"To Touch The Face Of God" - Challenger, 20 Years Later

President Reagan, from the Oval Office, January 28, 1986:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight; we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."

There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and an historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

I still remember Principal Thacker coming across the P.A. to announce that the shuttle had exploded shotly after liftoff. I remember watching TV, as search crews franctially searched in the vain hope that somehow, someone may have survived. Then, I held out hope, as my knowledge of what the human body could take would come later.

The price of exploration has always been high. So many things have the potential to go wrong that it is amazing we are successful as we are.

The price is high. Ultimately, I believe the price is worth it.

More Information:
NASA's Challenger site
The Challenger Foundation

Giant Octopus Attacks Submarine!

...well, sort of.

From the Victoria, B.C., Times-Colonist:

A giant Pacific octopus that attacked a remotely operated submarine off north Vancouver Island could have been senile or maybe just peckish, a marine biologist said Wednesday.

"Large male octopuses in the last part of their lives become senescent, or senile," said Jim Cosgrove of the Royal B.C. Museum. "They get to be like humans, doddering old fools that have inappropriate behaviours such as being out in the daytime," said Cosgrove, an expert in octopus behaviour.

The attack occurred Nov. 18, 2005, off Brooks Peninsula, on the northwest coast of the Island.

The submarine was 55 metres deep and Mike Wood was on a boat on the surface, guiding the submarine along the ocean floor looking for electronic receivers that detect salmon.

"I had the ROV [remote operated vehicle] with its manipulator claw attached on a ground rope. It took me two hours to find this particular receiver. The octopus came from the receiver direction about 30 to 50 feet."

The octopus anchored three tentacles on the same cable the vehicle was holding onto "and a fourth tentacle shot forward very fast and wrapped around my manipulator claw."
Wood immediately threw the sub into reverse and blasted the octopus with sand and debris from the ocean floor. The sub has about 50 kilograms of thrust "so it's quite powerful," Wood said.

In a video recording, the octopus whips its tentacles around as it tries to deal with the sub's counterattack.

"Eventually it releases the vehicle and it gets blasted off into the distance," said Wood.

The octopus was not injured, he said.

"It's unusual for something like this to happen, a giant Pacific octopus attacking an underwater robot," said Wood, suggesting this is probably the first time it has been recorded.

Paging Captain Nemo...

Cool. There's so much about the ocean we still don't know. Speaking of Pacific Giant Octopuses, they're pretty common in the Puget Sound - San Juan Isands area. The rocky seabed is an ideal environment for them. Their range extends from central California all the way into Alaska - the Monterey Bay Aquarium is among several aquariums that have specimens.

Video footage of the elusive Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus remains elusive, however.

A New Friday Furo Questus

...is up at The Wasatch Front.

The Lonely Ride of the Watchman

As I was perusing Huckleberries Online and Jim Olivera's daily "Best of the Northwest," I came across this piece by Frank Miele in The Daily Interlake. (The Daily Interlake is a paper based in Kalispell, Montana, serving the Flathead Lake area of Montana, and regularly punches above its weight in quality.)

Read the whole thing, but there was one paragraph that I particularly wanted to bring to you attention:

Bush's war against terror is a riskier proposition probably, partly because he is the Paul Revere in that war, unlike President Reagan, who was George Washington at Yorktown. It is relatively easy to accept the sword of surrender from your enemy. It is harder by far to be the first in line to shout "the British are coming" since lots of people would rather not fight the British ("They never bothered me or my family!") or anyone else. Bush, with just as much urgency as Revere, is riding his horse at full gallop to sound the alarm. Some along the road take up their arms and follow him, but many others just retreat into their comfortable houses, pull back the shutters, lock the doors and feel safe.

Who among us would have thought, in the days immediately following 9/11, that in the elections of 2002 and 2004 and the debate in 2006 would not be about the way to prosecute the War on Terror but whether we were even at war?

That is where we are as a nation now, divided in the early years of the war on terror between those who seek the comfort of what was and those who spurn that comfort in order to ensure any kind of a future at all. It is profoundly worrisome to look where Bush is pointing. If there is any chance to see the shadow of a peace-loving Islamic terrorist in that fog ahead of us, then by God someone will see that peaceful terrorist and try to get us to shake his hand. Meanwhile, the president's vision of a murderous brutal enemy does not waiver, and he is either right or wrong, but like Reagan he will not be deterred.

I would like to share his confidence, but I cannot. Bush has three years left. What happens after him? The Democrats not only share his vision but reject it, and militate against it. There are only a few Democrats, Senator Joseph Lieberman chief among them, who I trust to carry us forward, and they have been all but stricken from their party. And there is a significant portion of the Republican party that is soft as well.

It appears we just don't get it, not enough of us anyway, and the same goes for our representatives.

We are still divided. This September, it will have been five years since 9/11. We still cannot decide if we are even at war, when the debate we should be having should be focused on what to do about Iran and how is our wider strategy in the War on Terror proceeding. Instead, we argue over whether we are even at war, an incredible waste of time. The choice is actually very simple.

We can be actors or victims. We can suffer our fate, or we can make our own.

It is not too late, but the time to decide is now. The clock is ticking.