Columbia

There’s really nothing much I can say about Columbia that dozens of others haven’t already said. Space has become so routine that we are hardly ever aware that the shuttle is even up there, which is dramatically different from the ’60s, when I grew up and everything to do with space was headline news. Yes, I remember where I was when Challenger exploded, etc. In fact, the first inkling I had that anything was wrong came yesterday when I read a blog that made reference to where the writer was when Challenger exploded, but I didn’t understand it had any relevance to a current event — Challenger happened just a few days earlier in January.
But I can say this. Sean O’Keefe, the administrator of NASA, happens to have graduated from the same MPA program I came from, the Maxwell School. He graduated just a few years ahead of me, and came to speak to us at some point. He was then a rising star in the Navy bureaucracy. Personable, intelligent, highly respected. And today I wouldn’t have his job for anything.