February 01, 2004

In Memoriam

Its been a year since the Columbia disaster....I cant hardly believe it . I remember clearly my Mother calling me from California telling me to get the news on...What I saw numbed me as this was the very thing my Father gave the best years of his life to prevent. The loss of the precious payload of human potential...The best and the brightest of our and now other nation's people... In a space accident.

For those of us that are or have been connected to NASA. (My Father worked for NASA from 1963 to his early retirement in 1971) our hearts go out to all who might read this that may have had family or friends lost in this terrible disaster. ..

What the "space program" is today and what it was 30 years ago I think is different. Then, nothing would have been left to chance. My Father watched the three astronauts burn to death in Apollo 1, and swore that wouldn't happen again. As a senior Staff Project engineer on the environmental Systems end, he wrote an number of memos stating the dangers of a pure oxygen atmosphere that ultimately cost the lives of Three astronauts. He like those engineers that saw that chunk of foam fly off and mash Columbia's wing felt he hadn't done enough, fought hard enough to save the lives of the crew...Later,due to other sorts of bureaucratic problems, Apollo13 was placed in harms way. He was one of the people that volunteered to go on a one way mission to rescue Apollo 13, thankfully that wasn't needed. It has always been drilled into my heart that the crew was THE most important consideration no matter what.

I think we failed those brave people. I think we have spent too much money on garbage, and not enough on the Space Endevour that would have been a boon to mankind. The Shuttles have run too many years and are totally outdated. But we have nothing to back them up. Shear foolishness on the part of NASA and others

I had a friend that asked why we aren't sending men to Mars? Its one thing to send them up and quite another thing for them to come home safely. A two year round trip is out of the question and that is too bad Had we as a nation stayed the course, we'd be there by now...

I salute those that have perished in the effort to explore space, as well as those that continue to train, to risk to expand our knowledge of what is around us....