* * * * *
                                        
                     If it's risk-free, it isn't glorious.
                                        
> Broken up and vanished. In the sky over Nacogdoches County. And I'm sad all
> the way back to the little boy with his stiff black book and his Bonestell
> rockets.
> 
> But Willy was right, and nobody ever said it would be risk-free.
> 
> If it were, it wouldn't be glorious.
> 
> And it's only with these losses that we best know that it really is.
> 

“William Gibson [1]”

I remember being in school, watching Columbia on TV (Television) as it was
either launching or landing on the first shuttle mission—STS-1 [2] in April
of 1981. It was the start of the modern space age; no longer did we have
these one-shot rockets but a reusable spacecraft that looked like an
airplane. The implication that Real Soon Now, Joe Sixpack would be able to
walk up to the Pam-Am ticket booth, buy a ticket to the O'Neill Space Station
[3] and sit crammed in a small seat and eat small portioned luke-warm airline
food without even the benefit of a window seat. We couldn't wait. I was in
6^th grade at the time.

On Tuesday, January 28^th, 1986 I arrived home from school (it was a half day
due to mid-term exams) to the phone ringing. It was Mom calling urging me to
turn on the TV because the shuttle exploded on lift-off [4]. The hope of
being able to take a weekend jaunt to the moon were dashed amid shock, denial
and a string of tasteless jokes about NASA (National Air and Space
Administration) standing for “Need Another Seven Astronauts.” No excuse,
other than we were still kids. I was in 11^th grade for our generation's JFK
moment (Where were you when John F. Kennedy was shot?) [5].

I was in front of the computer when Gregory [6] called with the news [7]. I
didn't even bother turning on the TV this time and any hopes of a continued
American presense in space are now spread halfway across Texas. I hope I am
wrong. [8]

[1] http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_02_01_archive.asp
[2] http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/STS-1/HTML/EC81-15177.html
[3] http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/70sArt/art.html
[4] http://www.fas.org/spp/51L.html
[5] http://www.ishipress.com/jfk-shot.htm
[6] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2001/09/11.2
[7] http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/shuttle/index.html
[8] http://www.happyfunpundit.com/hfp/archives/000462.html#000462

Email author at sean@conman.org

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