Monday, February 03, 2003 :::
I've been wondering since Saturday why the Columbia disaster upsets us so much. (To be clear, that's "us"; for the hours when all I had was a short news item on my phone, I thought it was "me", but when the news radio seven hours later had canceled commercials, traffic, weather, and anything else to bring us continuing "we don't know anything more about the Columbia", I felt better — everyone else had lost perspective, too. Up to that point, I thought perhaps it had a particular impact on Generation X, i.e. those of us who remember the Challenger but were born after the Kennedy assassination.)
Last month a plane crash in North Carolina killed more than twice as many people. The astronauts were, in some sense, more famous, but no more so than the Oklahoma State basketball team, I don't think. The vehicle we lost was much more expensive, but an unmanned vehicle that was just as expensive I don't think would have had the same impact. The debris raining down seemed to intensify the disaster, but perhaps mostly because of what it symbolized coming back to earth.
There's something symbolic about the space shuttle and its astronauts, I think, and that moxie/arrogance/cussedness/"damn the torpedoes" is probably a big part of that. As Ilan Ramon suggested that he represented all of Israel, perhaps our astronauts, every time they go up, represent not just the country of America, but the idea of America. Spectacular failure is part of spectacular risk-taking, but it still upsets us; in response we resolve not to quit taking risks, but to make sure we succeed.
::: posted by dWj at 1:33 PM
