For the week of February 5 - 11, 2003

Through different eyes, Columbia’s different meanings

Commentary by PAT MURPHY

---

Few events provide so many meanings to so many people as does a tragedy of the immensity of the shuttle Columbia’s ghastly return to earth as a shower of thousands of fiery shards.

As a general rule, ground-bound mortals looking heavenward are dumfounded and dazzled by the mystique of nervy crews heroically blazing new trails in airless space in quest of exotic knowledge.

However, in the aftermath of Saturday’s calamity, some are apt to narrow their perspectives.

• To realists who grasp the chilling dangers of experimental flight: the Columbia and its crew—and the doomed shuttle Challenger and its crew 17 years ago—were costly, necessary losses in the onward drive for technological excellence in exploring space. Aviation’s honor rolls are filled with hundreds of now-forgotten test pilots who perished over the years while gambling their lives to improve aerospace science.
  
   
• To cynics with an eye for irony: the disaster over Texas provided a contrast between humanity’s best and worst extremes: Columbia’s crew was as good as they come as human beings, as accomplished technicians and scientists, as selfless men and women risking their lives for a relative pittance in salaries. Yet, only about 120 miles from the path of their final plunge lies Houston, the home of Enron and its despised executives whose contribution to humankind was self-serving acts of criminal fraud that robbed tens of thousands of investors and employees of their savings and their jobs.
  
   
• To U.S. religious zealots: Columbia’s awful end was divine retribution for some imagined national sins, as they were wont to believe about the catastrophe of September 11.
  
   
• To Muslims with an eye for the mystical: the presence of an Israeli Air Force officer aboard Columbia and the orbiter’s death dive near the Texas town of Palestine was a sign of God’s displeasure with U.S. support of Israel.
  
   
• To pessimists: the disaster was a metaphor for gloom all around and cause for sighing, "What next?" as America threatens war in the Middle East, endures a battered economy, suffers lost jobs, watches soaring new federal debt, reads of budget despair in the states, lives with the fear of terrorism.
  
   
• To advocates of unmanned space voyages: Columbia’s loss was virtual proof that manned space exploration is a waste of lives, time and resources, and should be replaced by robots.
  
   
• To UFO theorists: was Columbia a victim of alien forces patrolling outer space with laser guns?
  
   
• Finally, to families of the perished crew: the tragedy should not stop more space research, despite the costs and grief.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.