10:21 a.m. - February 02, 2003
Building a Hilton on the moon
Yesterday, I watched things about Columbia. Eerie that I also remember Challenger exploding--I was in school and we were watching it on TV. And Challenger has become more personal to me in the last few months--one of my very good friends has a dad who was the runner-up teacher to go on the shuttle. Basically, if Judy MacAuliffe was unable to go, her dad would have been on that shuttle. He was disappointed that he wasn't chosen, but I think now he's relieved that he wasn't on the shuttle on its mission.

Back to Columbia. Surprisingly enough, the coverage reached mythic proportions, so I was wondering what else was happening in the world besides a shuttle explosion/falling apart over Texas.

This only reminds me of media control--look at September 11--I'm sure it was like a continuous loop here when I was abroad--and it still IS going on, a year later, the 9/11 references, the 9/11 memorials.

So basically, the media will take one story, trump it up. All in the name of ratings, yes. But truth is, after about half an hour or so of watching the news, constantly being replayed on CNN, I got plenty sick of it and watched "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."

And I know some of you watched Bush speak, right? Yeah. That speech was not good. It was really stiff, like it was written on the fly (and it was) and he was not comfortable with the words chosen, and was just reciting words. I can't wait for Bush to get out of office.

I kept thinking about space travel. I have always wanted to travel in space, live on the moon, and orbit the earth. It's more like a science fiction fantasy that I feel, the desire to be looking down at earth from above, to look at the moon up close. This fantasy has been fed by many science fiction stories....those written by Asimov, Ray Bradbury, books like This Place has No Atmosphere by Paula Danziger, and even the Epcot Center's Future exhibit, where they show all the dreams of the future--homes under the sea, and homes above the earth, and of course, Star Trek.

I always hope that there will be homes in the sky someday. Always. I want to live to see that happen. But first, I want to see people taking care of our planet before they bring pollution over to other planets and other satellites (ie, like the moons) in the galaxy.

And somehow the Columbia exploding doesn't change that for me. Yes, there are risks involved with space travel, but at the same time, the tragedies of having lost lives in such explosions also opens some mysteries, hopefully solving them for future astronauts and shuttles and satellites and so on...

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