I woke up around 8:30 Pacific Time today, and flipped on the television to watch my usual lineup of Looney Tunes cartoons to start my Saturday, but flipped through a news report that began with the words “unable to survive an accident at that altitude” while displaying a picture of the Space Shuttle. I had a deja vu feeling, the same feeling I had when being awoken to the news of the Challenger explosion 17 years ago.

The limited facts that seem to be known for sure is that Columbia broke up at an altitude of 200K feet while travelling at over 12,000 miles per hour over central Texas.

Aboard were Commander Rick D. Husband, Pilot William C. McCool, Payload Commander Michael P. Anderson, Mission Specialists David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. My condolences and the condolences of all the world go out to the brave crew and their families.