Ach du kacke! Das Spaceshuttle ist tot!

[cottonman]

Ich habe folgende Nachricht von einem amerikanischen
Freund, der in Ausuebung seines Jobs als Ski-Lift Konstukteur
bei einem Unfall ein Bein und saemtliche Fingerspitzen verloren hat, und leider keine Gitarre mehr spielen kann, bekommen.
Ich poste die hier, weil ich meine, dass ich meine eigenen Gedanken, die in die gleiche Richtung gehen, nicht so eloquent
widergeben kann.
This ones for you Bud

You know, the loss of the shuttle is a terrible thing, but if I hear the
word
\"tragic\" one more time Im going to puke. Those folks were heroic, brave,
dedicated, etc.etc.etc.. But saying their loss was tragic is a misuse of
the
word. Tragedy implies that someone who has great potential oversteps his
bounds
in a quest for the unobtainable. We have become so accustomed to \"bloodless
war\",
\"bloodless conquest\", and risk-free anything that the idea that real people
putting their asses on the line to get us the life we have, scares the shit
out
of most people. Its okay to shed a tear for the occasional life lost
\"saving\"
Afghanistan, but the military wont let the press tell you the details of
the poor
bastard who got his guts spread on the lawn. We get complacent about a
16-year
span of perfect lift-offs, but we dont think about what goes through the
mind
of a crewman sitting on 3MM lbs of fuel, or hitting the ionosphere at mach
17.
Exploration is not armchair work. Even in as comparitively mild a field as
chemistry, I knew of more than a few people who died from exposure to God
knows
what. All day long I have been hearing: \"Its so risky\", and \"Should we be
continuing
to have a manned space program?\" ... Why dont we just crawl back into the
ocean
if its so scary on the land? Im sorry and Im sad, but those folks died
doing
the work that defines us as human... (some of us anyway).

Saludos,
cottonman


--
Wenn es fuer euch schon Morgen ist,
ist es fuer mich noch Heute...........