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This event will be felt really strongly throughout the FIRST community. I say 'will' because I fear the worst has not yet come.
When the Challenger blew up in '86, it really was a national tragedy; the Cold War era was just about coming to an end and the Space program was seen as one of the ways Americans triumphed over the Soviet Union.
This time, however, I'm not too sure if it will be seen the same way. It was only a few short months ago when there was the big discussion in Congress about the future of NASA's funding. How will this event affect Congress' willingness to fund space exploration (especially when Bush wants to pretty much start WW3 at the same time)?
What about the International Space Station? I read something that said with the Russians running out of funding, the only thing that keeps astronauts up there is the US's fleet of space shuttles. With this disaster, what's going to be the fate of the ISS?
And most directly, how is this going to affect the FIRST community. Kamen constantly talks about how NASA is one of FIRST's biggest (and most important) sponsors. What happens now? I know my team, 810, wouldn't be going to Annapolis this year if it wasn't for the NASA grant we recieved. What happens next year due to this tragedy?
With everything going on in the world right now, this really was probably the worst timing for such a disaster to happen. My team was deeply concerned over this event (as I'm sure other teams have been); we kept our radio locked to nothing but news channels while we were working on the 'bot today. Back in '86, the political and social situations favored accepting the loss of Challenger and moving on. Today in '03, it seems like the political and social situations right now are kinda tilting away from strong support for NASA.
I just hope I look back at this post next year and see I was wrong about what I implied here.
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