Columbia

Maybe the World Trade Tower has made us jaded, or maybe it's just because it's a Saturday, but it seems like the Columbia destruction this morning has largely been taken in stride. Some comments in some journals, but some people who don't mention it at all, and even some mention of today being a rather good day for the individual, on balance. It's not something that's dogged my thoughts today, nor did it seem to disrupt the life of the people around me. It's apparently one of those "these things happen" events.

Sardonic subtitle during TV coverage of the event: "Breaking news". Uh, yeah.

Today's event didn't really surprise me. Space travel is hazardous - it's not like driving a car or flying a plane, it's more like piloting a sub in the deepest parts of the ocean, only more so (and how many subs actually travel to the deepest parts of the ocean, anyway?). And it seems to me that the space program has technologically been at a stand-still for over 20 years. Is the most recently-built Space Shuttle really much more advanced than the very first one which went into space? Unlike almost every other area of technological endeavor, which advance steadily through constant study and revision, the Space Shuttle is, as I understand it, state-of-the-art 1970s technology.

So if it's to be expected that 1 in 50 missions would end in disaster back in 1978, are the odds really any better today?

For most of my lifetime the US manned space program has to my mind been pretty laughable. Launching satellites, servicing space stations of seemingly little value, conducting a modicum of research. Not much effort to advance the space-faring tech, either to make it safer through redesigns or more capable and able to do more (like, say, get to Mars). Going into space could be a wondrous thing, but instead it's a privilege available only to an elite few, with modest purpose, and no sense of progress that I can see.

They say Columbia could be a big blow to NASA's future. But it's never been evident to me that NASA had much of a future beyond what it's doing in the present.

Cynical, maybe, but it's also a reflection of how bitterly disappointing the space program has been to me for much of my lifetime. A friend of mine said, back in college, that he'd once hoped that he'd be able to into space himself during his lifetime. That was nearly 15 years ago, and even then it seemed like a dim hope. It seems an even dimmer one now.

Of course, it seems like there's little to be gained by colonizing the solar system. The other planets are barren and effectively lifeless. There's no strategic advantage, nor much evident demand for people to want to move out there. So the state of the space program isn't really surprising.

It's just disappointing.

I know I'm being a grump about all this. I always react to disasters of this sort differently than most.

It's sad that the seven astronauts died on the shuttle. Though no more sad than the 6-year-old girl who was killed - allegedly by a high school driver - in the city north of mine this past week. But sad in the way that anyone dying before their time is sad.

But I have little emotion for our manned space program, whose ambition seems to have gone the way of both Challenger and Columbia. And without that ambition, what good is it, really?