It was 17 years ago when the space shuttle Challenger lifted off on a crisp, cold, January morning to take seven astronauts into the heavens. They never made it. Seventy-three seconds later, the flight of Challenger came to a tragic end as the orbiter exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, and the nation went into mourning.
On Saturday, almost 17 years to the day of Challenger’s explosion, the nation once again had to face the loss of a space shuttle. Columbia, which in April would have celebrated 22 years in the service of NASA, was returning home from a successful mission when a catastrophic failure caused the orbiter to literally shatter over Texas.
We mourn the fallen: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon.
These seven heroes died for a lofty purpose: to increase scientific knowledge and to bring advancements from space down to Earth in service to humanity. Their cause was more noble than being killed for some fleeting glory in a war, or for any of the other petty purposes that people lionize the dead.
Space travel must no longer be taken for granted. It is a highly dangerous pursuit. Of all major space disasters in U.S. history (there now are four), only one of those ended with the victims surviving — the Apollo 13 mission which returned to Earth on April 17, 1970. In many cases with space flight, once the astronauts are in space, essentially they have already passed the point of no return.
In order to safeguard those explorers, the nation now needs to demand increased funding for NASA. At one time, NASA was the premier space agency on Earth. It is the only group that has sent astronauts to the moon. Yet its successes since the 1970s have been few. Much of that is because of the drastic cuts in funding that have plagued the administration since the Reagan years — a problem exacerbated by the current threat of an expensive war and a giant tax cut. It is time to reverse this trend.
NASA needs to refit or replace its aging fleet of space shuttles. It is time to return to the moon and to reach Mars, to make the new International Space Station a gateway for advancements for the betterment of humanity. Certainly, the money exists, if only the nation once again becomes awed by the possibilities of space travel and demands that it be made a priority.
John F. Kennedy made a historic challenge in 1961 that humankind would land on the moon within 10 years. We need a new challenge — something not only for national pride, but world pride. The world’s fallen astronauts deserve no less.