There is some conjecture that the seven astronauts of the space shuttle were doomed to perish once the shuttle left the launch pad.

When the space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral on January 16, 2003, NASA flight engineers on the launch pad observed something unusual. A 20 inch piece of foam insulation weighing only 2 1/2 pounds peeled off the orange external fuel tank and struck the left wing of the shuttle. It appears the foam fragment jarred some heat tiles loose that are crucial for keeping the space craft from burning up upon re-entry.

''We're making the assumption from the start that the external tank was the root cause of the problem that lost Columbia,'' shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said. ''That's a fairly drastic assumption, and it's sobering.''

According to published reports, while Columbia was still in orbit, NASA engineers analyzed launch footage frame-by-frame and were unable to determine whether the shuttle was damaged by the insulation. But the half-page engineering report, —issued on day 12 of the 16-day flight —indicated ''the potential for a large damage area to the tile.''

Eerily, if the heat tiles (as suspected) rendered Columbia a time-bomb waiting to go off, there is nothing (apart from an act of God) that could have intervened once the shuttle had left the launch pad.

In a similar way, according to the Scriptures, when we are "launched" into this world at birth, we too have a fatal flaw—our sinful nature—that dooms us to eternal destruction outside of an act of God. Unlike the astronauts, we've been given a warning about our fatal flaw. God has intervened on our behalf. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).