In 1986, one week ago today, the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff. Six hours ago, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart in a shockingly familiar spread of white skeletal fingers, as it bore seven astronauts home. The two disasters seem almost to form an arc, lead to the horrible thought that the Challenger, at last, has come home.
When that earlier disaster happened, I was in French class. A teacher from another room rushed in and told us about it, and my initial reaction was incredulous disbelief. In the world of 1986, things like that just didn't happen. Symbols of science and progress and order functioned as advertised; and the death of seven astronauts was a tragedy. The news mourned them for what seemed like forever; we were told that this would be a defining moment for our generation, our Kennedy Assassination. The one day in our lives when we would all, forever and always, remember where we had been.
Of all the happy lies I grew up believing, the death of that one hurts the most.
We have fallen quite far since then. The world where exploding space shuttles is historic has passed away, slipped beneath the waters, and vanished. Against the backdrop of terrors past and wars yet to come, this does not stand out. It's almost expected. It's news.
It's a latecomer, noisily getting taking its seat in a crowded theater of tragedies already hungrily watching us, halfway into the second act. And even the details of the disaster don't stand on their own. They are woven through with the spirit of the age. The image of the Israeli payload specialist, framed with the crew between the American and Israeli flags, makes us wonder: what will this mean for the Middle East? We see the craters, staked out by the Department of Homeland Security, and we wonder: how did they get so much power?
While we were sleeping, the skies have changed. We have entered an age of crisis, akin to the buildup that preceded the Civil War and World War II. We may not have known it, but for some time now there has been an empty seat at our tables. We have reserved that space for tragedy, preparing ourselves without knowing it for disasters yet to come.
We are not the Americans we were in 1986, and this is not their country. When we are asked, as we may or may not be, where we were when the Columbia disaster happened, many of us will not be able to tell them. Many more, without that clue, will be unable to recall that the second shuttle to explode was in fact the Challenger. Too much has intervened; there are too many marks on the canvas.
This has been a harsh century for Americans, thus far. A century of lessons learned, commencing with a Decade of Limits. On this day of endings, I plan to reflect on the deaths of those seven brave men and women, on the grief of their families, and on the future of this country and the world.
But even more than that, I wonder at all that we've lost, how many hopes and dreams and certainties, on how much has quietly slipped away without our knowing.
posted by Proconsul at 12:16 PM
