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02-02-2003, 02:50 AM
Again We Helplessly Gazed At Agonizing Fireballs (http://www.nypost.com/commentary/67979.htm)
By ANDREA PEYSER
February 2, 2003 -- THE cloud hung overhead for hours - crooked, slender fingers of smoke and debris climbing ever-upward, then halting, forever, in the middle of the sky.
In January 1986, I was a young reporter for the Tampa Tribune, covering a courthouse less than 50 miles from the Kennedy Space Center. We used the ho-hum event, the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, as an excuse to goof off, to gather on the roadside and gawk as the shiny craft reached for space.
We did not dare trust our own senses as disaster unfolded before our eyes. A shuttle launch was routine, after all. Multimillion-dollar spacecrafts were reflections of our greatness, of modern man's competence and ambition combining to break the natural human bonds to earth. Explosion was not an option.
Yet we could not wave away the cloud of upward-reaching exhaust as it broke into two, distinct paths, then stopped. The shuttle had broken up. The very sky was a graveyard. The silence that followed was awful.
A woman gasped. People beseeched strangers to explain what had happened. Then, on the radio, an anonymous NASA official intoned the immortally stupid words: "We have a major malfunction."
For improbable hours, the slender thread of smoke and debris, evidence of the seemingly impossible, remained overhead. The cloud dominated everything, everyone. It was a symbol.
...
CLick here to read more (http://www.nypost.com/commentary/67979.htm)
By ANDREA PEYSER
February 2, 2003 -- THE cloud hung overhead for hours - crooked, slender fingers of smoke and debris climbing ever-upward, then halting, forever, in the middle of the sky.
In January 1986, I was a young reporter for the Tampa Tribune, covering a courthouse less than 50 miles from the Kennedy Space Center. We used the ho-hum event, the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, as an excuse to goof off, to gather on the roadside and gawk as the shiny craft reached for space.
We did not dare trust our own senses as disaster unfolded before our eyes. A shuttle launch was routine, after all. Multimillion-dollar spacecrafts were reflections of our greatness, of modern man's competence and ambition combining to break the natural human bonds to earth. Explosion was not an option.
Yet we could not wave away the cloud of upward-reaching exhaust as it broke into two, distinct paths, then stopped. The shuttle had broken up. The very sky was a graveyard. The silence that followed was awful.
A woman gasped. People beseeched strangers to explain what had happened. Then, on the radio, an anonymous NASA official intoned the immortally stupid words: "We have a major malfunction."
For improbable hours, the slender thread of smoke and debris, evidence of the seemingly impossible, remained overhead. The cloud dominated everything, everyone. It was a symbol.
...
CLick here to read more (http://www.nypost.com/commentary/67979.htm)