seesaw

It's really unlikely that the space shuttle missions will stop. The ISS needs a crew i don' think that it would be save not to have a crew on the ISS. Plus there are people there now.

enigma555

They can't stop...

There are two astronauts manning the ISS right now.

EDIT: Sorry, it's three...

Totalitarianist

Thank goodness it was a NASA space shuttle, though--otherwise I might care.

jpbrooks

This incident, as tragic as it is, should not be viewed as a reason for abandoning our spaee program. After all, this is only the second major tragedy in the shuttle program's history. NASA has an excellent track record considering how dangerous space travel really is. It might be better to view this incident as a reason always to take our vulnerability into account in our scientific endeavors and not to allow our hubris, in our ability to achieve technological progress without cognizance of the serious risks and problems that can arise along the way, to overtake us.

John Phillip Brooks

Autonemesis

It's three for my lifetime. Almost four. I was 5 years old when Apollo 1 caught fire on the launchpad. I don't recall that accident, but I do vividly remember watching TV to learn the fate of Apollo 13 in April of 1970. By that time, I was 8 years old, and was very enthusiastic about the space program. I had a Major Matt Mason action figure and his lunar tractor toy.

I was in the USN out at sea when Challenger exploded in 1986. The ship was doing exercises off the coast of Southern California, but the captain brought us close enough to shore to pick up the civilian TV broadcasts about the disaster. I cried then, and I couldn't hold back the tears this time either.

There's an another difficulty with the ISS beyond the fact that there is a crew of three on board. The ISS hasn't yet received its own propulsion unit. It requires periodic visits from the shuttle so the shuttle's engines can be used to boost the orbit of the ISS, or the orbit will decay fairly rapidly.

Eudaimonist

Do you realize how insensitive and inappropriate that sort of comment is? Grow up.

Albion

Wasn't VP Al Gore pushing very hard for the space plane follow-on to the Shuttle? And didn't Bush cancel the programme soon after taking office?

NASA has a bunch of not very pleasant choices here - either it gives up the manned programme or it bleeds the rest of NASA dry to replace Columbia - and the ISS was already causing a lot of that bleeding as it was.

Abacus

Not cool, dude.

Abacus

Yes, I think he knows. That was very deliberate.

DamagedGoods

His was the first name that came to mind when they mentioned the investigation. I can imagine that piecing together information to figure out the cause is going to take a lot of time and a lot of talent...if it's even possible at all.