Discovery Lost
Seven heros, lost.
I turned on the TV to watch cartoons this morning and was presented with tragedy. Just like the Challenger 17 years ago, they played the footage over and over again until the horror of it was so burned into my head that I’ll never forget it. The last generation had the JFK shooting, mine has Challenger and now Discovery. I grieve, along with the rest of the country, for the seven heroic lives lost.
But, I grieve for the space program and the setbacks they will now encounter due to this horrible accident. How many missions will be scrubbed? How many new technologies will not see the light of day? How many delays will there be in the already lean experiemental NASA portfolio? Seven lives are gone, but much more will be lost as a result. I mourn for it all.
But, life must go on. I hope that they find out what went wrong quickly and minimize the delays for the rest of the space program. I hope that budgets don’t get cut more than they have been. I hope that we still reach towards the stars.
Ad astra, per aspera.
