February 4, 2003

Halfway through a sunny Sunday afternoon, it struck me that I might have known one of the astronauts who had perished in Saturday's Columbia disaster. That thunderbolt proved not to be true, but, after conducting some Internet research, I discovered another disturbing personal connection to the tragedy.

Three years ago, while on assignment for the Chicago Tribune, I reported on a Houston-based technology company's plans for a privately funded broadcasting and production facility in space. SpaceHab Inc. was using the occasion of the National Association of Broadcasters' annual convention, in Las Vegas, to announce its intention to create a subsidiary that would transmit original scientific, educational, news and entertainment content from the International
Space Station for use in commercial and educational endeavors.

Inside a white tent pitched outside the convention center, SpaceHab executives - in the company of astronauts Gene Cernan, Steve Oswald, Bernard Harris and several attractive models in silver space suits - directed reporters' attention to a model of the $100 million Enterprise module, which, by 2004, would be attached to the Russian portion of the ISS. The module would house the broadcast station, as well as a research laboratory in which company-sponsored micro-gravity experiments would be conducted.

Space Media Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceHab, would be responsible for delivering digital signals from ISS to Earth.

After the press conference, Harris described for me how Earth-bound students might use the Internet to communicate with astronauts, and compare the results of experiments conducted in different gravitational environments. A doctor, scientist, educator and SpaceHab executive, the Texas native's enthusiasm for the joint venture with the Russia's Energia was palpable.

"I want to bring space down to Earth in a virtual tour," Harris said. "Space is the only place we can have this gestalt view of our planet, and see how we really are one people."

As an African-American, he was especially keen on using the project as a tool to interest minority students the sciences.

For some reason, Sunday I mistakenly thought Harris might have been on board the Columbia. Even though I hadn't thought of SpaceHab in years, my heart sunk at the thought.

He wasn't, of course. Still, that brief encounter made me feel closer to those who had chosen a similar path in life.

Upon further investigation on the Internet, I learned that one non-human casualty of the disaster was the information collected as part of the STARS program, which was a joint venture of Space Media, SpaceHab and NASA. Students participating in STARS had sent experiments into space with the Columbia crew, and were anxiously awaiting their return.

American kids wanted to learn how weightless conditions would affect the behavior of harvester ants, while their counterparts in Australia, China, Israel, Japan and Liechtenstein had sent along some spiders, silkworms, fish, bees and gardens. Like the astronauts, these students had been preparing for the mission for more than two years, and some had traveled to Florida to participate in preparations for the launch.

Imagine what these kids are going through right now.

Since this column is about digital technology, I struggled to come to grips with the tragedy in a more analytical, non-personal way. I couldn't, but maybe some of this will make sense anyway.

Simply put, without the space program the benefits of digital technology probably wouldn't arrive for several more years. Almost no one can explain how it works - I know I can't -- but it's changed our lives, mostly for the better.

Certainly, Hollywood's interests in outer space no longer were limited to the imagination of its screenwriters and special-effects artists.

Satellites now deliver American-produced entertainment products to every corner of the globe. Digital editing and production techniques continue to revolutionize the way Hollywood conducts business and creates art.

Three years ago, SpaceHab chairman Shelley A. Harrison told reporters that his company "is about doing business in space," and it intended to fund the broadcast module through advertising, sponsorships, commercials and deals with media concerns and news organizations.

Harrison--who's credited with inventing the laser bar code-- acknowledged that he had already engaged in talks with Hollywood talent agents, in the hope of possibly creating an orbiting sitcom. He didn't see why actors and other entertainers couldn't participate in the space program, alongside scientists and educators.

"Imagine the songs John Denver might have written aboard the shuttle, or what a comedian like Steve Martin would say," added Cernan, a Chicago native and the last man to walk on the moon. "And wouldn't it be interesting to get a high school student's perspective? If we could send a 77-year-old John Glenn into space, why not a teenager?"

Considering the frenzy that erupted within minutes of the Columbia disaster on Saturday, I tried to imagine what would have happened if Glenn - or, God forbid, wanna-be astronaut Jason Timberlake -- had been on board the shuttle this time, as well. The media's rush to capitalize on their deaths might only have been surpassed by the hysteria surrounding the loss of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Elvis Presley.

Even if the students took digital technology completely for granted, it helped them see astronauts as the heroes they once were and find the humanity in science and math. Digital technology made the miraculous seem commonplace and fully within their grasp.

Instant access to information is a cool concept. Unfortunately, acts of God and man's incompetence can't be put on a seven-second delay.

Saturday's fiery rain of fuselage and body parts reminded me of something that happened after American Airlines came up with the bright idea of installing a camera in the cockpit of its jetliners. It produced a diversion from the usual drill surrounding takeoff, but it came with a downside few people anticipated.

When an American DC-10 crashed moments after liftoff from Chicago's O'Hare Airport, one of the first things that came to my mind was the near-certainty that those Los Angeles-based passengers were monitoring the progress of the takeoff when the plane's engine fell to the earth. That was an idea whose time came and went very quickly.

The same sickening vision returned to me while I was reporting -- from a small jet airplane, flying over California's central valley -- on possible applications for broadband devices on jetliners. Passengers, I was told, soon would soon be able to communicate with friends and relatives on the ground, teleconference with customers and co-workers, and download movies into the hard drives of their laptops.

There was at least one major drawback, I thought.

The year before, I had been a passenger on a plane that was forced to make a two-point crash landing, and, for better or worse, had been given nearly an hour to ponder all the various scenarios, only one of which was positive. I tried to imagine how I would have utilized such broadband access if it had been available on that flight, especially considering how difficult it was merely trying to decide whether we should use the seatback phones to call our loved ones and how to say goodbye on voice mail.

What would we have seen and heard from the planes captured by the 9/11 terrorists, if their captives had been able to log on to the Internet?

How much more traumatized would those STARS students be, today, if they also were able to monitor the activities of the astronauts during Columbia's journey home on Saturday? And, would those Internet-delivered images someday find their way into a Hollywood thriller, like those haunting images grabbed from Abraham Zapruder's home movie, nearly 40 years ago?

These are some of the thorny questions we need to start asking ourselves before we dive head first into digital swimming pool. Along with all the joys and wonders we've come to expect from our satellite dishes, DVD, downloaded music, video-on-demand and CGI artists, someday soon we'll almost certainly have to deal with sights and sounds no one ever dreamed of, except in their worst nightmares.

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