PORT LUDLOW — Saturday’s loss of the space shuttle Columbia struck close to home for resident John Fabian.
Fabian, a former astronaut, was a mission specialist aboard the STS-7 and STS-18 shuttle missions in the early 1980s.
“It’s a great loss,” he said Saturday, hours after the breakup of Columbia over Texas.
The seven crew members of Columbia were several generations of astronauts behind Fabian, he said, noting he didn’t know them personally.
“But we’re all members of the same fraternity,” he said. “We share the same unique and awesome experience.”
There’s nothing like flying into space, Fabian said.
“It’s an awesome experience,” he said matter-of-factly. “Physically, zero (gravity) is an enjoyable thing.”
It takes the hard work of “tens of thousands” of people to make “tens of thousands” pieces of equipment to function flawlessly during a mission, he said.
The risk that something can go wrong is not forgotten, but people will continue to dream of space flight.
“People who fly into space do it because they have a passion to,” he said.
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