Cue theme music: Requiem
Today
the flags are at half-mast, as they were yesterday. How many times have you
gone past and idly wondered who died? This time, I can answer that question. This
time, it’s our guilt—perhaps not wholly earned, especially by those of us who
come late to the industry, but felt no less keenly for that. The flags fly at
half-mast for bravery and for timorousness, knowledge and willful blindness.
They fly at half-mast for frayed wires in a pure, highly combustible oxygen
atmosphere; they fly for O-rings that sat through a freezing Florida night to
then be subjected to the roaring inferno of ignition and liftoff. Could these
flags at half-mast have been prevented? Probably. There were risks associated;
but then, there always are risks. Someone felt apprehensive, and yet we are
dealing with the unknown, the untried, the untested. You can mitigate risk all
you want, but sooner or later you have to take a leap. Were these leaps, these
accidents that cost so much? I don’t know. I know they taught us valuable
lessons, but I can’t tell you if those lessons were worth three lives and seven
lives. How does one measure the worth of caution, of safety, or of independent
review? How does one measure the worth of a life? These are tradeoffs we should
never have to compute, but will, without a doubt, have to contemplate again.
There will be more memorials in the future; there will be more moments of
silence, more remembrances, and more commemorations. Shall we quit in
anticipation of these sorrows? No. We shall not squander the wisdom that we
have gained, nor shall we continue blithely down the same path. We adjust, we
correct, we do it again, and we remember.
In
Memoriam:
Apollo 1 -- Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White
STS-51-L Challenger -- Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka,
Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe