Another Moment of Hell

This was apparently for the crew of Columbia. Still being transcribed is another earlier one for Challenger, which seems to be titled Hell for a Moment



--Another Moment of Hell--

We have lost another crew of heroes today.
We have watched another smoky flower bloom,
Leaving behind a trail of pollen that will engender questioning and lies,
That will bring fear, sadness, distrust, and horror.
How many of you already feel betrayal, by god or by fellow man?
Or just by fickle fate that whimsically reminds us of our fragility?
The things that insulate us from the source of our fire sometimes break us,
burn us with that fire to leave nothing but streaks of ash and bits of broken shell.
But out of that fire, from that broken shell, *always* another phoenix must arise.
Never can we let ourselves be frightened from our path,
Washed from it by tears of grief or heat of anger--
To be kept by accident from filling the empty void with our dreams and our lives.

It is a tragedy of proportions, not an epidemic of disasters.
Because there are so few flights and machines do we take such sad note,
Yet, if we compare to the number of cars or even planes, it is not such a great amount of destruction and loss of these things.
But it *is* a great amount of destruction of our hopes, and loss of our dreams.
But *because* there are so few flights, machines, people to do this daring thing
--of exiting the air and diving again back into it's fire--
it *is* a tragedy, of human proportions.

--Michael Elliott
Saturday, February 01, 2003 4:00 PM

This is dedicated to those who died for Columbia's phoenix, this first day of the second month of the third year of our new millennium:
-Shuttle commander Rick D. Husband
-Pilot William C. McCool
-Payload Commander Michael P. Anderson
-Mission Specialist David M. Brown
-Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla
-Mission Specialist Laurel Clark
-Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon