When I woke up Saturday morning, I didn’t think anything was unusual. It was about 8:30 a.m. I ate some food and read the paper. About fifteen minutes later, with Saturday morning cable cartoons blaring in the background, I wandered over to the computer.

At roughly 8:46 I read the headline “NASA loses contact with Shuttle”. I knew that wasn’t good. When I read the details of the article and realized they were thirty minutes overdue for landing I thought, “Oh no.”

I spent the rest of the morning glued to the TV listening to vapid morons whose understanding of the space program consisted of watching The Right Stuff more than once spew out inconsistent inaccuracies about the program, how the shuttle operates, what its mission was, and what may have happened.

I sat there, watching the various angles of that horrible descent. But, unlike most people I was looking closely. What had happened? Was their attitude slightly off? Had the avionics failed in some way, causing the angle of descent to venture outside the nominal 28 to 38 degrees? What in the hell happened? Surely that little bit of foam that fell of the tank at liftoff couldn’t have knocked off a great number of tiles. Those tiles are huge. But if it had, the shuttle wouldn’t have been able to handle the friction caused by re-entry. Breakup should have been evident for many minutes. Surely the telemetry or instrumentation aboard the shuttle would support that.

My mind reeled. This was a bad, bad day for me. I’m a space buff. Seven astronauts, the rock stars of my world, had perished. To continue the musical metaphor, they died on stage with smiles on their faces. They died slightly before the midway point between Earth and the heavens, two places they felt indelibly committed to. If an astronaut were to die, I could think of no more fitting place than between his or her two homes.

Though I am an adult, whenever I hear anything about the space program I become a starry-eyed child again. I look at astronauts the same way that many people look at professional athletes. These men and women are the elite. They are the best of humanity. Physical strength combined with stunning mental abilities and a courage beyond anything we could ever imagine.

The men and women of NASA and their sister agencies around the world understand physics. They know what laws govern our universe. And yet, as a matter of routine, they ignore those laws and fight to poke a small hole in our atmosphere and spend some time in a place that no human was ever meat to go.

That’s all you need to tell a human being. “It’s impossible. You aren’t meant to do that.” They said that when we descended from the trees and headed across the savannah. They repeated this when men crossed the Bering Straights into North America. “Don’t go there! We don’t know what you’ll find.” They said the same when we crossed the oceans in wooden ships. They said the same when we first flew. And they didn’t believe it when Laika, our canine predecessor, first went to space. Poor Laika did not survive. But John Glenn did. As did Gordon Cooper. And Alan Bean. And on and on and on.

Right now there is talk about the space program and what it offers us. There is much rhetoric about national pride, etc. All I know is that wherever the crew of STS-107 may be right now they are sitting with the crew from the Challenger and they are all saying, “Fix it and go back up there! Fix it and go! Get back up there!”

Astronauts are our greatest human resources. Forget about nationalities here. Astronauts are a source of pride for all humanity. Our entire species should look at every man and woman who has ever set foot in space and say, “Thank you. Thank you for being the few alive who are not willing to accept nature’s boundaries. Thank you for continually pushing the limits of human experience and knowledge.”

Astronauts are the pinnacle of what humans can be. They are explorers, adventurers and scientists rolled into one. They are on a constant quest for knowledge. They seek to understand this small part of our universe and try to ever expand our concept of life on this little blue-green dot and the neighborhood around us. Forget about borders, governments and social set ups. Astronauts are humans. They are all our people. They are all our heroes. Astronauts work on a daily basis, in risk, to expand humanity’s reach and understanding.

And they deserve our thanks and our awe.

Each time they strap themselves in to the shuttle they know the risk. They know that they are sitting atop of a pyro-cocktail that could kill them if something goes wrong. As they sit in space, they are aware of the myriad of situations that could kill them. They’ve studied those situations. They understand them. They’ve been thinking about them over and over and over. They think about them so they can be prepared for the situation. They know that as they re-enter the atmosphere they have three possible outcomes. 1. Bounce off the atmosphere and back out into space. 2. Burn up. 3. Land.

They know the risks. They understand them.

And, despite what happened this past Saturday, I would happily accept a job on the space shuttle. I would gladly accept the risk of take off, space and reentry. Despite what I’ve seen. Despite all the dangers. I would go in a heartbeat. And this is coming from a man who is afraid to fly.

I would go into space. I would gladly put my name beside those men and woman who have gone before. I would proudly stand beside the men and women who are waiting to go.

Just like every other space fanatic, I hope that good comes from this horrible situation. Perhaps it is time to retire the current shuttle fleet and work on a new program. A more modern, flexible, envelope-pushing fleet. The designs are out there. The discussion had been taking place over the last decade. Perhaps the men and women of STS-107 will have ushered in a new era of space travel. One that goes faster, farther. One that is stronger, more daring. One that is safer.

Let us hope. Let us hope. Because, as Richard Feynman said after the Challenger, “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”