I’m completely shocked tonight on hearing the news about the space shuttle Columbia breaking up over Texas. It’s the kind of thing you suspect would happen during lift off, as with Challenger, as opposed to when the mission is just about done and dusted.
The space travel of science fiction is obviously some way off when the best minds on the planet at NASA cannot guarantee the safety of a crew on a journey which has become fairly routine over the last couple of decades.
Whether it turns out to be fatigue from 28 missions in just over 20 years of service, or some other component failure that brought about the demise of Columbia, it’s a horrible tragedy. For the folks on Sky News and BBC News 24 to be sitting there discussing the possibility of terrorist involvement seems absolutely deplorable to me. It’s bad enough without so called experts trying to sensationalise their coverage with the T word.