[537 Votes]

Can we grieve, first?

With all due respect, I really wonder how much grieving I can do for people whose names I never even knew until this morning. There's authentic emotion, and then there's the synthetic kind which intellectually intimidated people like using in order to belittle those who are intellectually capable of thinking up solutions to prevent future tragedies.

Technically-knowledgeable people often respond to tragic circumstances by trying to think up solutions. This is not coldly insensitive; it is wonderfully appropriate. And in its own way, it is the sincerest form of demonstrating true grief.

[thulldud]

Technically-knowledgeable people often respond to tragic circumstances by trying to think up solutions. This is not coldly insensitive; it is wonderfully appropriate. And in its own way, it is the sincerest form of demonstrating true grief.

Hear, hear. I ask everyone to consider that this sort of response is exactly what the shuttle crew themselves would consider an appropriate honor. After all, they didn't go into space because they wanted to live forever -- they went to learn and achieve. The risk of life balances the potential win of each mission. They could minimize it, but it never goes away.

Dare nonetheless.

[The Duke]

Also, I find myself wondering what we're supposed to be "grieving" about? I must admit that I've not gone through a grieving process for any of our soldiers killed in battle, nor would I expect them to feel the loss if I perished. That doesn't mean that I don't have tremendous gratitude and respect for the sacrafices that they have all made on the nation's behalf.

Rather than grieving for those who perished today, I feel more inclined to honor them, and then to look postively towards the future of America in space. Let us not let the world come to know us as a nation of crybabies, but a nation of bold explorers, a nation in which all citizens have some measure of "The Right Stuff".