The best internet comment I saw about the Space Shuttle disaster — and I'm being at least half-serious — was from Eric Alterman…
Nothing about the space shuttle blowing up from me; what the hell do I know about why space shuttles blow up? And since I don't work for a network or cable news network, I don't have to pretend.
Neither do I. But I do know that the seven astronauts are no more or less dead than the four U.S. soldiers killed last week in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, or the Coast Guard soldier killed in an auto accident in Qatar. Somehow, the non-astronauts did not merit the same kind of grief, flags at half-staff, talks of enduring tributes, etc. We seem to be very selective with the mourning of those who die in service of our nation, and I think that's a shame. If we're going to be sending more men and women off to war, we'd better shake the notion that some deaths are more tragic than others.
And I think I also agree with this Paul Krugman column. It says, basically, that almost everything good that comes out of the space program can be done better and cheaper by machines, and that we send human beings out there mainly for show. It's a pretty dangerous show but Americans will never buy the notion that it should be curtailed. We all want to believe Star Trek is just over the horizon.