I can't help imagining Slavoj Zizek furiously penning an article on the Columbia disaster as a Lacanian/Zizekian moment:
***** It is not too much to say that along with an Israeli flag and a drawing by a child who was a victim of the Holocaust, Colonel Ramon, a 49-year-old father of four, carried Israel's dreams with him. He represented the accomplishments this young country would prefer to dwell on - its astonishing progress in technology and science - as well as its preferred self-image, as an honored member of the family of nations, cooperating with others to advance humanity.
Colonel Ramon, an Air Force pilot, had performed his share of military missions, even taking part in the bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. But as he rose into space more than two weeks ago, he seemed to transcend the conflict here, to slip the bonds of history, geography and politics that can make other Israelis feel trapped.
"One cannot remain indifferent to the sight of an Israeli who has the great privilege of being so detached from everything that happens here, floating there in another world, like one of the angels," wrote Avraham Tirosh in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest newspaper, on the day Colonel Ramon took off.
Although he jokingly expressed concern about the possibility of an Israeli settlement on the moon, Yasir Abed Rabbo, the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, had also set the conflict aside to wish Colonel Ramon a safe return.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/national/nationalspecial/02ISRA.html> *****
***** Unlike the Challenger, which crashed at sea, the Columbia fell to earth this morning in fiery and potentially toxic bits over the cities in Mr. Bush's home state, like a scene from "War of the Worlds." NASA spokesmen warned the public not to touch any debris, but report it instead to law enforcement authorities.
In a twist of nomenclature that would seem implausible in fiction, a craft carrying Col. Ilan Ramon of the Israeli Air Force apparently broke up over an East Texas town called Palestine.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/01/national/01CND-MOOD.html> *****
***** The $25 billion space shuttle was envisioned in the 1970's as the successor to the successful moon-landing program. Less expensive and ambitious than a manned mission to Mars, the reusable shuttle was to revolutionize exotic space flight by turning it into an inexpensive, once-a-week event, paying its own way by deploying and repairing satellites and selling other space services.
But almost from the start, the shuttle was plagued by design failures, cost overruns, delays, fraud and mismanagement within NASA and its contractors. Many problems were hidden until the 1986 explosion of the Challenger, which killed seven astronauts. More recently, an aging work force and management shortcomings have continued at NASA, experts say, and these and other problems are expected to be explored in the inquiries into yesterday's Columbia tragedy....
The Nixon administration embraced it initially to promote scientific and military goals and to help shore up the ailing aerospace industry. It was sold to Congress on the assumption that it would pay for itself through business it would generate: shuttling up to deploy and repair many private commercial satellites, and other tasks.
From the start, however, the program set unrealistic goals, as many as 60 flights a year, and was plagued with cost overruns, delays and other problems. By 1981, when Columbia became the first shuttle, each launch was costing $250 million, 16 times the original estimates. But many of the worst problems were hidden until the shuttle Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986.
Investigations later showed that faulty welds in a booster rocket - faults that had been concealed through falsified X-rays by a subcontractor to avoid the cost of repairs - had gone undetected and uncorrected until NASA auditors were tipped off by former employees of the subcontractor.
Investigators also learned that NASA had drastically cut spending on safety testing, design and development, even skipping thermal and vibration tests on the shuttle and its engines. Instead of testing component parts, contractors only tested assembled systems, investigators said. And they said NASA had misled Congress on costs and schedules, withheld documents, violated federal codes and squandered billions.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/national/02HIST.html> ***** -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>