The Columbia Shuttle Disaster: An Internet Guide
By Chris Suellentrop
February 3, 2003

Slate published yesterday a guide to coverage of the Columbia disaster throughout the Web. The first item to be noted is a potentially embarrasing item from the Associated Press: a routine article in anticipation of the shuttle's landing, describing it as a fait accompli. [Correction: the article only mentions that "space shuttle Columbia streaked toward a Florida touchdown Saturday to end a successful 16-day scientific research mission," not that the landing had been completed. Thanks to Kriselda Jarnsaxa for pointing this out.] (This article has been mirrored by none other than Cory Doctorow.) What proceeded 32 minutes later was, as we are sadly aware, anything but routine.

This roundoup of news sources lists the usual suspects: MSNBC, CNN and the New York Times, and includes some musings from the blogsphere, like Dave Winer's and even William Gibson's.

Still, as far as mapping the discussion of this sad event on the Web, it could use some helping. First of all, we could mention the commentaries and tributes posted by our own Salon Bloggers: Xian, Rob Salkowitz (whose tribute has also been included in Virtual Occoquan), the Raven, and Rayne, among others. Xian also mentions Shuttle Lost, a metablog by Jim Flowers tracking the blogosphere's reaction.

Looking a little farther among the blogs we find Steven Johnson wondering: "if, ten days ago, they had determined beyond the shadow of a doubt that the debris impact had damaged the craft on launch, such that a return trip through the atmosphere was inevitably going to end in tragedy, what would NASA have done?" For his part, Ian Williams offers a report from Houston of Saturday's mood and a reminiscence of January 28, 1986. Looking forward, Chutney ponders Gregg Easterbrook's proposal of dumping the shuttle program altogether and imagines the alternatives.

Going back to the journalists, the New Republic published on its site When Challenger Fell From the Sky, an editorial written after the Challenger's explosion which chastised the media for its "fetishization" of the tragedy.

And then, there's always the discussion going on at Plastic, Space Shuttle Columbia Breaks Up On Approach ("Tragedy in space today, as the American space shuttle Columbia, oldest in the fleet, apparently exploded while on approach to return to Earth"), currently racking 252 comments from the Plasticians; the most "compelling": "I remember," by TheMCP. ("When I think of today I suspect I will remember seeing Bush on the TV over the bar as I walked past the fireplace, out the door, into the cold grey rain.")

{Update, February 8, 2003}

To the posts about the Columbia written by Salon Bloggers add the one by Daniel Donilov, "Let's keep flying", where he reflects how "The tragedy brought home the importance of the process in which we are engaged — the endeavor to expand humanity's territorial horizons, to elevate our current scurrying to truly cosmic proportions."