No, the tragedy is this: Bush. The economy stinks, and now he has an excuse to pull more money from space development and exploration and sink it into a flawed economic plan. And don't tell me he wont: there's no oil in space. This is going to pull us further from the ISS, which is going to weaken the US hold on space, which only bothers me because it's going to be that much harder to get out there in a few years.
Maybe Nasa will get smart and start tourism once it cleans this mess up. As a four year old, I was wondering why they didn't book seats on flights for tourists; people want to go, and it generates revenue.
Suck.
I say this- let not these heroes have died in vain, and do not tarnish their memory with fear and apprehension. These people were explorers, going into danger regularly, and they knew this. Fear is not going to spread the best parts of humanity to space, only the worse.