A Better East Texas: Columbia Anniversary

The 10 year anniversary of the crash of the space shuttle Columbia is coming up on February 1st.  And how quickly things can change in 10 years.

NASA is a fraction of the organization it was at the time of the Columbia disaster, largely due to finding cuts, but we are now also having to celebrate our space accomplishments by watching the movement and pictures from the Mars rovers, unmanned crafts that appear to be the future of space exploration.

It is sad to note that in ten short years, we have lost a complete hero figure in our culture. No longer are kids growing up and aspiring to be astronauts.

Most kids under the age of 18 cannot name an astronaut. The exploration of space and the execution of human-impacting experiments are now left to these cheaper robots and largely un-American crew of the International Space Station.

And so gone and unfortunately fading from our memories are the crew members of Columbia, some of the true spaceflight heroes of our time.

So thank you Commander Husband and crew members McCool, Anderson, Ramon, Chawla, Brown and Clark, you are truly great Americans who shot for the heavens and made a better America and a better East Texas.