On Feb. 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, mere minutes away from landing, killing all seven crew members on board and leaving the body of the shuttle in scattered pieces.
Questions arose immediately: what caused the accident, and what could have been done to prevent it? Was there a safety procedure or technical detail that somehow had been overlooked?
As NASA administrators and engineers piece together the information gathered from the accident in an attempt to find answers, another relevant question still remains: where do we go from here?
History has repeated itself in the shuttle program: the same concerns were voiced after the shuttle Challenger exploded on liftoff in 1986, killing all crew members and grounding the shuttle program for four years.
Now, as the Columbia disaster is being analyzed, another reassessment of NASA's manned space flight program is underway. The motives, costs and benefits to placing human beings in space are being weighed with careful consideration.
This accounting of sorts is an unlikely combination of economics, hard science and an examination of the human desire to explore the universe around us and challenge our limitations.
"The shuttle program is expensive relative to the perceived scientific benefit it provides, but designing a replacement program would be equally expensive," said Gabriel Laufer, an associate professor in the University mechanical and aerospace engineering department.
"Space exploration would be more economically viable with machines, but there is the question of whether such programs would truly satisfy the human desire to explore space," Laufer added.
Machine-based missions to the outer planets, such as the Voyager spacecraft launched in the 1980s, may provide a wealth of scientific data, and some very pretty pictures as well, but such missions often do not inspire the sense of wonder or accomplishment felt after a successful manned mission, such as the Apollo moon landings.
At their best, human excursions into space can be triumphs of the human spirit. But at what cost?
Risks certainly are inherent in such a complicated endeavor, and as Columbia demonstrates, accidents do happen.
These risks must be weighed against the value of human lives that make space travel possible.
"I can't imagine humans simply stopping exploration into space," said Houston Wood, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
"The space program may return to the shuttle with greater attention to safety details, and the shuttle program itself may not be as long-lived as it was originally intended to be, but simply never go to into space again would be a denial of our curiosity and need to explore."
He cited examples of how space travel has inspired people since rockets were first being sent from the earth.
Wernher Von Braun, one of major developers of modern aerospace science in the mid-1900s, wrote books on travel from earth to the moon, and even mapped out plans for missions to Mars, long before such plans were either implemented or thought about as scientific possibilities.
In the popular imagination, the drama of Apollo 13's ill-fated flight to the moon caught attention in Hollywood and was a success at the movie box office.So the inspiration for space travel certainly exists: perhaps, as Wood suggests, it would be best to put the risks and benefits of NASA's shuttle program in perspective.
NASA currently runs on a budget of around $10 billion per year, and a sizeable portion of that is devoted to manned space flight.
This might seem like quite a lot, but consider also that President George. W Bush recently asked Congress for some seventy billion dollars to aid in the war with Iraq.
In addition, since it's inception in the 1950s, approximately 15 to 20 human lives have been lost in the hundreds of manned missions that have been launched, including the seven killed on Columbia.
Far more American lives may be lost in the current war, and in a much shorter span of time.
Also, as a society, and even as species, we must think of the future: the far future. At some point, billions of years from now, this planet will be rendered uninhabitable by the warming of the sun as it nears the end of its life.
Environmental catastrophe or the impact of a comet or asteroid may necessitate our departure even sooner. Although such long views of our species future may seem impractical now, they do illustrate the point that even the comfort of this planet is not eternal. Space travel in our future.
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