There are no words
Feb. 2nd, 2003 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksI don't know what to say. I mean, just a few days ago we were remembering the anniversary of Challenger and the Apollo 1 fire, and...
The Universe has a particularly sick sense of humor. I didn't know - I was playing SimCity 4 on the PC. I'd just shut down the game because I was feeling tired, I wandered back into my room to check e-mail and see what was on LJ and then I saw an e-mail with the subject of the Columbia tragedy and I thought at first someone had mistyped Challenger and then I looked at Chimera and saw my Yahoo! news page with the headline... and then I glanced at the window to #filkhaven and people were talking. And I'm flashing back to 1986, that morning when a classmate told me about Challenger and I was shellshocked for the rest of the day.
And I'm watching the footage on BBC World now, switching between that and CNN, the debris breaking up again and again and that same sense of unreality that I felt when I saw the smoking towers on September 11, and I'm hoping and praying they got out in time and I know that they couldn't have, not at 200,000 feet, and Jesus God it looks like a shower of stars.
And I'm dreading the days to come, dreading the inquiries and the blame and dreading the news that NASA will kill the shuttle program or scale it back and that Congress is going to use this as an excuse to say Mars is going to be another twenty years further away. And it's another special mission, with Ramon this time instead of McAuliffe, and I can't imagine what it feels like for a Jew to have the first Israeli into space become a casualty. High time the shuttle program was revamped and the vehicle redesigned anyway - it's 1970s tech, after all. There will be words and press conferences and statements and speculation and it's all going to mater jack shit to seven people. Unless. Except. Unless we let this stop us from going back to the stars.
In the end, and not the end, I don't know what to say about this except that this can't be how it ends and it shouldn't be how it ends. It's all jumbled up, and I really, really want to wake up now, please.
The Universe has a particularly sick sense of humor. I didn't know - I was playing SimCity 4 on the PC. I'd just shut down the game because I was feeling tired, I wandered back into my room to check e-mail and see what was on LJ and then I saw an e-mail with the subject of the Columbia tragedy and I thought at first someone had mistyped Challenger and then I looked at Chimera and saw my Yahoo! news page with the headline... and then I glanced at the window to #filkhaven and people were talking. And I'm flashing back to 1986, that morning when a classmate told me about Challenger and I was shellshocked for the rest of the day.
And I'm watching the footage on BBC World now, switching between that and CNN, the debris breaking up again and again and that same sense of unreality that I felt when I saw the smoking towers on September 11, and I'm hoping and praying they got out in time and I know that they couldn't have, not at 200,000 feet, and Jesus God it looks like a shower of stars.
And I'm dreading the days to come, dreading the inquiries and the blame and dreading the news that NASA will kill the shuttle program or scale it back and that Congress is going to use this as an excuse to say Mars is going to be another twenty years further away. And it's another special mission, with Ramon this time instead of McAuliffe, and I can't imagine what it feels like for a Jew to have the first Israeli into space become a casualty. High time the shuttle program was revamped and the vehicle redesigned anyway - it's 1970s tech, after all. There will be words and press conferences and statements and speculation and it's all going to mater jack shit to seven people. Unless. Except. Unless we let this stop us from going back to the stars.
In the end, and not the end, I don't know what to say about this except that this can't be how it ends and it shouldn't be how it ends. It's all jumbled up, and I really, really want to wake up now, please.
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-01 12:51 pm (UTC)I woke up this morning, to John and Eloise having an argument about what Bush was probably going to say. The first I'd heard of it. And it wasn't real, and it wasn't real, and it wasn't real, until I read this. And then they turned on the news, and video clip showed over and over and over and if I see the breakup one more time I'm going to run screaming hysterically through the streets, and you're right, you're right, and O God.
NASA isn't just us, it isn't just the United States, it's everyone by now, and I hope to God we remember that.