What a way to start a weekend! There’s nothing in the world like preparing for a world-class drunk on a Saturday morning and getting a phone call, “Turn on the TV. The Space Shuttle just blew up.”
Thanks a million. But it did give a mighty fine reason for spending the balance of the day drinking – as if a reason was needed.
So we’ve lost another shuttle. I was there in 1986, standing across the huge lake from the lauch tower, barely visible through binoculars five miles distant. I saw the ship rise at the head of a great plume of smoke and fire and saw it fall back to earth again as streaks against a cloudless sky. Believe me, it isn’t an experience I cared to repeat but deja vu’s a bitch.
I wonder if this isn’t the end. We’re on the verge of the next great leap in deep space technology and now we’ve lost another seven people to the unheralded dangers inherent in manned spaceflight. Do we have the moral fortitude to continue? I don’t know. I wonder sometimes.
How about Israel? Don’t you think the people over there are wondering when they’re going to catch a break? Don’t you think some of them are shaking their fists in God’s general direction and screaming, “I thought we had a covenant, dammit!” It just doesn’t seem right.
But, despite the hard knocks we’ve taken in this wholly bizarre year there is promise ahead. I hope by the end of the year that liberty is ascendant and expect we won’t recognize the world as it is in the new world to come. It’s about time something went right.