Nice to see you again, Opal.
To everyone who wants to know, I think the main reason this disaster was so disturbing is all the hype surrounding Christa McAuliffe, the first “ordinary” person to try to fly into space and because it showed how wrong a trusted authority can be. She was going to represent EVERY Joe and Jill who ever wanted to go into space but couldn’t become a professional astronaut. And NASA and Reagan assured us all there was some risk, some danger, but don’t worry, they’ll get back safe and sound, our guys ‘n’ gals can handle anything that happens. So the public identified with Christa, vicariously felt like WE were making the trip and the assurances of a grandfatherly President and a bunch of white-coated scientists and technicians told us all would work out as planned.
Do all of you now see how shocking it was to see that fireball and cloud of smoke, to see that pristine white-and-black vehicle shatter into a million pieces? One of US had just died in front of our eyes and it meant that Grandfather Reagan and the guys in white lab coats were wrong, wrong, wrong. Either they had lied to us about the risk or they had not really known what they were doing after all. One does not want ignorance or deception or incompetence from one’s leaders and savants.
And then after the disaster, there was so much attention placed on the McAuliffe family and on Christa’s students, wondering how they were going to bear up under the grief and shock, with very little attention placed on the families and friends of the other six victims, as if their grief was less important because the six were professional astronauts, as if their families should have expected them to die some day. (Some of this oversight has been corrected. In the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, there is an exact, scaled-down replica of the Space Shuttle in honor of Ellison Onizuka, the first Japanese-American astronaut. But what does it say about our country, our society, our culture that this monument to a fallen hero is located near the entrance to a shopping mall?)
And then there was the mistaken belief that flying in space was the one thing we Americans knew how to do right. No American astronaut had ever died while in flight (Apollo One was a fire on the launch pad; it never got off the ground) and the worst space disaster in American history (Apollo 13) turned out all right. This was something we knew how to do.
How shocking, then, to be forced to consider that we couldn’t even do THAT right.
It was a blow to our confidence, to our belief in ourselves, even to our faith. “God doesn’t want us to fly in His domain. That’s why He knocked the Shuttle out of the sky.” That’s what my boss told me. She actually compared it to the Tower of Babel. (And some of you wonder why I have trouble with Christians.)
And, yeah, crashes like yesterday’s are, sad to say, expected, common, ordinary. Space Shuttle flights are still something new, uncommon, extraordinary. The number of human beings who have flown in Earth orbit probably could all be placed into one Boeing 747 with seats left over.
I don’t know how to end this. I do know this, though: It’s morbid curiosity to wonder what they experienced. It’s tacky. And those who pander to those instincts ought to be made to take a “Challenger flight” of their own.
And I’m in a generous mood.
>< DARWIN >
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