In Memoriam

[smq]

"If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business [...] The conquest of space is worth [it]."
        -Gus Grissom



Here we are again: NASA's week of rememberance. It's a little creepy that the aniversaries of all of the United States' fatal space missions fall within a few days of one another, but it provides a stark reminder that the cost of exploration-of pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding-is sometimes paid with the lives of good people, painfully ended. May they all now rest in peace.

43 years ago this past Wednesday:



Roger Chaffee
  Gus Grissom
  Ed White
  Apollo 1 (AS-204)
lost January 27, 1967 due to a crew cabin fire during flight readiness testing

24 years ago yesterday:



Grego Jarvis
  Christa McAuliffe
  Ron McNair
 


Ellison Onizuka
  Judith Resnik
  Dick Scobee
   
    Mike Smith
    SS Challenger (STS-51-L)
lost January 28, 1986 due to exhaust gas leakage from the left solid booster rocket during launch.

7 years ago this coming Monday:



Mike Anderson
  David Brown
  Kalpana Chawla
कल्‍पना चावला


Laurel Clark
  Rick Husband
  William McCool
   
    אילן רמון
Ilan Ramon
    SS Columbia (STS-107)
lost February 1, 2003 due to failure of the thermal protection system during atmospheric reentry,
caused by damage sustained during launch.



Finally, though much less remembered, the four cosmonauts who also died on active space exploration missions:
 
    Влади́мир Комаро́в
Vladimir Komarov
    Союз 1
Soyuz 1
lost April 24, 1967 due to parachute deployment failure during atmospheric descent




Георгий Добровольский
Georgi Dobrovolsky
  Виктор Пацаев
Viktor Patsayev
  Владислав Волков
Vladislav Volkov
  Союз 11
Soyuz 11
lost June 29, 1971 due to a cabin oxygen leak during atmospheric descent

--SMQ