I can't really say much right now, as I'm dumbstruck. I've been spending the last couple of hours spewing expletives and watching the TV screen with furrowed brow, which is what I do whenever I'm attempting to comprehend such horrible images as these. This is a terrible, terrible day for Americans, or anyone else for that matter, who wants a future for the Human Race.

Right before I went to bed around 6am last night (or yesterday morning), CNN was showing a re-entry flight path, and saying how great the viewing will be for those in the south. I was unhappy that the latitude and cloud cover in this area prevented me from seeing it. I guess it's something I wouldn't want to have seen now anyways. I think I turned off my TV about a half hour before the shuttle broke up.

I woke to a call from my dad, and the news of the tragedy. Not exactly the thing you want to wake up to, but I guess that's always the way crap like this goes down. "How can this have happened?" I asked. The shuttle program had again reached such a comfortable level of monotony, of steady routine; surely it couldn't be dangerous anymore, right?

The laws of nature, dangerous and unpredictable, despise being taken for granted. We forget it, but space exploration is indeed a risky business. Considering the complexity of the machines involved, it is amazing that every other flight doesn't suffer the same horrible fate STS-107.

I'm sure there will be those who blame incompetence at NASA for this disaster. While that organization has its structural problems, any questioning of the operations team's dedication and ability is absurd. The 25 year old shuttle, which uses 35 year old technology, is a machine of such complexity, and such frailty, that maintaining perfect safety is quite impossible.

Despite the tragedy, my hope is that the destruction of the Columbia will remind us all of the importance of manned space flight, and put a new emphasis on the space program. We need a replacement for the shuttle, and we need to make many more flights. We need to conquer space, to move forward to the moon, to mars, to distant stars, because, if we don't, what's been the point of 3 billion years of life on earth. Shying away now would spit on the memory of the crew of Columbia, of Challenger, and of Apollo 1.