Saturday, February 01, 2003 IT's a tragedy but the Columbia Space Shuttle exploded on reentry to earth and NASA lost communications with the 7 crew members on board, one of which is an Israeli. It is generally expected that an emergency landing is not possible at its then-altitude which was about 90km.

I was watching the news and the sad thing is that people are actually connecting this to a possible terrorist subotage. I mean, for fuck's sakes! This just goes to show how paranoid everyone is.
Of course, taking a cynical point of view, it's easy to say that it's not that big a deal, especially if we take into account the number of people who died everyday from albeit-comparably-more-ordinary circumstances. But I think in a somewhat subconscious way, a space shuttle represents some sort of a possible future for all humanity, even though only 2 countries are represented in its crew members. It's sad.

posted by Sharon K at 8:55 am