February 4, 2003The space program must fly higher WASHINGTON--First we will mourn the brave and beautiful who fell out of the sky. Then, however, we will proceed to the usual post-catastrophe ritual: investigation and recrimination. We will search for the culprits. Some human agent will be hauled out to bear the blame. And we will search for the cause: flying foam, wing damage, insulating tiles, whatever--we will find it. But we will miss the point. The point is that the first 150 or so miles of space travel--braving the gravitational well of Earth and shooting through the atmosphere--is the...
