Steve wrote: > "Amelia" has been running through my head all weekend. "Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms..."
Yes, me, too. I was just sick at hearing the news Saturday morning. It took several minutes for me to believe it was for real. I used to work for the company that built the shuttle and was there at some of the first landings at Edwards AFB in California. I remembered a lot of what I learned back then - the biggest risk in re-entry was in the tiles failing. It seems that that may be part of the cause. As others have said, we pretty much take for granted the shuttle flights going smoothly, but great vulnerability is always present. Rest their souls. I also thought of a man I met on vacation last summer. He was very low key about his background and we danced and talked music a lot. He got tears in his eyes when I told him Joni was my fave musician and proceeded to recite "Amelia" in its entirety. I told him about the list and he said he wanted to join up. Later, I learned that he was a shuttle astronaut back in the 80s, scheduled to fly on the next flight after the Challenger. He never mentioned that to me when we met. As we know, all the subsequent flights were scrubbed for a long time after that tragedy and he retired before the flights resumed. I thought about him the other day and may try to get in touch with him again. Always thought it would be something to have an astronaut here on the list, but it's great anyway to know that one of these heroes is such a deep fan of Joni's. Kakki
