Seven people and a little boy’s dream
Posted by Aaron Springer on January 29, 2006 under General | 
Be the First to Comment
I am weeping tonight.
Twenty years ago, due to managers more interested in keeping lucrative NASA contracts, and due to NASA administrators more concerned with their schedule than human lives, seven of America’s finest sons and daughters impacted the sea going an estimated two hundred miles an hour after their crew cabin was sheared away from the rest of their vehicle. I am speaking, of course, of the event that shocked a nation that was just about ready to accept space travel as routine. It was the only time I ever saw the lunch room at my elementary school both full and silent at the same time.
I am speaking of the Challenger.
Did you know that the one man who stood up for what he believed in the months before the tragedy was the only one who lost his job? Yup. The one guy who said the o-rings would fail was ignored and ultimately was canned.
Yeah. Got to love this country. No good deed goes unpunished.
It is hard even now for me to watch the video. It was the moment that I stopped dreaming of being an astronaut.
When I was little, I was into the space race. I subscribed to Odyssey, which, at the time, was devoted to astronomy and space travel. They have also since lost that focus. I had patches from a variety of space missions on my jacket, and knew that one day, I would be floating in zero G and looking at the stars through a few feet of air, instead of several miles.
My dream rode with every shuttle mission, and crashed with the crew of Challenger.
When Columbia went down… well, that was it. Space travel will be confined to the written word for me, unless something changes drastically.
