Entered on 02 February 2003 at 8:39 a.m..

And the world did not stand still

It is truely amazing the events in life that bind you to your friends and to your society. Well be for the news reports came trickling in I received an urgent phone call from Brian asking me to turn on a TV. My immediate reaction is that something else has been hit, and as strange as it sounds when he told me no we've lost the Columbia, somehow it was a relief. Shock, yes I was a bit shocked, but relieved none the less. And as a flipped through all 4 TV channels and saw soccer, horse racing, and other programs continue without interruption I was at first angry. "Don't they realize how important this is?" I thought? "Don't they know that this isn't America's Space Shuttle, but the worlds link with space (well until the Chinese join us)?" And then I realized that they don't. Which, I have come to realize, is as it should be.

We have been launching and returning for over 40 years now, and although loosing people is tragic, life and the program will go on. Space travel has become normal and expected to most people. The world doesn't stop when a car, or train, or plane crashes and now, neither do they for a space shuttle.

My only hope now is that the Human space flight program can meet the psychological routineness of space flight. This is important. While I think when we travel to Mars for the first time, or back to the moon, we will capture the world's undivided attention, until then we need to carry on with the goal of making space travel as every-day as possible. For while it is magical, it will never be accessible to the masses until it is common place.

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