The family and I were camping at Death Valley this weekend so I hadn't posted on this big week of space disasters. It is the 40th anniversary of Apollo I fire (January 27, 1967) 21st anniversary of the Challenger accident (January 28, 1986) and on February 1st the 4th anniversary of the Columbia tragedy. Today NASA recalled these tragedies on the Day of Remembrance here.
This Day of Remembrance also reminds us that despite our losses, the American people have never wavered in their support for space exploration. They know that it brings out the best in us, our creativity, our curiosity, our courage in the face of the unknown. Space exploration reminds us of what it is to be a human being, in ways that have been, and will be again, both supremely gratifying and deeply humbling. But through it all, through both failure and success, we continue our work to know, to experience, to understand, to become a spacefaring civilization.
Let us hope we continue the search for unknowns and overlook the risks involved. May these space pioneers rest in peace as they have paved the way to our future.
Capt. Ed has a post on Apollo I here.
Here is the poem "High Flight" from which President Ronald Reagan quoted from in 1986,
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
No comments:
Post a Comment