Columbia Disaster

Posted on February 2, 2003 in Milestones

We were on our way out of the Lawrence Welk Resort, this morning, when I caught the gold streak across the blue background and the headline “Columbia is Lost“. I braked next to the fishing lake and backed up. It was true. Another space shuttle had gone down.

We watched only movie channels during our escape. Lawrence Welk shielded us from all the troublesome news from the world. As I flipped channels, I did catch any of the bulletins and in depth coverage that must have been playing on the major news stations. Even the Science Fiction Channel did not flash the news across its screen: running Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country uninterrupted was more important, apparently, than the breaking report.

I wonder what they did for 9/11 or what they would do for the death of a president?

We picked up an LA Times at the market and turned on NPR in time to hear a Duke University historian lambast NASA for not developing an alternative to the shuttle program as the Rogers Commission had recommended in the late 1980s.

I predict that in the next six months, the following conspiracy theories will arise:

• That the Israeli officer aboard the flight did something in an attempt to embarass the US or blame it on the Palestinians
• That terrorists did it.
• That the military did it in an effort to discredit NASA’s programs and divert the money into their pockets.

Unless substantial evidence is offered — literal smoking guns — I plan on not believing a single one of these.

On the other hand, I would not put it past that Bush to cut the program as a token gesture for reducing the largest budget deficit in U.S. history.

Wise crack: They took the space shuttle refurbishing program away from California and gave it to Florida. After the fiascos of the last two elections and this, should we trust Florida with anything?

California says “Give the shuttle back to us. We know how to count!”