RE: shuttle breaks up on re-entry

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Feb 01 2003 - 22:30:58 MST


Anders writes

> The real tragedy here is that a single accident can be so devastating.
> If seven good people have been killed in a car crash it would at most
> have appeared on local news, and a plane crash would at most merit a
> small national news mention unless it was particularly bad.

I have to admit that I am less shaken up than most on this
list. I was more upset in 1986 when the Challenger blew up,
but then, I was at work and everyone was commiserating.
Today, I overslept (like Michael), and have only heard
about it on radio. Even so, I'll bet that television
would have made it more sorrowful, because you could see
how deeply affected the anchor-people were.

I would have been more saddened by the demise of even of
someone I never met on this list, say Rafal or Eliezer or
Damien with whom I've exchanged quite a few posts. Perhaps
there is no accounting for how tragedy affects one.

> In a mature field there would be many other groups and systems that
> would to some extent buffer an accident - if a plane goes down, it won't
> freeze air traffic as a whole. But in a highly concentrated field -
> human gene therapy, the Concorde, the space program - accidents not just
> mean the direct loss, but also a setback for the entire field. In order
> to avoid risks to the other important parts of the project all activity
> is closed down in order to investigate.
>
> But there is a further problem. The early railway crashes did not end
> railways, it just led to the creation of safer railways. But the
> Hindenburg crash spelled the end of the whole field of commercial
> zeppelins. The difference was the spread of active support for the
> technology, how many different projects/approaches there are and
> especially if the general perception of the technology is that it is
> needed.

The difference was more than that. The Americans had already become
very wary of airships, with two huge disasters due to storms having
nearly killed the projects already. The Hindenburg just finished it
off, at least in the U.S.A.

Lee

> We need to get away from this risky, brittle elite project stage for
> many of our pet technologies, especially genetics and space. Setbacks
> happen, but they should be something to learn from rather the end of the
> endeavor.



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