17 years ago and a couple of days I remember being in my aunt’s house in Somerset watching the TV footage of Challenger taking off and a couple of minutes later being stunned into silence as it exploded. Today, the same emotions are going through my mind. I don’t have a TV in my home and moments like this are when you really miss it – although there is nothing to say and even less to do, it seems the closest way of being connected. Dave Winer posts an image from the National Weather Centre in the USA that shows the crash. Outside the Intercontinental hotel in Miami there’s a monument to the 7 astronauts who died in the last accident. I’ve walked past it so many times never expecting that we’d need another one. Richard Feynmann was one of the key investigators after Challenger and I remember him explaining how the ‘o-ring’ problem arose. It will take many more bright minds to understand this one, and 100x more than that to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Sometimes it seems like we’re trying too hard to get some place, only to find that trying hard doesn’t cut it.
Dan Gillmor says what I was thinking.
