When the news bulletin logo and music interrupted one of the kids’ morning cartoon shows this past Saturday, I was surprised &045; in two different ways.

The first surprise was important news of any kind interrupting the regular schedule. That’s always an attention-getter, especially when they break into a program that children are watching. The second was finding out that the bad news did not involve an Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Instead, the bulletin was about the space shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew.

I can still remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the Challenger explosion, when seven other astronauts were killed. And now it has happened again. Out of five shuttles built, two have now been destroyed. That’s not a particularly impressive record.

Since we were all in the room, the bulletin grabbed our attention. A fun day, with a planned outing to Minneapolis, turned somber. We still went and did our errands, but everywhere we went the story followed us: on TV, on the radio, and in people’s conversations. Sure, only seven people were killed (more people die each day in traffic accidents in the United States alone), but their deaths were so dramatic, and the aftermath of the explosion was so unpleasant.

These deaths were unexpected, too. Most of us have no illusions about the risks astronauts face. Living and working in outer space &045; outside the safety of our planet’s atmosphere &045; is dangerous. In space, death is only a few inches away no matter where you sit. But over the past decade, space travel has become routine. Shuttle launches and landings are back page news, only as interesting as the latest activity at the local airport, at least until something goes wrong.

And these days, everybody’s getting into space travel, with scientists from many countries traveling into space via our shuttles or Russian Soyuz capsules. Working in space is starting to look like a regular job &045; science fact, not science fiction. Private citizens have paid millions and politicians have used their influence to claim seats aboard what’s beginning to look more like the ultimate roller coaster ride than a series of scientific missions.

The accident has a personal impact. Our oldest daughter has long had a dream of working in space, of serving as a scientist on missions to the planet Mars. Most of the time her dream doesn’t seem too unusual, until an accident like last Saturday’s reminds us what can happen during even routine missions. I want her to chase her dream, but I worry. What if something went wrong when she was a million miles from Earth?

As much as I grieve the loss of the brave men and women who served aboard Columbia, and Challenger, I am also filled with dismay, and even anger. These were potentially avoidable accidents. When the shuttle program began, the shuttle itself was supposed to have its own engines and fuel tanks; it would take off and land like an airplane, under its own power. It would make getting into and back from space easier and safer.

But before the first shuttle was built, politicians decided they didn’t want to spend the money to build a proper space plane. So NASA compromised. Instead of a completely reusable, self-powered spacecraft (like the kinds we do see in science fiction movies), we built a glider with stubby wings and little maneuverability. The shuttle soars into space while strapped to a giant fuel tank, with two missiles bolted to its bottom. Despite the fact that the shuttles rely on 30-year-old technology, we won’t commit to building a replacement (spending billions on missile defense, instead). Given that history, the relatively few accidents are a testimony to the amazing skills of our shuttle pilots.

We cannot run away from the rest of our solar system. There are things out there we need to know about, like which asteroids and comets might be threatening our planet, if nothing else. So we need to spend what it takes to design and build a safer and more reliable spacecraft. The astronauts who risk their lives working in outer space deserve that level of commitment from all of us who stay here on our planet’s surface, whether we dream of space travel or not.

David Rask Behling is a rural Albert Lea resident. His column normally appears Tuesdays. Dustin Petersen’s column, which normally appears Mondays, will appear Tuesday this week.