CNN’s reporting that NASA’s planning to loan shuttle debris to researchers in order to help them better design hypersonic vehicles. Additionally, NASA’s considering releasing the debris to museums for it to be put on display. I don’t have a problem with NASA using the debris for research studies and if the display of the debris is done tastefully, I don’t have a problem with that, either. But one has to wonder why it’s willing to do this with the Columbia, but not with Challenger. (Anybody know if the Apollo 1 capsule is on display?)
So, is NASA right to do this, or should they lock the Columbia debris with the Challenger debris in the silo? Or, should they display Challenger as well? One thing that I think they should do is that whenever humans land on another planet to start a colony is bury pieces of Challenger, Columbia, the Apollo 1 capsule, and any other spacecraft in which humans have died as a memorial to those who led the way.
The Apollo 1 capsule is locked up at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, and is not on public display.
I don’t have any problems with displaying any of it, except for the fact that other people do, and the people who do have problems with it, tend to have really serious problems with it, and so for that reason I think it’s probably better not to put the pieces on public display.
For one thing, sooner or later you’re gonna have psychics and suchlike petitioning for permission to touch the objects, to do remote viewing with the objects, to hold seances around the objects, and just generally cause a lot of psychic harm to grieving relatives (“She knew they were going to die, but she was okay with it…”) Best not to open that whole can of worms, I’m thinking.
Not to mention the display(s) giving a ready-made locus for the NASA-Disaffected in our society, protestors and whatnot.
Good point. Still, I liken hiding the pieces of Challenger, et. al. to trying to cover up the Holocaust. The men and women who died in the pursuit of the conquest of space, died for something greater than themselves. To hide it because of a few nitwits, is cruel, and proof of how close humanity is to savagery, IMHO. After all, the Catholic Church digs up the bodies of those it considers to be potential saints, to my mind, those who’ve died to pursue the advancement of humanity are equal to those who would be saints. Why should we treat them any differently? (Admittedly, I can understand why the families of those who died wouldn’t want the bodies of the astronauts paradied around as a novelty item.)