Editorial: Our losses strengthen our resolve

Friday, Feb. 7, 2003 | 4:57 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: Feb. 9, 2003

The original seven Project Mercury astronauts were featured on the cover of the Sept. 14, 1959, edition of Life magazine under the headline, "First-person reports by THE ASTRONAUTS." The National Aeronautics and Space Administration had been created the previous year amid vast attention and excitement. But nothing about space in the past had so enraptured the public as the seven men chosen from among 508 military pilots. They were announced to the world on April 9, 1959, and instantly became the most famous people on Earth. By the time of Life's cover story, the question of which one would be chosen for the first flight into space was generating speculation the world over. Introducing its series on the astronauts, Life wrote that "one man chosen (from the seven) will embark on the greatest adventure man has ever dared to take. ... (H)e will catapult upwa rd at the head of a rocket for more than 100 miles and then plunge down into the Atlantic Ocean. If he survives, he will be! come the heroic symbol of a historic triumph. ... If he does not survive, one of his six remaining comrades will go next."

This founding spirit of America's space program has remained strong. We've always pushed forward while knowing the risks inherent in space travel, just as early explorers pushed forward knowing the risks of setting off in wooden ships across violent oceans. We lost three astronauts in 1967 when Apollo 1 caught fire on the launch pad, seven astronauts in 1986 when the Challenger space shuttle exploded 73 seconds after takeoff and seven more astronauts Feb. 1 when the shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas 16 minutes before it was supposed to touch down in Florida.

Space travel has brought with it monumental improvements in communications, navigation, weather forecasting, geography and computer technology, to name a fraction of its achievements. Fuel cells, considered the energy of the future, were developed for the space program. Satellites monitor the Earth's environment and play a critical role in the nation's defense. Gus Grissom, one of the original seven astronauts and one of the three killed in 1967, once said, "If we die, we want people to accept it. ... The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." Hard as they are to accept, his words were true then and remain true today.