AMERICA woke yesterday morning to the news it had hoped never to hear again - the lives of a shuttle crew cruelly wiped out in a fireball.
Again, as with Challenger 17 years ago, the tragic image of the doomed space craft spewing burning debris played over an over again on all the television networks.
The tragic news was a body blow to America, already bracing itself for further ter
rorist attacks and an imminent war against Iraq. The initial assumption was that it was a terrorist outrage, but within hours the White House had allayed that fear.
Drivers pulled their cars into the roadside to hear the tragedy unfold on their radios. In supermarkets, women dropped their shopping and ran home to watch the dreadful images on their television screens.
Nick Cann, a British-born pilot for Continental Airlines who became a US citizen last month, said he had been planning a day’s ski-ing from his home in Marblehead, north of Boston when the news broke.
"I was getting my gear together and I turned on the TV just after 9am," he said.
"The commentator covering the shuttle landing said they had lost contact, but didn’t seem unduly worried. There’s always a couple of minutes when the shuttle is coming in to land when they are out of contact. Five minutes went by, then he said they had ‘lost telemetry’. I knew then it was serious. I sat down. I realised I wasn’t going to go anywhere today."
Describing his reaction to the tragedy, Cann added: "I felt sick. I felt for the families, waiting there in Florida for the landing. I felt for the country. I wondered when America was going to get a break."
Meanwhile, there was also heartache in Israel. Ilan Ramon, an Israeli air force colonel, who vanished with the rest of the crew, had become a national hero. In many ways he symbolised the cherished hopes of many in the Jewish state, when he became his country’s first astronaut.
Those pioneers who had founded Israel in 1948 and fought for its survival, could hardly have imagined such achievement, arising from the ashes of the Holocaust.
No-one knew this more than Ramon, himself the child of an Auschwitz survivor, who had provided a ray of hope and distraction from the almost daily violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Before leaving on the doomed mission from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, he said: "I know my fight is very symbolic for the people of Israel, especially the survivors, the Holocaust survivors, because I was born in Israel, many people will see this as a dream that is come true.
"My mother is a Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz and my father fought for the independence of Israel not so long ago. I feel I’m representing the whole Jewish people."
As he orbited the Earth during the mission, Ramon, who was the payload specialist aboard the shuttle, told Israelis that the planet looked fragile from outer space, and had left him with the thought that his countrymen, and all citizens of the world, must take care of the Earth to ensure the survival of the human race.
Yesterday Ramon’s father Eliezer Wolferman said: "I didn’t expect for this to happen. I don’t have a son. I prefer not to talk right now. It’s very hard for me."
Ramon’s brother-in-law Gabi Bar sobbed as he spoke to a television station a short while later. "This is a moment of crisis," he said. "I don’t know how we can come to terms with the loss of Ilan."
Although the deaths of Ramon and the other members of the crew are now certain, the Israeli government was holding out hope that the national hero might still be alive up until the last moment.
Prime minister Ariel Sharon telephoned Ramon’s father and expressed his sorrow. As grim faced newscasters spoke of the tragedy on Israeli television and radio, many Israelis were overcome with grief.
With the nation weeping, the Israeli embassy in Washington dispatched a small team to Florida, to assist Ramon’s wife, Rona, and their children, who were in the United States to await his arrival from outer space. Even before the Columbia exploded, the Israel government Coins and Medals Corporation had announced a new medal dedicated to the first Israeli astronaut.
The medal, which will now become a symbol of remembrance, adapted a verse from the Book of Psalms saying: "His excellency is over Israel, And his strength is in the skies."
Ranaan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon, had said: "The state of Israel and its citizens stand at this difficult hour with the families of the astronauts and Col. Ramon’s family."
Ramon, 48, was a hero before he entered outer space. His career included participating in the bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981in Baghdad, which Israel feared was intended for the development of nuclear weapons.
Although Israel was heavily criticised around the world for the operation, many observers believe that the strike prevented Iraq from producing its first atomic bomb.
