Disturbing ...

[unixronin]

We built five Shuttles.  We've so far lost two of them: Challenger on January 28, 1986, during launch, and Columbia seventeen years later to the day, on February 1, 2003, during re-entry.

I just started reading Titan, by Stephen Baxter (not the one by John Varley).  It was first published in hardcover in November 1997.  The third event of consequence that happens in the book (the first is the arrival of the Huygens probe on Titan) is the loss of Columbia, during re-entry, apparently sometime in 2004.

Coincidence, of course.  But still somehow chilling, and I found myself unable to stop reading at that point.

Would Baxter still have written this if he'd had foreknowledge?  It's probably impossible to say.

Comments

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Long ago, I was a subscriber to Analog: Science Fiction/Science Fact magazine. One month, I remember a fact article by G. Harry Stein (http://www.sssrocketry.org/ghs/2004/gharry04.htm) predicting that the Shuttle would "prang" and that people would die, but that it was very important for manned space exploration to continue. Therefore, he suggested all us space enthusiasts get in the good graces of the reporters of our local news outlets (newspapers, TV, magazines) to offer "expert" opinion (spun to a clear-eyed assessment of the risks, and the value of space exploration) to keep the public on the positive side of it all when the time came.

"When", not "if". I think this was in ... '82?

I've always faulted Congress for forcing that Rube Goldberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg) design on NASA in the first place by not funding the agency properly. I mean, c'mon: solid rocket boosters on a manned space craft? They never did that in any previous design because once lit, SRBs burn until the fuel is gone and there's no way to shut them off before that. Too dangerous. Hang everything off a disposable liquid fuel tank? Madness.

As Richard Feynman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman) wrote in his separate appendix to the Challenger Disaster report:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. The Shuttle's always been a disaster waiting to happen -- the "spaceplane designed by a committee" problem. It was just that he got the specific shuttle right, the mission phase right, and was only about a year off on the date (though he missed the exact cause).

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And yes, I've always considered it a particularly ludicrous decision not just to use solids in the first place, but then to re-use the solids and throw away the external tank (along with whatever fuel and oxygen remained in it). At the point it's jettisoned, it'd be just as easy to carry it into orbit anyway.

[juuro.livejournal.com]

And would a different publisher have required an amended edition post-accident.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's a good question too, given the frenzied rush post-9/11 to retroactively erase the World Trade Center from everything.... (an action which I have always considered bizarre and cowardly).