Slipping the surly bonds of earth

I am not often at a loss for words. Tonight I am just...I don't know...I am exhausted by the events of the day and yet I cannot sleep. My mind is a jumble and my heart is bruised with the loss of the Columbia today.
I am a geek's geek. I can't help it, I was born and not only allowed, but encouraged to look into everything and anything I was curious about...and I have a VERY active curiosity and imagination. Plus my older brother (by 2 years), was a math genius. (think super geek) This practically guaranteed that the two of us would become science, space and Nasa junkies as kids. We did experiments by the thousands. we built a fleet of rockets and planes and fly by wire planes and radio controlled planes and helicopters. Boats, submarine, we breadboarded computers, and always in the backround Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, SkyLab, Soyuz....My brother and I still continue the tradition today by encouraging his kids to geek out, and they are. In fact my brother was probably a bigger air and space geek than I was, he got his pilot's licence at 16 and has owned a number of real airplanes since then. He also ended up marrying a Physics tweak that is also a pilot and was in the Nasa astronaut training program. (She was washed out by space docs after tearing up vertebrae in her back in an accident)...

Anyway, in other words, as kids, we ate it and slept it and drank it. And I have kept my interest all through my adulthood. In fact, if you had asked me before today's tragic event to tell you the names of the crew onboard the Columbia, I could have....see, I told you ..........geek.
But don't think for a moment that I was ashamed of my geekyness.
Oh no! I revelled in it.
I put in some backround only to try to give you a sense of the depth of my feelings when I tell you..I Love Space, and NASA..and it is with a truly heavy heart that I search for the words to express my feelings and thoughts.

Mostly I feel a great pride....is that weird? By not naming grief or horror as my "main" emotion, it almost feels as though I am being ungrateful or selfish or like I am belittling their value or memory in some whispered dishonourable way. It is not like I don't ALSO feel grief and sorrow and loss, but for me, there is something far greater happening here.

I look upon the 7 faces of the crew of the Columbia, and I am overwhelmed by pride with the understanding that we ALL are part of such an amazing race of people. These 7 people ARE our species brightest and best. And what are they doing? EXACTLY what our brightest and best should be doing.
Exploring.
Searching.
Adding to our collective pool of knowledge.
Pushing the known limits of man.
I mean, look at what they were riding in.
This Space Shuttle...this machine ..this uber plane that can fly... jet ...rocket, at almost 4 miles per second, 6 times faster than a rifle bullet.
(Think about it.....that is a trip from Minneapolis to Chicago in a 90 seconds, New York to LA in 12 minutes..
AND, more importantly, once it reaches such incredible, man generated speeds, it can then leave the gravitational well that is the earth.
We have conquered, this impossible physical impediment, this locked door to the unknown, this gravity.
And how did we do this...this defying of the nature of things? ..this "impossible thing"?

It started less than 100 years ago in 1903 in December when 2 bicycle making brothers from Ohio first collared the laws of gravity. Less than 100 years ago! There are people that are still alive today that lived when man could not fly! In the short time since then, we progressed at an unimaginable pace. Flying became routine.......

What then? Then we simply decided one day we wanted to see what was OUT THERE, and so we just did it!! The Moon? Let's go there! How? A single charismatic leader merely challenged us to it. And, "we the people", gathered up the will and within a decade, we were there.

At it's best, the human race is capable of the most breathtaking things. Music, Art, Literature, Science, Architecture, the whole list would be staggering. The largest structure to the smallest nanotechnology, we as a species are built to move forward, to reach, to question. It is our most basic nature to do this.
The human race is imbued with an indomitable spirit and the need to answer the simplest question..... Why?

I will mourn the astronauts that gave humankind their lives today...but I will also take a moment and mourn ALL the seekers that have given their lives in pursuit of knowledge.....and that, my fellow humans is a long long list.

Did the astronauts want to die? Of course not. Did they know they could die pursuing the holy grail of knowledge? Absolutely!
But, (and here is the core of it for me, as I have been writing, I think I just figured it out) ............DID THEY GO ANYWAY??????
You know the answer to that one.
If you asked every member of the current astronaut corp if they would get on a shuttle and fly tommorow?
You know the answer to that one as well.
And so do I.

Any one interested in going to Mars??

Posted by Jack at February 02, 2003 08:23 AM