Thoughts on Columbia
A Friend's Essay
Used as an Editing Sample
Note: The finished version of this piece will be in its own page. My friend has given me his permission to use the marked-up version of his text, below, as a sample of the work I typically do in copy and line editing.
DEFAULT COLOR Author's original text BLUE (lined through) Deletions RED Additions, corrections A good published piece is almost always a team effort. The author reviewed my edits several days before I made this sample page available, with his approval, for your review on the Web.
He concurred with nearly all of my edits, although I did agree to two further adjustments at his request. I restored his original wording — "causing or curing" — in one sentence of the ninth paragraph, in place of "prevention," which I had substituted. He and I also further fine-tuned the last sentence of the first paragraph to make the meaning clearer.
I like to offer my own writings for peer review before I publish them, in case I have overlooked something — whether crucial or trivial — that might spoil an otherwise good piece.
For this sample page, I have set the author's text in the Courier New (typewriter) font for easier on-screen reading. This font also makes the punctuation marks stand out more clearly. The finished version will be in the Arial font and will be accompanied by several photos.
J. H.
I'M OLD ENOUGH TO RECALL the other space shuttle disaster, the "Challenger" explosion in 1987 1986. At the time, I must admit, that my reaction seemed pretty hard-nosed, and maybe even callous. I was also surprised, that when I said it this what I felt, how many people agreed with me had the same reaction.
[New paragraph.] It That experience colours colors my view of this last latest tragedy, and why it matters to so many people. But it does explain, too, why I think people are reacting much more maturely to this one.
We had slowly come to think that exploration comes without risks, — or at least without the risks of previous ages. We could did not imagine that it could would ever happen, — as, in fact, it did happen, — that a shipload of brave souls would leave port and never, ever be seen again. Or, if they were, that they would only be seen only as body parts many years and years afterwards. With all the communications we had developed, and all the technology we have had worked out to rescue explorers in difficulty, we had also forgotten just how dangerous exploration of any kind really is.
Prior to the "Challenger" disaster in 1987, we began had begun thinking that space travel, at least by shuttle, was almost routine. The other tragedies of space travel had been forgotten, and We had largely forgotten, for instance, how close-run the 1970 rescue of the Apollo XIII crew had been. Yet we were reminded at that first time how dangerous it space exploration still is.
[New paragraph.] In the end, what caused that the Challenger disaster was something we don't spend too much time thinking about: it was a simple rubber ring — the O-ring — which was a little too brittle because it was a little too cold. As one of the men who had helped build "Challenger" reflected later, we had fallen into the state of mind which seemed to afflict some of the owners and crew of the steamliner "Titanic.": A little bit of ice, so they thought, couldn't hurt anyone.
"Challenger" is still too recent in the minds of for many of us not to remember. And we seem better to understand better now just how risky space exploration is. Or, indeed, any kind of exploration. On the same weekend that the Columbia disaster occurred, seven high school classmates were buried killed in an avalanche and killed while on a back-country skiing expedition in Canada. It That was also exploration, and it, too, had its risks. As we absorb the loss of "Columbia", we seem more aware of it this.
In both cases of shuttle disaster, of course, we feel felt it the loss more than we did with concurrent misfortunes, because so many people came had, in one way or another, come to know the crews of both shuttles before the tragedy tragedies occurred. In this age of instant communication, we imagined that, in some sense, we knew the ones who were lost had died.
[New paragraph.] Again, This was so in previous ages. Certainly, by the time men were trying to reach either the North or South Poles, they people had read about the explorers in the newspapers, or maybe even had seen them on film. The radio broadcasts by Admiral Byrd from the South Pole made him seem like part of the family. It's This helps to explain why these losses like that of Columbia seem more personal than three or four others calamities reported that one same weekend. They are [italics added] more personal.
We won't know the cause of this the Columbia disaster for some time. Perhaps it will be was something like the rubber ring with "Challenger", — or perhaps a foreseeable hazard, like the iceberg which sunk the "Titanic.". But perhaps it will be was something beyond anybody's powers of causing or curing. A very small piece of natural space debris would could easily have done it very easily the fatal damage. Whatever it was, I guess we'll want to know. It's not an experience we would want to risk repeating.
And yet it is something of a humiliation to realize that we don't have control of everything, that we don't know everything, that we don't always master everything. We come to think: "We have done all of that. We know all that."
[New paragraph.] But then, on occasion, we're reminded that it isn't so on occasion. Maybe it this speaks to something we really know about ourselves but don't like to admit very often. Maybe it's as simple as this: We haven't found a way not to die, but we keep hoping that we will escape that fate will escape us, — or at least for a very long time.
When John Donne wrote his essay with the line "No man is an island,", he understood this. Any death is a little of ourselves dying. The more we know somebody, the more we identify with them, the more we feel the loss. The more we feel part of ourselves lives has died. And the more that somebody has contributed to the lives of others around them, the greater the sense of loss.
Naturally, the question about manned space flight would arises, "Is it worth it?"
Exploration is one of the ways we acknowledge that we don't have control over everything, that we don't know everything, that we haven't mastered everything. But it is part of being human to want to know, — to want to find out, to learn, to seek, and to find. In a way, we do it every time we leave the comfortable confines of home and family. Even if there had been we gain no good benefit, materially or spiritually, from a given venture, that need to explore still lies within us. We would stagnate and die If we did not explore, we would not be truly human. We would stagnate and die.
The crew of the "Columbia" were well aware of the dangers of their flight. No doubt, that was a reason why they all seemed to be looking forward to coming home to Earth. They, like nearly all others who have gone into outer space, were really beginning to understand how beautiful, welcoming, and frail our small planet, our own spaceship, really is.
In the end, they more than understood an essential truth conveyed in the last entry in Robert Falcon Scott's diary. which he Scott wrote these words while pinned down in an Antarctic storm, knowing that neither he nor any of his fellow-explorers were going to survive. In the end, he did sum up the way explorers have felt from the beginning of time:
[JH: Set as new paragraph, bf, no quotes, smaller font; indent two levels l/r:]
"Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale."
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