Per Aspera Ad Astra

I was in seventh grade at the time, going from gym class to the locker room to clean up and change when I heard about the Challenger explosion.

"The Russians did it. Ought to nuke 'em." Or so went the political analysis at Dirksen Junior High boy's locker room.

By the time I got to my next class, the battered TV on the rickety A/V stand was plugged in and alive, showing the contrails of an exploded space ship, blossoming out and then down like branches on a willow tree.

My generation had never known a televised failure that dramatic. We had lived through the daily death count in Vietnam or that fateful motorcade in 1963 Dallas. Reagan getting shot was close, but he lived. The Challenger was real, though. We saw it on the TV.

There's something just a touch more tragic about this than other tragedies. Space shuttle crews represent the best and brightest among the gene pool, all acting for the holistic benefit of man. To Americans, in love with the idea of pioneers, the crews are the first settlers in space, continuing that sense of adventure and pride from landing on the moon in 1969. Going up into the void was progress, a true meritocracy where the smartest wins out and talented scientists could literally get above our petty bullshit and craft something new out there. I don't know where, but as long as it wasn't here, with crime and corruption and war and pollution and mindless religious fanaticism. Space was our happily ever after ever in a fairy tale for the empirically minded.

The shuttle explosion today was the first massive spacecraft failure since that day nearly 17 years ago. You have to admit, you never think about the hazards related to space flight until something like this happens. You also have to admit that, statistically speaking, it's a pretty safe way to travel. While it is a tragedy, the Columbia was the first U.S. space shuttle in orbit, beginning its spacefaring days back in 1981. According to CNN, also borne in 1981 if memory serves, it made 28 launches in its lifetime.

The cable news coverage of the disaster is now moving from facts to fillers, asking witnesses how they feel as Americans. Footage of debris, impacting in some field in Texas, is sprouting up. You are being warned to stay away from it since the materials are potentially lethal to touch. This is good to know: Space shuttles are flying boxes of poison. Whose brilliant idea was to launch boxes of carcinogen that could explode in-flight? Apparently, no one at NASA thought something like "The Andromeda Strain" could relate to the pretty white birds they shoot into orbit.

Just curious: How soon will Columbia debris show up on e-Bay?

Pretty quick, it turns out.

No hint of terrorism with this tragedy, despite the constant reminder of an Israeli astronaut was among the ranks of the doomed crew. No, it looks like this machine just fell apart, too much strain on re-entry. Too many times around the block. You just hope whatever happened up there took their lives quickly. You place yourself in their shoes to imagine the sense of one massive clusterfuck coming their way, nothing you can do except to pray that mercy, traveling on gossamer wings, is faster than a space shuttle going 12,000 miles per hour.

I lived in the heart of NASA for a few years while I was in Texas and had neighbors who were in the control room when the Challenger exploded. I remember stories they would tell about how they got through those next hellish days by comforting each other, holding on to the great goals of exploration and the optimistic beliefs the crew died fast. In these next days, we shall weep and have our spirits laid low. Perhaps, when we are finished mourning, when the wreaths have been laid, when the professional speechwriters hear their words uttered by the head of state, when we have dutifully and lovingly comforted the families of the lost, when the tributes go silent, we will start talking about retiring the current stable of shuttles that may have looked way-bitchin' during the Jimmy Carter-"Moonraker" gambit of sci-fi imagination and instead try for something new, something safer, something sturdier, something not packed with cancer-causing agents.

It'll be bittersweet, but it's a tribute nonetheless.