Roll On, Columbia, Roll On
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On a Saturday morning 10 years ago, some of us got up to watch the space shuttle land — space flight an almost-routine occurrence as the sharp pangs of Challenger faded to memory. And then Columbia disappeared, jarring us out of that complacency about space flight, reminding a nation that years of safe roundtrips didn’t erase the risk, ripping the heart of NASA, changing families forever. Mike Massimo, @Astro_Mike to those of us who follow him on Twitter, used the medium that didn’t exist a decade ago to share some of his memories about the people who got to live their dreams by flying through space on STS-107:
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Today is the 10 year anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, I miss my friends but have awesome memories of each of them
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My favorite memory of Laurel Clark: taking our families together to the Children’s Museum in Houston, she was always fun to be around
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My favorite memory of Willie McCool: watching him give my one year old son a ride in a rolling chair through the halls of NASA
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My favorite memory of Rick Husband: eating his nacho recipe and hearing him talk about his family and flying jets, I miss you buddy
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My favorite memory of Dave Brown: going to wrap party for the movie “Armageddon” at the Kennedy Space Center and hangin with the movie stars
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My favorite memory of Kalpana “KC” Chawla: meeting and escorting her family during her first space launch at the Kennedy Space Center in ’97
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My favorite memory of Ilan Ramon is sharing Christmas together with our family and friends just before his spaceflight
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My favorite memory of Mike Anderson: flying in a T-38 together to Kansas and talking about spacewalking along the way, he was always smiling
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‘Mission of Hope’ finds uplifting story within the shuttle Columbia tragedy – Cosmic Log cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news… via @NBCnews
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And from others inside the program and out:
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#InMemorial RT @FragileOasis
Journey of the human spirit goes on. Earth’s moon from Space Shuttle #Columbia 26 Jan 2003 http://pic.twitter.com/IWER71Yh -
#inmemoriam The bright sun dissects the airglow above Earth’s horizon in this photograph taken on STS-107: http://twitpic.com/c01jp8
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10 years ago today #Israel’s 1st astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon perished in Space Shuttle Columbia. We salute him. http://pic.twitter.com/hDnkSOTQ -
Thinking of the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia today during NASA’s Day of Remembrance http://pic.twitter.com/es4nJBcr -
Remembering the crew of STS-107, aboard Space Shuttle Columbia, lost 10 years ago today. http://pic.twitter.com/plu46bvl -
#inmemoriam STS-107 Mission Specialist David Brown undergoes pre-flight training in a @NASA_Johnson airlock: http://twitpic.com/c02mju
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Un día como hoy pero del 2003 el transbordador COLUMBIA estalla al volver a la tierra http://pic.twitter.com/PNSaZATL -
* As far as I know, Woody Guthrie wasn’t thinking of flights to the moon when he wrote Roll On, Columbia. The song, sung to the tune of ‘Good Night, Irene’ is an ode to a then-contemporary major feat of engineering, combining the power of rivers with the majesty of the Grand Coulee Dam.
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