Mourning of the Shuttle Columbia.

February 3, 2003

Before I get to what I’ve been up to since my last update, I want to take a minute and talk about something that happened last weekend.

When I woke up Saturday morning, it was fairly early, about 9 AM central time, and when I checked my mail, the first two things I saw were “CNN Breaking News” emails that I signed up for from their website, that they only send out when they have news flashes of important events. The first one said that NASA had lost contact with the space shuttle Columbia, the second one that it had been destroyed for unknown reasons. I was left in a state of total shock for a minute or so. I remember on September 11th that same feeling, how just everything washes over you for a bit because you’re still trying to wrap your mind around this one important piece of information. In a comparison, the deaths of seven people who I’d never heard of before Saturday seem insignificant to the deaths of 3,000 Americans in the largest terrorist attack not just on US soil but in the entire world, but unlike CNN, Fox News, and especially Congress, I see them for what they really were.

Post 9/11, the United States lived up to its name moreso than any time since World War II, I’d wager. Were were all united behind the concept of rebuilding not the towers, but ourselves. Part of this feeling of unity came through revenge and the military action in Afghanistan, despite that the majority of them were Saudi citizens. The feeling of needing to put it behind us came through our desire to forget what we’d seen that day, footage of aircraft screaming across the New York skyline and disintegrating in a ball of fire that consumed the entire width of the towers, over and over and over and over again. I saw the footage of the planes crashing and the towers falling more times that day than I’d ever care to see anything like that. We needed to move on as a collective people, and it was easier because those that died were primarily average people just doing their jobs in the great machine known as capitalism. They weren’t anything special, just people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The deaths of the seven astronauts hit me harder than the 3,000+ people who died that day a year and a half ago. As you all know, I’m a fan of science fiction. No, let me rephrase that. Science fiction tends to get lumped in with each other, so if someone likes sci-fi that means that they automatically like Star Trek, Star Wars, Space: 1999, V, everything piece of science fiction out there. I like a lot of different things, but I can’t say that I like the whole genre. What’s more appropriate is that some of the media (books, movies, TV shows) I cherish the most would fall into the category of science fiction. Star Trek, Babylon 5, Dune, Farscape, Star Wars, Alien(s), Terminator, all of those are things that I enjoy. The one thing that most science fiction tends to adhere to is the idea of humankind traveling the stars. Why is this? I think that it is because most of our recorded history has been spent exploring. This was done for a variety of reasons, some economic, some political, some purely for the spirit of exploration, but since we have explored our planet almost to the fullest extent (that is, at least the parts of the planet we can get to), the only natural place to go is upwards, outwards. Am I to believe that humans, having colonized the entire planet are to remain Earthbound for the rest of our existence? We have to go to stars. To summarize a quote from Babylon 5, we have to go to the stars because one day, maybe a hundred years from now, maybe a billion years from now, our sun will grow cold and expire, and if we don’t go to the stars then everything will have been for nothing.

When I saw that the space shuttle had disintegrated on reentry, I saw the future of humankind begin to disintegrate before my very eyes. This is the second shuttle accident NASA has experienced, the third deadly disaster. Seventeen astronauts have died in 50 years of NASA’s history, and those seventeen deaths are a small price to pay for the advancement not of the United States, but of the entire human race. I shudder to admit it, but the Nazi scientists who experimented on Jews and created the V2 rockets that rained down upon Britain in World War II did more to advance the space program than any money that has come from Congress in the last 20 years has. How many died sailing the oceans of the world? How many died making their way from Africa to Europe to Asia and eventually into what is now North America? How many died crossing the vast expanses of Africa? How many died chartering the known world only to find another place where no one had ever been before? Thousands, that’s how many. Tens of thousands, I’d be willing to wager. Old maps used to show the edge of the world as a vast expanse with a dropoff and the text “Here be monsters.” This was done because no one ever returned from those expeditions and all were assumed to have sailed off the edge of the planet, yet people kept sailing. Even Columbus had to seek sponsorship, and they still only gave him three ships because they feared that he and his crews would never return. It was nearly three years before a space shuttle flew again in the wake of the Challenger explosion in 1986, and although it will be much less time than that now due to the astronauts on the International Space Station, I can see the space program being cut yet again. “Let’s focus on our problems down here,” they’ll say. The money that should be going to the space program will instead go to defense and new tax cuts, and while I cannot debate the validity of those, NASA will find itself with a smaller budget and a smaller mission within the next five years. We should be launching 15 or 20 shuttles a year, not 5 or 6. Yes, there are issues that must be overcome. Yes, the space program is expensive. The fact that NASA’s budget keeps getting cut because they need so much money to continue operating at both safe levels and levels that will allow them to advance is evidence that no one knows what they’re doing. “They need so much money, let’s keep cutting it,” I keep hearing. No one is willing to put money up to look at alternate methods of entering space. The rockets used to lift the shuttle into orbit cost half a billion dollars each time they launch, so clearly other methods are needed. I’ve seen several other methods described, some of which are feasible to build and scientifically sound from both my limited understanding and outside examination by experts. One method reduces the cost of cargo into space from $20,000/kilogram to $100/kilogram.

Early in the 20th century, even as far up to the 1950’s, visions of the future showed us riding around with jetpacks, traveling to colonies on the moon by rocket, that sort of thing. The best example I can think of is Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001, which had humans living on the moon, regular spaceflight, and our crowning achievement, a manned mission to Saturn. Well here it is, 2003, and we’re ready to do other things with the money that should be used to be lifting up another space station, more satellites, and more research experiments.

Not in my lifetime, I suppose, will I see anything like Clarke described. Especially now with the deaths of seven more astronauts and the eventual resulting pullback.

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but only the bold will conquer the heavens. The seven who died on Saturday were the boldest not of Americans, but of the human race, and their loss will be felt by all who live on this planet. They tread where the rest of us cannot and paid the price for their bravery.

And that’s all I have to say on that matter for now.

Whew, OK. That’s been rattling around in my head since Saturday, but I hadn’t really committed all that to paper (or in this case, digitally). Besides all that on Saturday, I really didn’t do much this past weekend. I think I’m getting a cold, and I’ve been snuffling all day today and fighting with feeling of confusion and listlessness brought on by my illness. Thankfully, I’m done for the day, so I can spend the rest of it sleeping if I so choose, although I’ll probably just bum around and do dishes, clean up my room, that sort of thing.

One thing that I have going now is that I have two monitors hooked up to my computer here. Dan was nice enough to let me have a 20″ monitor he scrounged up from ITS here, though since he’d already come across a similar 20″ model, I guess it was more because he had no practical use for it and I might. I currently have a 19″ monitor, so if I’d simply replaced my monitor the benefit would have been small as I would have only gained an inch or so in screen size. Instead, I opted to use a feature of the graphics card in my computer and hook up the 2nd monitor. This way, I now have two screens, one computer. I can display things on both monitors, so I essentially have one big screen. I’ve been using the bigger monitor as my secondary display because it’s so much bigger than my current monitor (both in weight and in depth) and needs to be at an angle on my desk to even fit. Right now I have my website editing program open on my display in front of me, and on the second monitor I have my instant messaging buddy list, a web browser with Google News (updates automatically every 5 minutes or so!), and Winamp, my MP3 player. To get things from one monitor to another, you simply drag and drop like you do around your screen now, but it’s a little odd at first to see the window you’re moving go from one screen to the other, and even span them. I found that last night while I was working on my Quant homework that having two displays was especially nice, as I could have the memo I was writing open in front of me and the data I was referring to open on the other screen. Very handy for such things.

So that’s about it. One big gripe and a little bit of news. Oh yes, and as of last Friday, it is officially 100 days until graduation. I have a lot of work to do before then, so I need to get cracking. Right after I nap for a bit. Have a good week, everyone.

Feelin’ sick. Must…go…on.