Wow–Space Shuttle Flashbacks

I woke up this morn­ing to the news that the Space Shut­tle blew up on re-entry.

I had two thoughts rush through my mind imme­di­ate­ly:

1) Wow–I vivid­ly remem­ber the last time this hap­pened. It shocked me deeply–the idea that our sci­ence was­n’t per­fect and that Amer­i­ca could make a mis­take and that heroes could die.

2) The first Israeli astro­naut was on the shut­tle, and it’s such a high-pro­file Amer­i­can sym­bol: it sure would be an attrac­tive tar­get to ter­ror­ists… Acci­dents hap­pen, and I hope that’s all it was. If it was ter­ror­ists, it would have to be some sort of sab­o­tage before the shut­tle took off (that, or some­one on the shut­tle would have had to turn traitor–something I con­sid­er extreme­ly unlike­ly).

I have intense sym­pa­thy for the fam­i­lies of the astro­nauts: may God com­fort their hearts with His peace.

[update: my wife men­tioned that it looked as though I actu­al­ly sus­pect ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty. Not so! I’m report­ing the first two thoughts that flashed through my mind, not giv­ing my cur­rent opin­ion. For the record, I think it’s improb­a­ble that ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty caused the Space Shut­tle to dis­in­te­grate.]