Today, the space shuttle Columbia burned up in its landing pattern, essentially disintegrating in flames.

My parents called me shortly after noon, my time. I didn’t get to the phone in time, and called back. After some small talk, they broke the news. I turned on the telly, and began to watch the carnage.

There’s a history here. There’s a reason my parents were concerned about my reaction. Two, actually.

The first is that they recall my reaction to the Challenger disaster in 1986. I turned nine in October of that year, and I was in grade school. I was also a big believer in the space program, the nobility of it. I still am. My self-determined projects as part of the gifted program involved constructing a model of the shuttle with researched diagrams of its functions. This was a time in which kids wanted to grow up to be astronauts instead of C.E.O.s. Most kids that day were in school, some watching the take-off on TVs. I had been taken out of school by my mother for a dentist’s appointment. I still remember the eccentric office, with duck images and on the wall, some of them knitted in middle-class homely fashion. I never understood them, and thought them strange, barely connecting them to hunting, a ritual I did not know. I was actually in one of the patient rooms in the dentist’s office when the radio, played in the rooms, related the news. I don’t remember much afterwards, but I think my mother took me home instead of back to school, because the next thing I remember was being in my room, finding myself crying while leaning against my bed. It was one of the first times that I can remember crying in this way. I leaned there, sobbing, mourning the astronauts and the space program and the unexpected horrors of my safe world.

The playground jokes started soonafter. NASA stood for Need Anther Seven Astronauts, and (the obligatory disaster joke) we knew the astronauts had dandruff because we found in the wreckage their Head & Shoulders (a brand name, apparently, for anti-dandruff shampoo). And I remember laughing, as a child. But there could be no doubt at what a major event the disaster was in the lives of my generation, who were fortunate enough not to live through a World War or Great Depression, though we like generations before learned our lives would likely end in nuclear fire.

Incidentally, I saw telemetry data for the Columbia during its flight on some cable channel that broadcasts such graphics, oddly, during the night. I suppose it's better than going off-air. I didn't even realize that it was Columbia. That's about as much of a personal connection to Columbia as I have, though it's more than many.

There are similarities between the two disasters. Both flights, curiously, had a special astronaut. The Challenger carried a "civilian" -- Christa McAulliffe, a female schoolteacher -- for the first time, and the Columbia had Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. Of course, the Challenger exploded little more than a minute after take-off and the Columbia on re-entry. More importantly, the Challenger was a bit more of a media event even before its explosion (take-offs are always more celebrated than landings, though the national news did not broadcast what was the twenty-fifth shuttle launch), making the disaster something everyone watched, at least soon after the fact. The footage of Challenger showed all but the faces, the space shuttle form perfectly visible until the enormous fireball. The footage of Columbia is a streak of burning gold breaking into other streams of debris, beginning at about 200,000 feet.

In the wake of Challenger, the space program was put on hold. Hearings were held at which Richard Feynman pulled his famous stunt to illustrate the effect of cold on the O-ring. Actually, NASA apparently knew or should have known this effect, if not its severity, as it was apparently demonstrated in the deteriorated O-rings on spent booster rockets recovered from sea after launches. In retrospect, the disaster was rather stupid. The launch had been delayed a number of times due to weather, and it was finally authorized for take-off at temperatures far lower than any previous shuttle flight. It seemed, as of 2002, that the space shuttle, a remarkable piece of engineering essentially built from the ground up, had a spectacularly successful record: as long as it didn’t take off in freezing cold, it was fine, flight after flight.

Unfortunately, the space budget was cut not long after. NASA, having already spent millions preparing future projects, had to ditch them or scale them back. NASA smartly figured out how to do more with less, making its projects more efficient and more reusable, though problems occurred in space probes that ceased certain functions. The dream of space seemed lost. Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrick had famously speculated on a manned flight to Jupiter or Saturn in 2001, while the real 2001 came and went without so much as another moon mission. Even Mars seems decades away, at least.

And we’re operating with space shuttles designed in the 1970s. We need a replacement system, one more reusable and less risky. Columbia was the first shuttle to leave Earth orbit in 1981. It had been refitted and repaired a number of times. Right now, its debris is scattered across Texas and a debris cloud is visible on weather radar, trailing through the skies. Let this be a symbol, a call for a new space vehicle, one without these dreadful booster rockets.

Let us hope that this tragedy invigorates, rather than weakens, our resolve to explore space. I’m fortunately hearing phrases like “the space program must go forward” from many people. Californian representative Dana Rohrabacher is on CNN as I write, calling for just this in fairly articulate terms. Perhaps, just perhaps, we’ve learned from our mistake.

The dream of space flight, of achievements for all of humanity and in human history, helped us in the turbulent 1960s. Let us hope that this renewed dream speaks to us in the very anxious first decade of the 21st century. And let us call the first new space vehicle Columbia.

Houston, where NASA has its command center, had a view of the debris shooting overhead. Houston, of course, had recently been devastated by the bankruptcy of their biggest local company, Enron, one of the biggest U.S. companies, a spectacular bankruptcy caused by spectacular corporate corruption and greed. Everything’s colored by recent history.

The last time I was awakened to such news was 11 September 2001. After that, nothing compares. It is a sign of the absolute gravity of that even over our consciousness that Columbia lacks the weight of Challenger. After losing 4,000 people, mostly civilians, and watching the New York skyline crumble and our entire nation’s military command center burning into the night, even the symbolism of the shuttle and the loss of seven noble explorers pales by comparison. This is the second reason my parents were concerned about my reaction: 11 September devastated me. I could barely do anything. I would be walking or in class when a flashback of people jumping from a burning building would paralyze me. Even now, seeing a skyscraper makes me think of a plane crashing into it. Every once in a while, I still turn on the news just to make sure it hasn’t happened again, or am afraid to do so, or try to fight the nervous urge to do so.

A great difference must be made between those who knowingly put themselves in risk and those who do not. To brave the risk of space flight is part of the astronaut’s job. To brave being shot or exploded (though, I think it important to add, not tortured) is part of the soldier’s job. The heroic firefighters and policemen who died on 11 September, and risk death time and time again in our cities, are paid to risk death as well. We must care about every soul, but we must remember that, when astronauts die during space flight, or soldiers are killed by their enemies, or firemen by fires, that they are paid to risk their lives, that their noble desire to serve and to explore entails this risk. After seeing thousands of civilians die, in this country, in those buildings I remembered from childhood, in the great American city, in Manhattan itself, nothing seems to compare.

I end with a final thought I’d like to share. I spent last night reading, among other things, new Warren Ellis comics and non-fiction. Just Wednesday, the new Previews was released, containing the long-awaited original graphic novel written by Mr. Ellis, Orbiter. Illustrated by Colleen Doran, Orbiter begins with the space shuttle Venture returning to Earth (10 years after it left) and crashing. Wide shots of the shuttle landing, in flames, bodies being crushed, were distributed. And now, just three days later, this disaster. I cannot help but wonder whether this project will be delayed like so many after 11 September, though the fact that it’s an original graphic novel with fairly low circulation might insulate it. I wish I had Warren Ellis on my speed dial; someday, maybe. Obviously, not as many works of art feature space shuttles as did terrorism or epic violence. Still, it’s these side stories, tacking these repercussions, that are the real body of any story -- as well as the least likely to be preserved.

So here is my time capsule, recording the immediate reactions of one author for history, offered on Saturday, the first of February, 2003, slightly less than two hours after I first heard.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT

Fuck. It feels like sacrilege. So, once again, no assignment.

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