This reader thinks the Space Shuttle rocks. And then some.

“I can’t begin to describe my disappointment with you.

“Every book, every poem, every song, painting, sculpture, symphony and dance

– everything that makes us ‘us’ and not beavers or turnips — is rolled up

into that one magnificent object that we hurl at the rest of the universe in

order to say, ‘We’re here. We matter. We’re a part of this universe too.’

“All your math is just diddling ’til you die, unless it’s part of the

universe at large.

“You know, there’s a universe outside of you. You should know better. What

the shuttle does is to give all of us meaning. More than that, the shuttle

IS meaning.”

[Me] Not to nit-pick, but we’re not precisely hurling the shuttle at the

rest of the universe. We’re hurling it into low earth orbit — that’s about

a half of a billionth of the diameter of the Solar System, about one sixty

thousand trillionth the diameter of the Galaxy, etc. I mean, let’s not get

carried away here.