Yesterday, at 1400 GMT, contact was lost with the space shuttle Columbia, which was on its way to land in Florida after the end of mission 107.
Daniel Rosenberg
Yesterday, at 1400 GMT, contact was lost with the space shuttle Columbia, which was on its way to land in Florida after the end of mission 107. A few minutes later, the pictures began to arrive showing the shuttle burning up at the entrance to the atmosphere. The seven crew members of the ferry and their son Ilan Ramon, perished.
Since the dawn of time, humans have set out to explore the world in which we live, Magellan, Columbus, Marco Polo and others marked the path between Europe and the rest of the world and brought great wealth and prosperity to the old continent. But in addition to the researchers who became famous, there are a large number of other researchers who fell in the line of duty - whether it was trying to reach the South Pole or trying to circumnavigate the world.
When Yuri Gagarin became the first cosmonaut, a new land was opened to the human race - but disasters were not long in coming. Vladimir Komarov died when the Soyuz spaceship he was in crashed, the Apollo 1 crew burned in the spaceship while it was being tested on the ground and the most famous disaster of all - the Challenger crash in which seven people died. Yesterday, seven more names were added to this sad list, including the first Israeli astronaut. But this, despite the grief, is a known risk. When those astronauts boarded the shuttle they were as well aware of the risk involved as any other astronaut. Space exploration is a dangerous thing. Failures are not unusual, on the contrary, they are part of the game. Therefore, despite the terrible disaster, we must not give up - we must continue with more determination on our way to the stars and fulfill the legacy of the fallen.
In the coming days and weeks, the American space agency will find the failures that caused the accident and draw the conclusions. But we have the duty to continue promoting space exploration, to continue our journey to places far from the earth, to continue the path of the astronauts who perished.
We lost two space shuttles but we must not let the space program freeze because without a future we have no existence. If we don't demand a space program that is bolder, more innovative and reaches new heights then the space program will die. For the future of our children, that one day they will be able to look up to the stars and know that there are humans out there in the distance, we must keep the torch lit.
Despite the heavy disaster we must realize NASA's vision - improve our lives here, explore space there, and find life beyond. As the future generation, we must dare to keep flying, dare to board a spacecraft on the way up, dare to dream so that in fifty years we will look around and see a flourishing human society.
Daniel Rosenberg
Track chairman
israspace@yahoo.com
