Phil Plait's thoughts on Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia

[LongTomH]

Phil Plait has a post entitled: Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia and those who sacrifice for the stars.

Phil goes into a detailed analysis of why the Apollo 1 tragedy occurred: The use of a pure oxygen atmosphere at 5 psi (pounds per square inch) to make the Apollo capsule lighter and the need to test on the ground with a pure oxygen atmosphere of 15 psi, making the fire danger much higher. Add in a complicated hatch release mechanism which made unlatching and opening the hatch in an emergency both difficult and slow.

Add in a stray spark, and the rest is history.

And so they died.

But I’ll take this opportunity to make a point. People die. When they push back frontiers, when they explore, when they stand on the vanguard of what is known and what isn’t, the chances of catastrophe are higher. The best we can do is try as hard as we can to minimize those risks. Of course, the way to make risks absolutely minimized is to go nowhere, do nothing.

That is unacceptable. Ships are safest in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.

NASA, along with a handful of agencies for other countries, want to go back to the Moon, and push back the frontiers even farther to near-Earth asteroids and to Mars. I agree, and know that we must continue on. And, at some point, in some way, we will lose more people. This is inevitable, but it does not mean we should not go.

And so, Phil asks that we remember the names of:

• Grisson, White, Chaffee, Apollo 1
  
• and Komarov Soyuz 1,
  
• and Dobrovolski, Patsayev, Volkov Soyuz 11,
  
• and Scobee, Smith, McAuliffe, Onizuka, Resnick, McNair, Jarvis Challenger STS 51-L,
  
• and Brown, Husband, Clark, Chawla, Anderson, McCool, Ramon Columbia STS 107

This list will not end. But there are billions of us, billions, whose names are not on this list, yet our lives have been changed forever due to the ones who are.

Per ardua ad astra.

So, raise a glass tonight to the fallen and, if you really want to honor their memories, do not let the US stop exploring!

Edited to Add: Also check these threads from the Bad Astronomy Website:

What Value Space Exploration?
Give Space a Chance

[Phoonzang]

1. Shame they all died for us to sit around on our asses for 30 years

and do nothing in space. We haven't even left low Earth orbit since the 1972.