Surreal. Sad. I remember clearly 1986 when the Challenger exploded on take-off, as a first-year Astronomy student at [www.ucl.ac.uk] going into the residence common-room and finding some Americans girls I knew, weeping, and everyone in a state of stunned shock.

Yesterday I opted to skip my planned trip to London in favour of getting the tyres changed on my motorbike; I carefully but comprehensively belted around for a bit to scrub-in the new tyre surfaces (increasing lean-angles with mileage, doing gently tyre-warming weaves a-la Formula-1) and got home, did the washing, crashed out for a nap, and turned on BBC News 24 around 8pm, to be greeted by Dubya acting all serious and sombre, plus shuttle takeoff pictures.

• thought number 1: oh fuck… not again… please?
• thought number 2: oh god, it’s true. those poor people…
• thought number 3: the ISS is going to be really hosed… the space program will be set back for years
• thought number 4: i wouldn’t like to be under the flightpath

…which is prettymuch the sum of everything that was said by rote on the TV for the following three hours.

I’ve watched Columbia fly over the UK, repeatedly. Maybe that’s why I seem to take the issue harder than most. Hmmm…

Remembering the Challenger incident, the coverage of this incident is different; people are more analytic, less shocked. More cynical.

Perhaps the generation for whom space exploration was at all exciting, has faded. Perhaps it’s a post-9/11 thing. We’re in a world of cost/benefit, not daring. Never daring.

That’s tragic.