Yeah but...
When I was a senior in high school, the space shuttle Challenger exploded into a ball of fire shortly after liftoff. I learned many things that day, not the least of which was observing how network television manipulted the raw footage which I saw that morning, into a more "effective" (albeit misleading) clip for the evening news. One thought which struck me then, and which I was reminded of this past Saturday when the Columbia disintegrated, was, "yes but there were so few people aboard."
I know that sounds horrible, and I mean no disrespect to the crew, their families, their friends, and their colleagues at NASA for whom the holes left by the loss of these people can never be filled. However, for the rest of the country and for the world to be obessed over these seven lives strikes me as absurd. In my opinion, it is only the spectacular nature of their death that draws our morbid fascination.
These seven people took an enormous, calculated risk to go up into space to accomplish equally enormous and wonderful goals which were unattainable on Earth. I believe these risks are very well taken and that NASA has and will continue to minimize the risks. However, space travel cannot be expected to be safe. How about ground travel? We do expect ground travel to be safe. Most of us get into our cars and pull out onto the road without the least thought weighing the risk of death versus picking up milk at the corner store. However, consider this statistic:
There were 17,448 alcohol-related fatalities in 2001 — 41 percent of the total traffic fatalities for the year.
National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Fact Sheet 2001
Now what do you think about pulling out onto the road. Is it worth it to go out to dinner on Friday night? Perhaps you would rather eat in, safe in your home. Seven lives lost in one Saturday morning are certainly to be mourned, but what about 17,448 lives lost in one year? Where is the public mourning for those lives? Or do they need to die all at once, in a spectacle caught on video.
(There is another take on this sentiment over at the British site, The Guardian.)
