I'm terrified that this will kill the manned space program. NASA has been aimless for so long that it may be easier to trim back and take even fewer chances.

If a Presidential candidate ever made a campaign pledge that we'd have habitable space colonies eight years after he was elected and a mission to Mars in four, he would have my vote. Not one of those bums has any vision at all.

I don't think that the solution here is the government. The problem is that to increase NASA or the Air Force's budget, you need to either cut other programs or raise taxes. Most people would rather have that money to buy the things that they want or need than see a few dozen people live on Mars or the Moon (I know there's plenty of gov't waste that could be trimmed and given to NASA, but I don't think that it's either feasible or going to be enough).
What we need to do is encourage independent trials. Neither cars nor airplanes were created by governments. While government oversight may be needed in some way, control is not. It seems to me that one way to do this would be to say that any colony established belongs to the United States, but that the company that creates it will have all sorts of special privileges, like exclusive trading rights, tourism privileges, and maybe something for back here on Earth like not having to pay business taxes for ten years.

In my opinion, we must first provide the funding based on the current threats to our country, not half baked ideas. I am not saying that the NASA program is not doing the country the grandest of deeds. At the same time, we must concentrate at what the current threat is and provide funding appropriately. Maybe this launch should have been postponed until the proper funding was approved to ensure this was a top notch safe flight. I am not trying to get an argument going, I just think it is rather strange when the NASA budget is at the lowest accidents like this happen.

The CBC's science editor just said on the radio that the space station will fall into the sea unless we send a shuttle up in a timely fashion.

Manned space is not dead. Shuttle Version 1.0 is most likely dead. Version 2.0 is probably going to be accelerated, and thats not altogether bad. Lets all remember here, Its a tragedy, but its not the end. We will change things, make things better and we will continue with our mission in space.

Space is too important to all of us on Earth to stop because of an accident. Manned Space is not just a big expensive disneyland ride, its necessary to secure the skills and technologies necessary to meet the challenges of life on earth in the next 20 years. We often forget just how much the space program has done to better the lifes of every single person on the face of the earth. It sometimes takes a tragedy like this to remind us that all those "neato' things like velcro, Integrated circuits, fuel cells,GPS, the internet itself and cell phones exist because of the sacrifices of time and, like today, the lives of some very special people.

When youre walking around today, feeling the pain of today,and feeling sorry for yourselves, just take a quick look around and see how much your lives have been improved by the manned space program.

And know again just how lucky you are.

And thank your lucky stars that this country and the free western world has men and women who would jump at the chance tommorow to go up in Shuttle Atlantis and continue the work that this crew sacrificed their lives to do.

And remember that there are three astronauts today on the ISS, who, while they are just as sad as you and I are, will go on with their work today, and the next day and the next.

And when I get the chance I'll pass along the link to show you how you can look up in the sky most every night after sunset to view the ISS.

The moral to the story here kids: dont take life for granted, either on the micro or macro levels.

( We Came in Peace for all mankind )

Those Canadians...

The Russians are launching a supply mission tomorrow, scheduled before today's tragedy.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030201/wl_nm/shuttle_russia_dc_5

Not necessarily seven NON-military funerals. Six of the seven were in the armed forces, and may conceivably receive military funerals:

Husband, 45, an Air Force colonel
McCool, 41, Navy commander
Anderson, 43, Air Force lieutenant colonel
Brown, 46, Navy pilot
Clark, 41, Navy physician
Ilan Ramon, colonel in Israeli airforce.

Chawla was the ONLY civilian.

The moral to the story here kids: dont take life for granted, either on the micro or macro levels.

well said, Frank.

NASA should aim for Mars and leave near Earth orbit to the private sector and the Air Force.

As Promised:

To determine if the International Space Station is visible from your location:

http://www.heavens-above.com/

all visible satellites are listed on this site.

Well said, Stephen, although I must disagree in that NASA cannot ground the shuttle fleet for long currently. Such a grounding would doom the space station program.

Hey, you sound like another cowboy. People like you will kill us all--not Suddam.

~

Saddam has taken this opportunity to equate this tragedy with our desire to bury him. Mr. Green your hero comment was inappropriate to say the least. As a friend commented when he forwarded your callous statement to me, "May i suggest that after we bury Saddam we do the same to Mr. Green."

Yippie kayay, motherfucker.

Mr. Green your hero comment was inappropriate to say the least.

woah, i have no idea what the hell joan is talking about here. i found stephen's writing about this tragedy to be incredibly moving, and very non-partisan (stephen is one of my favorite righty bloggers).

The CBC's science editor just said on the radio that the space station will fall into the sea unless we send a shuttle up in a timely fashion.

yeah, they hope it's the sea it falls into.

i'm curious, does anybody have any statistics as to lives lost in the various other nasa programs (mercury, gemini, apollo)? because the space shuttle program is doing pretty badly at this point.

i'm all for going into space, but i think the pressure to go up so much like it was a bus line is making things sloppy, and deadly.

Ah, skippy, it looks like a couple of moron trolls found Stephen.

As someone who has had my life touching the space program since 1982, NASA is the problem; not the solution. Give their funding to the real space program.

I was going to explain, but you know what is said about opinions, myself included.

Skippy,

So far as I'm aware, the only casualties in space have been Challenger and Columbia. Apollo 1 lost three astronauts in a pad fire. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo didn't lose anyone in space, though Apollo 13 came close. A number of astronauts have been killed in conventional jet aircraft crashes. Considering the hundreds of people who have gone into space on the shuttle, and the prior programs, the fatality rate is well under 1%.
Something that I think tends to be overlooked, is that going into space is *fundamentally dangerous*. You strive for perfection, but people *will* die.

They died doing what they wanted (and trained and sacrificed so hard for so many years) to DO. They died in the pursuit of knowledge, for exploration, because they all WANTED to be in space. That is what makes human beings so great, and why we aren't still sitting around in darkened caves. I hope that when my end comes I will be in the act of something even a fraction as decent and noble.