[OT] Shuttle Disaster: On a lighter note...

Humor has it's time and place. And, I'm sorry, Reiduck, if you find it inconvenient that the time and place others want isn't the one you want. That is human nature, and you will have to get used to it.


That being said, I will give you some approrpriate song lyrics:

Rocket Rider's Prayer
© 1986 Stephen Savitzky.
All rights reserved.
Author's note: You have to admire the people who fly the shuttle. There you are, sitting on top of two oversized roman candles and enough hydrogen to make the Hindenberg look like a wienie roast, secure in the knowledge that the whole thing is controlled by a million lines of computer software, and that every component of this complex and dangerous system was made by the lowest bidder.


When the rocket stands before us like a tower of glass and steel
Then no words in any language can express the way we feel
Mingled joy and hope and terror as we're starting on our way
And we suddenly consider that it just might help to pray.

chorus:
So pray to great green Mother Earth and the grim old god of Space,
And the gods of flame and metal whom we've summoned to this place.
Oh you gods of flight and physics, now you have us in your care;
We hope that you will listen to a rocket rider's prayer.

So first let's pray to Vulcan, ugly god of forge and flame,
And also wise Minerva, now we glorify your name,
May you aid our ship's designers now and find it in your hearts
To please help the lowest bidders who've constructed all her parts!

chorus

As we're lifting off it's Mercury who'll help us in our need
Not only as the patron god of health and flight and speed
We hope that he will guard us as we're starting on our trip
As the god of Thieves and Liars, like the ones who built this ship.

chorus

If we make it into orbit where the sky is starry black
We'll have time to praise old Mother Earth and hope she wants us back
And tell all the other deities who've helped us on our way
That it's nice to visit Heaven, but we didn't come to stay.

chorus

Now we're coming down from orbit back to where the air is thick
With no engines and the glidepath of a highly polished brick
And with nothing but those tiles between our hides and flaming Hell,
Better pray to Hell's own Pluto that they glued those suckers well.

chorus

So now we're back on Earth again; the sky's a lovely blue.
All you deities we didn't name, you know we love you too.
We hope that you're not angry and you'll keep us in your grace;
We may need your help the next time that we're heading into space.
 
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i think there is a lot of underlying hostility with incidents as the space shuttle. we all know its terrible. no one wants to have people die in the prime of their life. you cant help but thing how you, or your loved one's would feel were they or you to die. you don't like how death seems so arbitrary and unfair.

unfortunatly there are a lot of people who get bitter because of all the hype around the deaths. more people, who are just as important to their loved ones, die every minute. some people have a hard time separating their bitterness/sarcasm to the unfairly weighed cultural opinion that somehow the astronauts deaths are worthy of "national mourning" while others deaths are just statistics.

i'm not here to start anything and when i heard the news i felt rather sad. i know that one day i'll probably die and leave my wife behind (I'm 7 years older than her) and the thought of that makes me tear-up. all of those families are now experiencing what she'll experience in the future, what i would prefer to save her from experiencing.

its just hard to not be sarcastic and bitter, when you see the way the "nation" seems to react. in ways, i think we all know death is probably even more personal than birth, and the most dignified way to deal with death is not in public display, but in private mourning.

and then again, we as a nation are endebted to them for their efforts. its a fine line to walk. Enough to show respect, not enough to be ingenuine. Its just a hard thing all the way around.

joe b.
 

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