Sad day for the Space shuttle & Crew

[Darkmiss]

very sad indeed to hear the loss of the Space Shuttle
and all of its crew

what a setback for space flight too

[jordi]

Al-Qaeda culpable... no hay duda con un judio en la tripulaci?n.

[Rassilon]

If you think about it with the tragedies of the airlines and everyday traffic...spaceflight still seems to be as safe as ever...Humans arent perfect and mistakes will happen....I just hope this wont be a situation that could have been avoided...that will damage the program...

[Stargazer_2098]

This is a sad day indeed.

The future of NASA and manned space-operations in this decade and beyond is now in serious jepordy.
The crew of ISS is likely to abandon the station and return in the Souyz capsule, since the space-shuttle fleet is likely to be grounded for years.

Project Prometeus may be canceled or put on ice, a manned mission to Mars will be totally out of the question for the next 30 years or so.

Most tragic of all, where the loss of 7 human lifes. I just hope their death will not be in vain.
My condolences to the families and to NASA on this tragic loss.


The cause of this accident can have been several things, maybe the shuttle came in at a slightly wrong angle, or maybe the heat-shield failed for some reason, or maybe there was a software glitch.

Terrorism, or any ground-interference of this event is out of the question; the shuttle was too high up in the air, and it was moving way to fast.

Significant debri-fields has been found all over Texas, people are adviced not to touch this debry, since it is loaded with dangerous chemicals.


This is a sad day indeed.

.

Stargazer.

[Mad Boris]

It is indeed a terrible tradgedy, but I doubt that manned space flight is in serious jeopardy. As Bush said "Our journey into space will continue" (or words to that effect. The Shuttle is the workhorse of the US space programme - too much is invested it to cancel it.

A manned mission to Mars never really seemed to be on the table for at least 30 years anyway. The ISS programme will certainly be delayed at the very least, but it's impossible to say exactly how. People are already talking about getting the shuttle back in space in a matter of months rather than years, as for Challenger. We'll just have to wait and see.

What is project Prometheus anyway ?

I remain optimistic that manned spaceflight will continue to develop. Though accidents are tragic, rockets are inherently dangerous and a perfect saftey record may simply be impossible. The astronauts accepted the risks, and will always have to accept some danger element. Even in the wake of this disaster, I'd still be willing to go into space.

Nonetheless, the most important thing for NASA to do right now is gather all information on the disaster that they can, and do everything humanly possible to prevent it from happening again. Abandoning the manned space programme would be a betrayal of the lives of the seven astronauts.

As Stargazer said, there's no real possibility of terrorism, though we must simply wait for NASA to uncover the real problem.

My symathies and condolences to everyone involved with the Shuttle, especially the astronaut's familes.

[brunetto_64]

I am very sad for what has happened to the space shuttle and to his crew…and their families
It didn't want again us this to the nasa…
I still remember me the ‘86 accident and now…



Bruno

[ogg]

It is for the families of the fallen to mourn their passing. We who knew them not have only our sympathy to share. But there's a more personal sense of grief here that goes beyond the brave lives lost, because I find myself grieving for the machine also, and I don't feel particularly guilty about this. She wasn't human but she loyally bore so many of us aloft to see our world from above: *the* Space Shuttle, the first of her kind, an icon of our age and of the wonders we yet frail beings can still create. When she first flew it had only been 20 years since Vostok 1 carried the first of us to space, yet this year she would've been 22 years old. Now the grand old lady of space is no more, and I for one will miss her. Here's to Columbia.


http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020308.html

[Thilo]

My condolences go out to the thousands of people including children dying since the space shuttle event in africa of hunger, dying on indias street .. dying of aids, dying because they do not have water, because totalitarian regimes cut off food supply...

This space shuttle crew are peanuts.
It really pisses me off that those few people of the crew are getting mourned over and literally ten thousands of people die an unnatural death each day in 3rd world countries... if you'd stop canting and spend at least a bit of money to help organizations like medicins sans frontieres you would help the humanity a great deal more than crying around.

Sorry, this had to be said.

[ogg]

This space shuttle crew are peanuts.
It really pisses me off that those few people of the crew are getting mourned over and literally ten thousands of people die an unnatural death each day in 3rd world countries... if you'd stop canting and spend at least a bit of money to help organizations like medicins sans frontieres you would help the humanity a great deal more than crying around.

Sorry, this had to be said.

well... did it? I agree about keeping it in perspective, but did you actually poll the people in this thread to see if they cared about the starving millions as well? Or did you just assume that everyone else is just much less moral then yourself? Anyway, people aren't perfect utilitarians and if you tried caring about everyone and everything equally you'd either go mad or dilute yourself down to not caring about anything. So what if something like this grabs attention and sympathy? Get off the high horse.

[Thilo]

Or did you just assume that everyone else is just much less moral then yourself?

I agree with you, that on some point you cannot care about these millions of people who die in the third world countries. But as soon as that happens, and if you don't actively help with money and sit on the millions of a nice society and food in overflow it is inconsequent if you mourn the loss of 10 people who had the choice to take the risks of dying or not (they knew they might die) is the inmoral thing. I am not thinking about these 3rd world people anymore, you are exactly right, but the consequence for me is not to speak out these words of condolence to these 10 people, for i do not know these people personally. Do I have to feign any feelings to get accepted in society? This is what i am speaking up against. The condolences at the top were thought as a balance against the crew. Yes, I pity that the space programme had a major setback, I do not like it either, and I would rather have the space shuttle crew alive if it was my choice. But i personally cannot pretend to be deeply moved by these events and in 2 weeks forget about it and continue my life just like 3 days ago. This is a thing pushed up by media ...

[Rassilon]

Needless death and suffering is sad no matter the circumstances...When it happens its presented in its own way and its own time to be morned...We cannot go each day mourning the loss of loved ones...we muct continue in that spirit to honor them by remembering them in life and not death...Sure its easier to cry over someone close to you vs someone in Africa you dont know and no it doesnt make the death any less of a loss...But remember that we all need to look to life and its continuation...not wallow in dispair...because if we were to morn all death...there would never be happiness on this planet...

I suppose it would be easier for some to realise that death is not the end...With that concept then the sadness would only be for those close to us and how they will be missed...Pain is sad and so is suffering...but with the idea that there is a end to all suffering makes it easier for us to hope for a brighter future...When of course we start looking at the real issue for alot of suffering in the world...that is for each of you to see and not me to show it to you...I really wish more WOULD believe death is not the end but a metamorphasis into a higher state of being...then arguements like that would be mute

Lets all remember were alive and we can each make a difference while being here on this plane of existance...peace

[Don. Edwards]

ogg,
Your way off here.
#1. The space-shuttle Enterprise was the first of her kind. She is/was the prototype and was built in 1974/75. Unfortunatly she never made it to orbit. She is now in a museum. The Smithsonian I think.
#2. The space-shuttle Colombia is more than 22 years old. She was launched for the first time in 1982 but she languished on the ground for at least 4 years before she saw flight. So I think she was built in 1978. That puts her 3 to 4 years younger than the Enterprise. I was in sixth grade when they did the first flight tests of the Enterprise off the back of the 747 so I think I have a pretty good recolection of what went on. So that would make the grand lady almost 26 years old. If you stop to think about that its about the age when most airplanes are seeing retirement. She may have built like a truck but she was still basicly a plane without flight engines and she went through alot of streses and strains when it came to launching. The Colombia was also the most trouble plauged shuttle of the fleet.
I was at work when the maintanence crew came in to lower the flags to half mass in memory. I asked why they were lowering the flags and they told me a shuttle went down. The first thing I said to the guy was It was Colombia wasn't it. He thought I had been lisening to the radio but we are not aloud to have radios at work so my guess was right, sadly. I am just sorry that 7 people had to loose there lives.
Well I wonder how much Russia want for there shuttle Braun.

And as for coments about the third world.
I am sick of hearing about how bad its been for these people. If they would stop having babies and start taking responsibility for there overpopulation then they wouldn't be having the problems they are having. Why should the leading nations of the world be heald accountable for the care and feeding of these people. I am tired of all the bleeding hearts out there that want to feed everyone and to heal every disease. I hate to say it but we need diseases to keep the human population in check. Stop to think would happen if every disease was cured. Nobody would die eccept of old age. Then you would see a very overpopulated world. Its all checks and balances.
Its time for us as a nation and as a planet to put our resorces into getting our buts off this planet and start to cololize the other worlds of our solar system. If we don't, we are all doomed to the fate of the dinasaurs. We as humans have the ability to better ourselves and to learn from our mistakes and to control our environments. The dinasaurs couldn't do that so they were replaced. If we don't get a move on, we arn't going to around much longer to learn anything more or to pass on what we have learned. I for one feel the world needs a new goal. I see space travel and colonizing other worlds as the best posible goal for us as a people. Sure some will get left behind. But that is the way of evolution and the price that must be paid. If we want to evolve past our present state we need to go forward and not to look back. Nature always moves forward and we must do the same.
Well I will get off my soap box now. Enough preaching from me. I hope you all give just a little thought to what I said. Then again you can completly ignore it. The choice is always yours.


P.S.
Has enyone bothered to think about the fact that all of the US space program tragities all happened within a one week period of each other. Apolo 1 fire in January 28, 1967. Shuttle Chalenger January 26, 1986. Shuttle Colombia February 1, 2003. Now that will make you give pause and make you think.

[Matt McIrvin]

While this is a sad time for everyone involved and a terrible blow to NASA, I don't think that it will kill manned spaceflight. The writing was on the wall in any event: the shuttle program was going to have to wind down in the near future, Columbia was on the verge of being mothballed, and the future of NASA manned spaceflight and the ISS were already very uncertain for a variety of reasons. Many plans were already under discussion (and heated debate) for how we move forward from here, and whether the space program was headed in the right direction; yesterday's tragedy will only hasten the process. And while the reliability of manned spacecraft needs to be improved, any program that absolutely depends on maintaining an accident-free record is not really viable in the first place.

People will go back into space. It might not work out the way NASA had planned previously, but this has a way of happening to long-term plans for risky ventures.



About the supposed immorality of mourning for the astronauts when so many suffer in the world:

By that logic, you shouldn't do nice things for your family members while kids are starving in Africa; you shouldn't help your sister through her financial problems if she's far richer than somebody in Bangladesh; you shouldn't pet your cat while somebody else dies of AIDS. That way lies madness. While the impulse to absolute fairness is admirable, it simply isn't possible for humans to spread their emotions thinly over the whole world like butter.

It is good and important to help the suffering everywhere, through our cash and efforts, and to note their problems. Glenn Reynolds posted a nice note yesterday on his weblog about a horrible train crash in Zimbabwe (a nation already suffering under famines and bloodshed induced by a cruel, lunatic government) that happened at about the same time as the shuttle accident, and killed more people. But it's OK to show extra concern for those who are emotionally near to you; that's how people actually do good most of the time.

And to the sort of people who are likely to post on this board, the brave women and men who risk their lives to travel in space are special to us, even if we don't know them personally.

[Thilo]

Matt: no, after this logic you shouldn't cry around in the first place. I have seen people on other boards literally "crying" and saying they were, this is the madness that i dislike.
You can say: pity for human space faring, but making the astronauts to martyres is an exaggeration. They knew which risks they would take, and they had the choice whether to take these risks or not.

[Paul]

Thilo,

How many people have helped fly a Space Shuttle mission?
Of course there are ordinary people like us who are suffering and die every day. We mourn specifically for the crew of Columbia here today because their role in human civilisation was special.

[ogg]

ok here goes...

Thilo:
I think we're in agreement. I agree completely that the media are completely sappy about the 'human cost' angle. It gets completely blown out of proportion both by advocates and critics of the space program. Critics for example will insist that this shows that the space program is 'too dangerous'. Trying to bring up a family in the South Sudan warzone: now *that's* too dangerous. I must say though that I have a kind of remorse here for the crew that doesn't have to do with them being people. They were also office-holders for an office that I think is kindof cool, ie 'astronaut' and died in the execution of that office. So you'll excuse me if I don't completely agree with you equating all rational concern down to a calculus of misery generated or avoided. Mother Theresa's death for example was more significant than the average because of who she was and what she did, not just she might have had more life left in her or could have helped more people. All sorts of things can matter, not just people and their wellbeing. I get into arguments about this all the time, but I really don't see why people are the be-all and end-all of morality. Do we really want to say that science and the environment and things like that are only valuable because they're useful for people? This is getting down to basic philosophical/ethical axioms though... I'll stop here before I get too boring.


Don:
You took issue with the details in my sappy eulogy-for-an-inanimate-object (ie saying I was 'way off') and I was surprised by some of what you said, though some points were taken. Here's a snip from a Smithsonian webpage: (http://www.nasm.si.edu/nasm/dsh/artifac ... rprise.htm)

"The first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, is a test vehicle designed to operate in the atmosphere; it is not equipped for spaceflight. Enterprise was rolled out at Rockwell International's assembly facility in Palmdale, California in 1976. In 1977, it entered service at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards Air Force Base, for a nine-month-long approach and landing test program. The vehicle was flown atop the Boeing 747 Shuttle carrier aircraft and also released for piloted free-flights and landings
to check out all systems and performance characteristics. This test program was a necessary prelude to the first orbital flight by the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981.
The Space Shuttle made its debut in 1981 as the new U.S. launch vehicle for human spaceflight in Earth orbit. It was developed for a variety of purposes: satellite delivery and retrieval, orbital servicing, roundtrip service for science instruments, and laboratory research in space. Intended to be an economical replacement for expendable launch vehicles that are used only once, it was the world's first re-flyable spacecraft."

so, in response to your numbered points:
1) Columbia can reasonably be described as the first space shuttle because Enterprise was a test vehicle never designed nor intended to go into space. It may have looked and landed like a space shuttle, but this 'orbiter' couldn't ever have made it into orbit.
2) A reasonable point. I guess I should've said "she'd been flying 22 years" or something. But first flight is somewhat more of a significant event then being declared complete in some ribbon-cutting ceremony in some hanger when not actually fully prepped for launch. I think you knew what I meant, surely?

As for the "they should look after themselves" comments about the third world... I could go on at length, but basically all I want to say is that it's nothing like that easy to know what to stand up for let alone how to stand up for it. You blame the people who overpopulate and don't take responsibility and cite death and disease as a remedy... well here goes my understanding of the problem and suggestion for a remedy.

Poor areas with substandard educational systems have high levels of poverty and suffering because that is the natural way of populations. Take any population of any animal in any natural environment and some of them will be starving because if they weren't then there would be some resources going to waste and so natural selection and competition between species means that successful species will expand their populations until saturation point and a large proportion of them are going hungry. That's just competition, and it works the same way in biology as in commerce. What enables human beings to extract themselves from the natural situation are 'unnatural' things like science, education and other public services - but if you're in that situation it's a very long climb upwards. Look at how long it took for western civilisation to go from the middle ages (when westerners were just as starving and miserable as anyone in the world today) to now; and the west has had a considerable head start.
To make matters worse, the political incentive structures are set up so as to keep the people of the third world in poverty. Progressive, representative governments are deselected because generals and thugs are rewarded for seizing power. When a coup topples the government in an country like Nigeria for example, Exxon and Shell simply scrap the contracts they had with the old government and renegotiate with the new boss. Either this or they just continue doing business as though nothing had happened. It's like if I bought your old TV off the burglar who stole it from you, and there were no law to stop me from keeping it - this encourages burglary. So understandable western interests (you want to keep making money and you want stay out of other people's wars and not take sides) encourage political instability and leaders in the third world who are willing to sell out their people's interests. In turn, it will be in the interests of these regemes to keep the people of their country uneducated, uninformed, unpolitical an unable to crawl their way out of their state of nature. You can't blame the people for not standing up for themselves if they have no ability to do this and usually not even any understanding of what they should be standing up for. All they can do is live their lives as well as they can, and that's just what they do, and the collective result is a continuation of their miserable condition. Westerners occupy a priviaged place in the global system; we had natural resources available that gave us a comparative advantage (read "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diarmond), we clawed our way out of the state of nature and now there's no-one from outside who can make it worth the while of our elected leaders to ruin our lives for us. It is only from our priviaged postition that it looks as though "We as humans have the ability to better ourselves and to learn from our mistakes and to control our environments", as you put it. Being this kind of human takes social resources that much of the people of the world just don't have access to, and the rest need to look long and hard at what they're doing that's perpetuating this. I'm not saying westerners should be trying to feed the world; but they should at least consider stopping being part of the problem. I'm no socialist or anything, I have no political affiliations and I'm not sure if I really care about ending world suffering; but it worries me to hear this kind of uninformed blaming of the people who are on the recieving end of it, and talking about things taking their natural course or 'Nature always moves forward and we must do the same'. It's things taking their natural course that's the whole problem. If removing suffering were as simple as the sufferers pulling their socks up and just excercising some latant ability to make things better for themselves, then there'd be no suffering. But there is suffering and it's not that simple.
The remedy is not to pump money into the problem but to make small sacrifices to the profit-gathering ability of western business dealings to allow development without interference. The idea that the west managed to claw it's way up but other cultures won't be able to without wads and wads of western cash is pure arrogance. All that's needed is a stronger international legal system that recognises not just nation-states but also enshrines some sort of international constitution protecting progressive, representative governments and their sovreignty over national resources and security, by marginalising their enemies. It means that those with the money band together, declare solidarity with progressive governments in the third world and all agree not to do business with usurpers or under conditions of corruption: to simply not buy 'their' oil (or whatever), regardless of what this does to the price at the pump. Anything short of this, and we've got skewed capitalism, not capitalism per se. The problem is though, western consumers/voters are a lot happier in the short term with paying low fuel prices and giving a few dollars to charity to make themselves feel better about it. Ultimately the guilt lies with us.

Hmmm... seems I have gone on at length after all. Nuff said, I'll get off the soapbox now too. This is a software forum, after all...

[JackCrow]

I just wonder about the self-professed morality of a person who claims to care about the millions of sick and dying people in third world countries, yet spends time that could be better used at a homeless shelter or an AIDS clinic perusing a forum about a software simulator.

[Darkmiss]

[billybob884]

I just wonder about the self-professed morality of a person who claims to care about the millions of sick and dying people in third world countries, yet spends time that could be better used at a homeless shelter or an AIDS clinic perusing a forum about a software simulator.

it does make you wonder, doesnt it?

[John Van Vliet]

Hi i have to agre with don edwards in that we -the USofA- can not take care of the hole 3d world .This planet allready has to meny people . As for what some have menchond taking care of the homeless ---I WAS ONE --
Most of the people on the streets belong in phyic. wardes or half way houses ,whitch do to cuts are CLOSED.


It is sad about the astronughts but ,thats life, it was bound to happen sonner or later . My own personal views ,being an athist, is that one becomes worm food and nothing more ,or like Socrates 's good nights sleep .


So all i can say is that they died the way that they lived ,doing what they wanted to do !!!

PS I have put up some U.S.flags in my gallery