Shuttle Columbia Exploded

My condolences to the crew of STS-107, Space Shuttle Columbia.

May the stars shine bright
for these brave and daring souls
who bridged earth ever closer to heaven.

* tries to ignore blasphemous news propaganda coming out of Iraq

I thought I was going to have a good day...lose for words here...

Let their names ring through history as the Heros they are.

Good-bye Columbia, and God speed to her valiant crew.

Let us not forget that other nation's have had a loss here.

Ilan Ramon, Israeli payload speciallist. First Israeli in space. Son of Holocuat survivors. Many felt he and his mission was a positive symbol for Israel during this time of violence. He took with him a drawling drawn by a young boy in a concentration camp.

Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist, Born in India emigrated to the US in 1980. Became a Aerospace engineer. Choosen for the space program in 1994.


They joined together with the Americans in a mission of peace.


Rick Husband, Flight Commander. Airforce colonel from Texas. Baritone in a barbershop quartet and sang in church choirs.

William McCool, Columbia's pilot. Navy test pilot from Texas,

Michael Anderson, Payload commander. Ltcol. Airforce. Was on Mir in 1998. A Star Trek and Sci fi fan.

David Brown, Mission Specialist, Navy Captian, Medical Doctor, Jet pilot, and a circus acrobat.

Laurel Clark, Mission specialist. Naval officer, Doctor both as Diving Medical officer on subs and a flight medical officer for Naval aviators. became an astronaut in 1996.

The friends and families of the deceased have all my sympathies.

Yet again, words fail me. Printable words, anyhow.

How anyone could rejoice in this news is beyond me.:mad:

The Star

A steady shine with holy grace,
Marvellous like an angel´s smiling face,
Bringing hope to those who are desperate,
Helping us the right way to get.

Not only freedom, but eternity
Is in us if its noble light we see.
Not bright enough to blend your eyes,
But strong enough to fortitude let rise.

There is an old dream to travel to the stars,
But we know this true fellows are as far as
You can imagine or even beyond.

For millions of years they exist
And I hope that they will miss
Us – if we are once no more.

___________________________________



I cannot say anything else. I feel pain for those who lost their lives and can only wish strength to their loved ones. I hope that they will someday overcome their pain and manage to remember the good times with their killed family members, rather than today's catastrophe.


It is no loss for the US alone, but a loss for the whole world - we lost seven of us today who boldly went up into the sky, and were not allowed to return home again. I cannot say anymore - yet what I said describes not nearly the pain I feel - how bad are their loved ones feeling?

OMFG

Words fail me when I heard of this only moments ago.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Phantom
How anyone could rejoice in this news is beyond me.:mad:

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Because they're sick, twisted psycohpaths. :mad:

Sorry not feeling very liberal or understanding today. Still, let's try and remember this isn't about those people, and we should simply try and ignore their sickness. Today should be about mourning this loss, but also about celebrating the lives of the brave crew of the Columbia, people who may have lost their lives, but at least they mananged to live their dream. Their legacy will live on.

As somebody else already pointed out, this is a loss for all off us, but our deepst sympathies should be with the family and friends of those who died. It saddened me every time I watched NASA officials struggling to hold back their grief in the news conferences.

Apologies for the lack of coherence.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Capt Daniel Hunter

As somebody else already pointed out, this is a loss for all off us, but our deepst sympathies should be with the family and friends of those who died.

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And I am sure they are with them - at least for my part and I know nobody who feels not that way. I nearly cried when I heard that and tears were coming to my eyes when I saw it. Again I am almost crying.

I've been glued to my T.V. set for the better part of the day flipping from channel to channel to hear the experts speak.

Its a terrible loss to NASA, to the families and overall to all of us.

I just hope that this accident puts things back into perspective and they finally retire the aging fleet. And maybe its time Congress took away the monopoly of space flight from NASA.

What a crappy way to start the new year...:( :( :(

If they retire the fleet, what are they going to use? Should we put a hold on the program based on the hope that a re-useable new design will come along sometime in the future? That could take decades.

NASA seems to be the whipping boy of the US scientific community, they carry off 105 successful missions, but when 2 missions do go wrong then they get kicked in the nuts.

Let's keep things in perspective here, this mission was no. 107 and in that time only two, 3 if you include Apollo I, accidents have happened. That is a failure rate of only 11% (or a fatality rate of 1.9%), now I am not trivializing the deaths of those 14 (17+Apollo I) souls, but if we terminate the space program, or even delay it for a great length of time then they will have died in vain. Those people, and their ralatives, knew the risks of what they were doing as soon as they put the mission patch on their shoulder. They were scientists and explorers...That explroation must continue. When this type of thing happens we are all quick to point fingers...NASA should have done that, or should have did that. We forget all the intensive time and manpower that does go into the launch process so things like this doesn't happen, but we will never be 100% successful, accidents will happen. It is the way of things.

In his message today, the President said that their "cause" will continue. The manned space program isn't going anywhere.

May God be with the families of the lost astronauts :(

We have a design for a new Shuttle already, don't we? I'll see if I can find a picture of it, but I swear I've seen one.

Here it is:
http://www.flug-revue.rotor.com/FRHe...2/FR9612m1.JPG