The country and the world are reflecting on the tragedy of the mid-flight destruction of the space shuttle Columbia on Saturday. I have also thought a lot about what it means.

Us in space

When I was growing up I, like many young boys, was fascinated with rocketry. When I was seven or eight years old, it had been five or six years since the last Apollo mission. I remember being a bit confused about why it had been so many years since we had a manned mission into space.

The space shuttle program had been talked about for eight years at that point. There was a lot of press coverage of the space shuttle Enterprise ridding piggy-back on the back of its 747, but at that point nothing had actually done anything more than glided in for a landing.

Then, on April 12, 1981, when I was just shy of nine years old, Columbia launched into orbit on flight STS-1. That was a really big deal for a kid like me. I remember watching the launch live in school and the landing as well.

When I was in junior high, a science teacher set up a chapter of Young Astronauts at our school. We were one of the first 1000 chapters and our charter certificate was flown on the last successful flight of Challenger, 61-A in 1985.

As an active member of our Young Astronauts chapter, I was strongly affected by the Challenger disaster. I had hopes at the time of going into space someday and was confident we'd all go into space someday. The Challenger accident and the long delay in shuttle launches shook that confidence.

Eventually, in 1988, space shuttles launched again and continued to launch (and return successfully) regularly until now.

During the mid-to-late 1990s, I ran across more and more literature suggesting the space shuttle program was holding us back and that NASA was not doing any real exploration anymore.

Considering so much innovation went into creating the space shuttle program, it is puzzling why it seemed to stop once the shuttle design was complete and in use. Why haven't we come up with anything better? Why have all potential plans been shelved and forgotten? Why have we lost interest in exploring space and other worlds? Why haven't we gone back to the moon?

Despite the tragic loss of life, I hope we can take this time to ask ourselves what we want from NASA and space exploration.

Take THAT, stupid banks

I was happy to see the Salt Lake Tribune had a exposé in today's issue about just how much credit unions in Utah are eating into the growth of banks. The article, titled Banks Aren't Hurting, does a great job of putting the issue into perspective. Considering this issue is being discussed in the Utah state legislature today, the timing is perfect.