face of a tragedy. The Palestinian government expressed public condolescenses this morning to Israel, for the loss of their countrymen.

 

I wouldn't go that far ... there's still lots of utter morons around saying "terrorism", "they must pay", "God teaching the US to stay out of Middle East", and other such complete garbage.

 

Well as Qui-Gon said 'your focus determines your reality'. You can focus on the "morons" or you can focus on the positive.

 

They have enought food to last till june in the space station and if it gets extreme they can use the escape pod to get back to earth

lets hope this accident dosent stop future plans for space flight/space stations

 

Na, it wont hinder the human race's exploration of the final fronteer. Why? Cause Bush says so.

But yea - enough oxygen, food abd water to last and another Russian "unmanned" rocket is about to deliver more supplies in a few days.

Sad day, but I guess these things much be expected to happen, when doing outragous things like building a space station. The Human race was hardly meant to fly - let alone travel in space.

 

> The Human race was hardly meant to fly - let alone travel in space.

Says who?

Anyway, yeah, very sad news, but, for me anyway, more sad about the setbacks in the space program. NASAs had somer MAJOR losses these last few years, mostly to very expensive satellites & interplanetary exploration vehicles.

People die daily, of course. 9 yesterday in a train crash in Sydney. 300 or so on our roads every year. Hundreds at a time in boating ferry and aeroplane disaters, thousands via disease, war and starvation.

Every loss of a human life is tragic. Not to take away from this incident, because I truly feel for the families, but is an Astronaut's death any more horrible than the death of a kid who gets run over by a car, or who starves to death in Ethiopia?

 

and my connection to all this ...

back in '91, as a "Top Gun" crazed teenager I was in the Air Training Corps. Our Squadron made a trip to the US in our Jubilee year, and visited a number of interesting aviation-related places, like NAS Miramar (home of the Top Gun school), Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, the Boeing Factory etc.

Anyway, when I was at Edwards' I met an F-15 pilot called Rick Husband. he was a really nice guy, and took a bit of time showing us around his fighter. He was working as a test pilot for the USAF and had recently applied for Astronaut training. When I got back to New Zealand I wrote to him to thank him, and he sent me an F-15 patch and a few other things. I wrote to him a few times since then, the last time just over a year or so ago. I always got a nice reply, and he always seemed like a really good, friendly guy.

This morning I found out he was the commander of the shuttle when went down today.

I can't pretend to have known him well, but I'll always apreciate the interest he showed in me, and the time he took to write back.

R.I.P.

 

Wow.

 

But the shuttles aren't exactly lfying everyday are they? The risk in going up there is far greater than the risk in other means of trsnsportation.
Which is not to belittle the deaths here on terra firma, just that you know the huge risk when you step on board as huttle.

I didn't realise there were three left up there. Will they be ferried back in one go? That's a lot of people to make room for on the trip up there. And imagine being stranded knowing what had happened...

 

Me: > The Human race was hardly meant to fly - let alone travel in space.

jp: Says who?

Says the text book of life. We've been given hands and feet. Not wings. We weren't meant to fly, and just because we have the knowledge to do so, doesn't make it right. i.e: Nuclear / Biological Weapons.

Small world STH. Sure, you hardly knew Mr Husband (don't know his rank) but I'm sure you'll still be a little more shocked than anyone else (apart from immediate relations and friends of course).

Yea, I'd be pretty nervous being left up there on the station, but hell, they all knew and know the risks involved, so why should they be more worried now. Pilots don't get more and more nervous and worried about flying when an engine failure happens on another plane in another country. These people left up there will have a different shuttle (definitely)... and hopefully it's heat absorbing panels wont fail, and they'll re-enter Earth's Atmosphere safely.

But perhaps, if there is a "god" or "higher being", this is a way of saying we *shouldn't* keep exploring. Maybe there's worse things out there than AIDS or Cancer. Who knows.

Personally, I want to know what's out there. Hell, I'm positive there's another Earth-type planet with life as advanced, if not more so, than us. And well, hopefully they're friendly.

 

One thing I've learnt in my 32 years on the face of this planet is:

That if humans can do it they will do it, and if they can't do it they'll find a way to do it.

All of our technology we humans use today can be directly attributed to WW2.

Computers were built to crack codes and to calculate tragectories for projectiles.

Jet aircraft.

Rockets and space travel was born from the German's V2 rocket programme (although the V2's never got off the ground in a striaght line) and the Americans "borrowed" the Nazi scientists after the war.

Nuclear power and weapons. The list goes on.

We were meant to fly. If there is a divine force then he/she/it wouldn't have let it happen at Kittyhawk.

Philisophical debates aside, I was very saddened to see and hear the news on Sunday morning. It's pretty hard to imagine what the families feel at the moment.

R.I.P.

 

> Says the text book of life. We've been given hands and feet. Not wings. We weren't meant to fly, and just because we have the knowledge to do so, doesn't make it right. i.e: Nuclear / Biological Weapons.

Where can I read this "text book of life"?
There are some things I'm dying to know...

I know what you're trying to say, but I 100% disagree with your take on Human life on Earth.

Where do you draw the line? Are we supposed to drive? Have electricity, write, build houses, shoot guns, go to school, travel to new countries...

Our brains are advanced enough to have us manipulate our environment to suit our needs. We are an inquisitive, exploratory, conquering species.

For me, the exploration of Space, if only limited physically to our Solar System via probes, and optically to the edge of the known universe via Hubble & radio receivers is the last great "unknown" where astounding discoveries occur regularly.

It's tragic lives were lost as part of the International Space Station project. The bigger tragedy would be if their deaths caused the cancellation of that programme. I doubt any of the 7 astronauts would have wanted that...

 

R.I.P.

 

a sad day indeed for space exploration.
personally I think its a pity that we only hear about space projects like this when something goes wrong. I suppose it comes down to what the media thinks is important for the general public to know.

I hope the space program isn't halted for too long, but then again I hope they also find out what went wrong.

 

Yea, I fully support exploration. That's one reason why I really enjoy StarGate SG1. Just the thought of travelling to other planets is mind boggling. And if we do find a way to invent "Hyperspace" or have worm tunnels to other places in "Space", I'm sure many many many problems (world population size, hunger, cure for diseases etc) would be fixed. But there's always some new thing that will be found that will help keep the population down as much as possible. The world was never meant to be this full. Only due to our discoveries and knowledge has the world become over-populated. And new diseases etc pop up as natures way of trying to keep us to a steady rate. It's not really working. You look at a graph of human population growth from way back (eg:

[image=http://www.ldolphin.org/poprecent.gif]

When we do discover new planets etc, great things we will find, as well as worse.

Anyhoo - getting a little side-tracked possibly.

Definitely the 7 crew members would want the space programmes to continue, and it will. What the families would be feeling right now, Roff, the same as any family that looses another family member suddenly.