I haven't been online much, now it is the 6:15 PM, and its the first chance I have had today to get online and really delve into what happened.

I headed in early for breakfast this morning. Upon entering the Dinning Facility I saw a friend from Advanced Initial Training and decided to sit down and chat with him (my Officer In Charge sat down with me). I held an akward, ten minute conversation with my friend, where he sounded very distracted and borderline retarded. It was ten minutes before he and my OIC pointed out what was going on on the bigscreen behind me. I couldn't believe it, not just that the shuttle had busted up, but that something so serious was going on right behind for so long and no one bothered to point it out to me for the while.

However whether I know about it or does not matter in the face of the simple fact that the crew of STS-113 is gone in a very tragic way. With time things will come together. What a horrible event for the family members of those killed, the NASA community, and us all.

Kudos to Robert on the Columbia page, good call, thank you to Alan for the good reporting, and to everyone for posting thier thoughts and feeling and getting relevent information out. Somhow, piecing things together and finding out what happened is an important part of the dealing with events like this. I guess that by knowing "how" and event occured, preventing it the next time around is easier.

I'd like to write more, but I must go now.

Regards,
Justin Kelly