Today I heard a quote from T. S. Eliot's poem, Little Gidding. I looked up the poem and reread it. I was struck by the aptness of some of the lines to our lost Columiba:


Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended.


In the uncertain hour before the morning

Near the ending of interminable night



The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire.



Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.


With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling


We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;


(Italics added)


We shall not cease from our exploring, nor should we. To do so would be dishonor to ourselves and to those heros who devoted years of training to earn the ride that cost their lives. We will not cease from finding ways to make it safer, but even if we fail, we will send others, because, as humans, we must test all limits, search beyond every horizon and cross every frontier. Someday all of us will cross the frontier these have crossed, and know the place for the first time.