Editor's Note: Carolyn Permentier is a writer living in Arnold, MD. Her book, The Wacko From Waco, is available online at www.bn.com and  www.iuniverse.com (in the bookstore). Using her life as a model, she argues that religion is a major factor underlying many of man's ills.
Ms. Permentier is a regular contributor to psst! magazine.

I can only imagine the excitement of the crew aboard the shuttle, Columbia, on February 1, 2003, as they neared the end of a successful research flight that had begun on January 16th. But then, something went very wrong.

Seventeen years after the Challenger exploded on liftoff, January 28, 1986, another disaster has tainted the already beleaguered U.S. space program with the loss of 7 precious lives.

As body parts and pieces of the shuttle are being retrieved from Texas and Louisiana, the nightmarish question is everywhere... could this have been prevented?

The loss of life and the agonizing pain of loved ones left behind is always horrific. And the scope of such a catastrophe cannot be fully grasped. Words are simply inadequate. But if this loss of life was the result of an under-funded or mismanaged space program, the implications are even more significant. And, apparently, rumor suggests that these are precisely what caused the Columbia tragedy.

I recall a time in 2000, when some high in the military warned, offering intelligence to back their point, that we had better be worried and ready to combat a terrorist attack. The military wanted to prepare for a smallpox epidemic, warning that a "lone terrorist" with one small vial could wreak havoc on our nation. Their cry to Congress? We need funding!

But funding was not forthcoming until September 11th. Of course, there's funding now, after the fact. Why must we wait for a disaster to get it? The squeaky wheel doesn't seem to get the grease around here until it falls off the axle! 

Much attention is being focused on the shuttle tiles that protected critical wing sections. According to a technical report by Paul Fischbeck, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he alerted the space agency nine years ago to the tile problem. He reports that NASA struggled for years to try to ensure the tiles were firmly attached to the shuttle, but they never completely solved the problems. As of the writing of this article, NASA has made no comment on the report.

Following a $90 million overhaul in April of 2000, the Columbia was put back into service last March, flying astronauts on a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The Columbia was the oldest ship in NASA's fleet - the first to fly into space. Yet its final mission was only the 28th, and the shuttles were designed to fly 100 times before being retired.

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