There are many ways that sadness has infused my daily life over the past few years. Today’s disaster, the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia on re-entry, has added yet another splash of sadness to my life.

Today, intellect and innovation were destroyed 39 miles above the earth. Bright, brave and brilliant men and women who strived to increase the heights to which the rest of man could climb perished in a ball of gas and flames. It is not the way in which they died that saddens me so, it is who died. The world lost scientists who were pushing the limits of what we understood about our bodies, our planet and our universe. These were the types of people we cannot afford to lose. I pray that we do not lose any more.