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“And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam
fell on them?” (Luke 13:4, NLT)
I have always loved space flight, and all
the rockets, and liftoffs, and moon suits
that go with it.
I remember the three major accidents that
have blemished an otherwise wonderful, and courageous effort to not only orbit
the earth in near space, but to sail across the unknown void towards the moon.
I
graduated from high school in 1967. Three men sat on a launch pad early that
year. It was only a training mission, and the immense Saturn rocket was
scheduled to go… nowhere. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were
strapped in, and were performing various tests of the equipment. Then, the
unspeakable happened. A flash fire burned quickly through the craft; trapping
the men inside. The astronaut’s panicked voices screamed for assistance. The
escape hatch was not designed to be opened rapidly. The 100% oxygen environment
nurtured the contagious spread of the fire; offering no hope of escape.
It was 1986 and the moon had been long
since conquered, and men were once again circumnavigating the earth; in winged
craft that looked more like airplanes, than spacecraft. The Space Shuttle was a
marvel of technology. Space flight had become so common that a civilian teacher
was strapped in, and prepared for numerous circuits of the earth. Christa
McCauliff was excited about the opportunity. Then, the unspeakable happened,
again. Seven brave astronauts died 73 seconds after liftoff. I was working a hundred
miles from the Cape that day, and though I didn’t witness the explosion, I
remember the white, wispy smoke that hung in the sky long afterwards.
It was 2003, and a veteran space shuttle
had descended to four hundred thousand feet above the continental United
States. Sixteen minutes from landing everything literally began to fall apart.
The Columbia burned up in earth’s low atmosphere, and small pieces were
scattered over several states.
Gus Grissom and his fine crew died, as a
result of faulty wiring, a too rich oxygen atmosphere in the cabin, and a door
that was not designed for quick exit.
The Challenger was doomed due to a poorly
designed “O-Ring” that allowed hot gases to escape the main rocket; made less
durable as a result of cold weather conditions that day.
The Columbia was damaged in the first few
seconds after liftoff, as a large piece of insulation bounced off its left
wing.
I heard a sermon that sounds just about
right. We learn in three ways. Through
insight, through crisis, or
finally, as a result of catastrophe.
If insight is ignored, the next incremental step is crisis. If crisis is
somehow taken for granted, the subsequent, and final step becomes catastrophe.
We were in too big a hurry to get to the moon.
President Kennedy had promised that we would be there before the new decade
began. Designs were hurried up, and too much was overlooked.
The Saturn test vehicle should have never
caught fire, and the door should have never been so difficult to open. An
oxygen-rich environment, and a poor escape design spelled disaster.
The Challenger should not have exploded
on that cold day in 1986. Seven wonderful people did not need to die. The
sub-contractor had warned NASA to avoid launching the spacecraft on such a cold
day.
The Columbia accident was tragic, and
unnecessary. Insulation had fallen off the main fuel tank in the past.
Potentially, a spy satellite might well
have been used to identify the wing damage, and another shuttle might well have
been prepped, and rushed to the doomed spacecraft, and the unfortunate
astronauts.
And, “it is neither here, nor there,” but,
ironically, all three of our space-related accidents, though they occurred in
two different centuries, and three different decades, occurred within one week
of the others in January and February on the calendar!
Time and space would fail me to list the
hundreds of famous accidents among ships, and planes, and all manner of
vehicles over the past hundred years. And in so many of these instances,
insight was tossed aside in favor of crisis, and catastrophe.
And to summon up one further example.
There was a bridge which spanned a rather small river in a rather insignificant
town in West Virginia. The bridge was built in the mid-twentieth century, and
had stood for over thirty years. On one particular day, the metal structure
began to sway, and creak, and buckle. Dozens of cars, and multiplied people
fell into the river.
The final accident report revealed that one small, and seemingly insignificant
bolt had shattered. It was a “time bomb waiting to go off.” For, you see, the
flaw was there when the bolt was originally fabricated.
It is imperative that we learn through the
insight gleaned from the lessons learned over a significant period of time. There’s
just nothing like it. It has the potential to save us from so much harm, and
suffering.
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