Submitted April 22, 2003, 1:55 PM
What were your thoughts and feelings when you heard that Columbia was lost?
My father-in-law called at about 9:30 and told me about the space shuttle breaking up. He said there was some debris that could be coming down on us since we are in Waxahachie, Texas. After hearing all the details on the TV, I thought about how dangerous it is, the stuff that astronauts do. Many of us take for granted that the shuttle will come back in one piece. This time it didn't happen.
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If you are old enough to remember, please compare your responses to other important moments in space travel like the Challenger disaster and the moon walk.
It seems like the Challenger disaster had a much bigger impact on us than did the Columbia. We all were pretty well shocked about it. Some kids I guess couldn't really handle it, so they started making jokes about it. I was in 6th grade at the time, and seem to remember that that was most of what people talked about at the time. I remember too that the space program was immediately stopped, where this time NASA firmly declared that they would be launching other shuttles in the near future.
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Have your views of space travel changed over time?
Now I see space travel as having a more practical use than I did when I was growing up. At that time, I thought space exploration was just something great we should do for its own sake, but now I see the benefits of the research that's being done on the missions.
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In addition to saving your story to the archive, may we post it to the web? (yes/no)
How did you hear about this project?
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