for anyone who didn’t know, the shuttle Endeavor re-entered our atmosphere a couple days ago (Tuesday). Now most media coverage had been on a single panel that was damaged and “would it be safe at reentry.” Funny thing is, because of all of this commotion, I forgot that for the first time since the Challenger in 1986 there was non-military personal in the for of a teacher on board. This young lady was a full working member of the crew and I can’t even imagine what she’ll be able to teach now.
When the shuttle enters there is something that is called a sonic boom. Typically this is silent and most people don’t realize that it has happened until they watch on the news, “oh the shuttle is back” in a passing fancy. This time, I don’t know if it was because of the trajectory or where the shuttle came in exactly (I’m definitely not an expert on these things) but that silent sonic boom shook our house! It was amazing! We were sitting, doing nothing special, and what sounded like a huge pop shook the house from the top down. My dad jumped up (he’s the one who is into the space program) and ran outside, saying “That was it!” My mom and I followed, and we knew we couldn’t see the glider from that distance but it was a natural reaction I suppose. We then went inside to turn our satellite to the NASA channel and sure enough, there was the shuttle in it’s final decent. It landed beautifully and just looking at it, one wouldn’t have guessed it had gone through a re-entry at all, near pristine (using the phrasing from the post conference).
That damaged panel was handled with all the caution in the world, and upon inspection after return, it was “minor” in a sense. The success of the mission should have been all over the media, the monumental fact that a teacher was on board gaining new information and knowledge for education, the experiments, the work that was a great success that caused the mission to be a success should have been on the media. The biggest problem is that our media today sees a necessity to publish the depressing, tragic story because that’s what gets an audience. People don’t watch the news to hear about the good in the world, they don’t seem to care. They watch for the horrors, so they can then go and complain about them. There is so much more going on outside of the tragedy of the middle east, the shootings in schools, the death and destruction. I’m not saying to turn news media into storybook rainbows, but until the people (which determine the run of the story) will watch more than just hate and evil, that is all we will see.
