Wow. That’s the only word I can think up for now. This afternoon I received an e-mail alert by CNN stating that NASA had lost contact with the space shuttle while they were on their re-entry to earth. Needless to say this is again a big tragedy. I still remember when the Challenger blew up years ago. Now the Columbia is gone and with it a fine crew of 7.
Off course this will set back all the missions planned for this and coming years. I’m sure they don’t allow any shuttle to lift-off until they have a clear idea what caused this. Since they broke up or exploded on re-entry my first – non expert – idea would be that the heat shield got damaged and as a result the shuttle exploded. But who knows? One thing is for sure: there won’t be any round-trips to the ISS soon (unless they need to get the people of it or transport some food and other things.
Given the circumstances (a war is at hand) I wonder what will happen now: will Bush just go on or will this tragedy slow down his plans?