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From: homeier@aero.ARPA (Peter Homeier)
Newsgroups: net.space,net.religion.christian
Subject: To The Challenger
Message-ID: <250@aero.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 12:21:08 EST
Article-I.D.: aero.250
Posted: Tue Feb  4 12:21:08 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Feb-86 09:48:37 EST
Reply-To: homeier@aero.UUCP (Peter Homeier)
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
Lines: 51
Xref: watmath net.space:5609 net.religion.christian:2515

The following was written by a friend, Patricia Harper Cummings of
South Pasadena, California.


TO THE CHALLENGER


We had come to think of you as the Space Titanic, hadn't we?  Somehow,

along the way, we had forgotten that you were part of an imperfect world,

a world where both victories and tragedies exist.  You were our Disneyland

in the Sky - someday we might even have a chance to go ourselves, or our

children, on the ultimate vacation to the cosmos.  On Tuesday we cheered

as you carried seven of us with you.  And we trusted you to bring them

back, but you failed us.  Or did we fail you?  In that smoke and in those

ashes that we watched in horror and disbelief drift sadly down into the

sea, we watched our hero, our false god and our fantasies fall as well.

You who had become our symbol of national pride, of triumph and of

adventure, perhaps you were meant to be something else.  We will search to

find that now - your true identity - for we will now search with hearts

united in devastation.  Perhaps then you will be resurrected in our

wounded spirits into that which you were destined to be: a reminder of our

finitude, a call to try again, and an invitation to a new mission with our

sights fixed even Higher next time.


Patricia Harper Cummings

-- 

Peter Homeier                                  ______
Arpanet:    homeier@aerospace                 / o    \_/
UUCP:       ..!ihnp4!trwrb!aero!homeier       \___)__/ \
The Aerospace Corporation, M1-108
El Segundo, CA 90245
Disclaimer:  Anything expressed above is my personal opinion, and not
             the position of the Aerospace Corporation.