The coincidences of Saturday's tragedy are a bit freaky. (P.S.: They are just coincidences.)

1) An Israeli was on board, leading everyone to jump to the obvious conclusion.

2) The next flight for Columbia was scheduled for November. That flight was to carry Barbara Morgan, the teacher who was the backup for Christa McAuliffe.

With NASA blaming slashed budgets on their lack of safety advances, what purpose does NASA serve if they have to keep sending shuttles up to space without proper evacuation procedures or equipment testing? Satellites are launched commercially. It's two years after 2001, and there aren't any commercial flights to a space station. Is NASA still just a foreign relations PR machine that it was during the Cold War? Or is there something more?

There's really only one plausible answer. As much as I mourn the deaths of those astronauts, we have to remember that NASA is a military organization no matter what semantics you want to use. They were founded on the basis of doing something before the Russians did. Much of NASA's research is funneled straight into the Army and the Air Force. Weaponizing space is inevitable. These seven astronauts did not die in a tragedy like a plane crash. These seven astronauts were soldiers who died in battle.

I hope you, the reader, aren't taking this as heartless. I'm not being heartless. However, this tragedy, at a time of economic and political turmoil, puts the spotlight on NASA and makes me question why billions upon billions of dollars are spent and lives are put at risk in the name of conquering space.

Tangent: Cruel.com has an AP wire article that was filed shortly before the shuttle broke up which tells you a lot about journalism.