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Michael Leinbach: Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

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Michael Leinbach Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew
  • Название:
    Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew
  • Автор:
  • Издательство:
    Arcade Publishing
  • Жанр:
  • Год:
    2018
  • Город:
    New York
  • Язык:
    Английский
  • ISBN:
    978-1-628-72851-4
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Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Timed to release for the 15th Anniversary of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, this is the epic true story of one of the most dramatic, unforgettable adventures of our time. On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated on reentry before the nation’s eyes, and all seven astronauts aboard were lost. Author Mike Leinbach, Launch Director of the space shuttle program at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center was a key leader in the search and recovery effort as NASA, FEMA, the FBI, the US Forest Service, and dozens more federal, state, and local agencies combed an area of rural east Texas the size of Rhode Island for every piece of the shuttle and her crew they could find. Assisted by hundreds of volunteers, it would become the largest ground search operation in US history. This comprehensive account is told in four parts: • Parallel Confusion • Courage, Compassion, and Commitment • Picking Up the Pieces • A Bittersweet Victory For the first time, here is the definitive inside story of the Columbia disaster and recovery and the inspiring message it ultimately holds. In the aftermath of tragedy, people and communities came together to help bring home the remains of the crew and nearly 40 percent of shuttle, an effort that was instrumental in piecing together what happened so the shuttle program could return to flight and complete the International Space Station. Bringing Columbia Home shares the deeply personal stories that emerged as NASA employees looked for lost colleagues and searchers overcame immense physical, logistical, and emotional challenges and worked together to accomplish the impossible. Featuring a foreword and epilogue by astronauts Robert Crippen and Eileen Collins, and dedicated to the astronauts and recovery search persons who lost their lives, this is an incredible, compelling narrative about the best of humanity in the darkest of times and about how a failure at the pinnacle of human achievement became a story of cooperation and hope.

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After a two-year stint as deputy director of the International Space Station Program Office at KSC, I became the eighth launch director of the Space Shuttle Program in August 2000. I was now responsible for all shuttle launch operations, including giving the final “Go”—or often “No-go”—for launch.

Through it all, I never lost touch with friends made along the way, nor did they stop reaching out to me. I like to think I was just a regular KSC guy who got a big job.

Some of my predecessors had a sort of old-school management style that entailed demanding action and acting aloof toward junior personnel. However, my openness, combined with coming up through the ranks as I did, earned me the moniker “the people’s launch director.” I was no overbearing type—but I was also no pushover. People always knew where they stood with me and what I expected of them. I publicly recognized superior performance, and also did some course correcting when necessary. It was a combination that worked well for the team and me. Together, we accomplished amazing things.

And what a thrill it was to work with the space shuttle! It was a masterpiece of American technological prowess—the pinnacle of NASA’s manned spacecraft evolution. Each of the winged vehicles of the “Space Transportation System,” which we called the “orbiter” or just simply “the shuttle,” took off like a rocket from KSC and landed like a glider. Crews of up to seven astronauts[1]{1} could work in a spacious shirtsleeves environment for missions lasting as long as sixteen days, while the temperature in the vacuum of space just outside their windows ranged from 250°F in direct sunlight to minus 250°F in the shade. They could also venture outside through an air lock to perform space walks. The shuttle’s cargo bay carried payloads as large as a school bus.

Each orbiter—the size of a small commercial airliner—was lofted into Earth orbit bolted to an enormous external fuel tank and a pair of the most powerful solid propellant rocket boosters ever developed. The two solid rocket boosters turned 2.2 million pounds of fuel into energy—and speed—in the course of 127 seconds. The foam-covered fuel tank held about 1.6 million pounds of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, which the shuttle’s three main engines gulped dry in the space of eight and one half minutes, by which time the shuttle was in orbit and traveling 17,500 mph. Everything in the system except for the external tank could be reused.

NASA’s shuttle fleet—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour—flew 135 space missions between 1981 and 2011, carrying a total of 833 crew members.[2] Space shuttles took 3.5 million pounds of cargo into orbit during the Program. This included scores of different payloads—satellites, laboratories, planetary probes, NASA’s Great Observatories (such as the Hubble Space Telescope), experiments, and space station modules.

There had never been such an amazing flying machine.

It was also far from perfect.

Фото

In 1997, NASA announced plans for a sixteen-day research mission, STS-107.[3] The new Spacehab double module, about the size of a school bus, would fly in the payload bay of Columbia, the flagship of the shuttle fleet. Spacehab was an orbital laboratory boasting a wide array of science and medical experiments, studying subjects as diverse from how various systems in the human body respond to weightlessness to how to grow protein crystals for cancer therapies. Spacehab was pressurized and connected to the shuttle’s cockpit by a tunnel, allowing the astronauts to operate the research equipment in a shirtsleeves environment. NASA announced the mission’s crew in July 2000.

United States Air Force Colonel Rick Husband was the mission commander and the man at the shuttle’s controls. He had served previously as pilot—the second-in-command, who does not actually fly the shuttle—on STS-96. He was one of very few astronauts to be given command of a mission after only one previous spaceflight. A deeply religious man, Husband was renowned for his sense of humor, ability to build cohesive teams, and beautiful singing voice.

Commander William “Willie” McCool, the mission’s pilot, was a US Navy test pilot and was on his first shuttle mission. His colleague Laurel Clark described him as a “ten-year-old trapped in the body of an eight-year-old” because of his boyish looks and youthful exuberance.[4]

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Anderson, USAF, served as payload commander for STS-107. He was a veteran of one previous shuttle mission and was the ninth African American to fly in space.

Kalpana “KC” Chawla, PhD, an aerospace engineer, was the first Indian-born woman in space. Flying on her second space mission, she was STS-107’s flight engineer.

Captain Dave Brown, MD, a naval aviator and naval flight surgeon, was a mission specialist on his first spaceflight. Brown was the only unmarried member of the crew.

Commander Laurel Clark, MD was, like Brown, a naval flight surgeon and a mission specialist on her first spaceflight.

Colonel Ilan Ramon, a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, was the specialist operating an experiment to observe dust storms in the Mediterranean and Israel. He was Israel’s first astronaut, and this was his first space mission.

Between their selection and their flight, the crew spent more than 4,800 hours training for the mission and an additional 3,500 hours training to run the medical and scientific experiments in the Spacehab module. The many mission delays—thirteen in all, due to priority changes and hardware issues—enabled the crew to bond closely with one another. They spent nine nights camping in Wyoming as part of an outdoor leadership course in 2001. Brown carried a video camera everywhere to record the crew’s preparations and commemorate their friendship.

A mission’s commander sets the tone for how the crew interacts with the support teams on the ground. Some commanders were type A personalities—all business. Husband, on the other hand, was one of the warmest and most caring commanders imaginable. He, and by extension his crew, made everyone he worked with on the ground support teams feel like part of a family.

Robert Hanley, from Houston’s Johnson Space Center (JSC), served as the interface between the astronaut crew and the teams at Kennedy who were preparing Columbia for her mission. Hanley got to know the STS-107 crew and their families intimately during the two years leading up to the mission. He said, “Hands down, 107 was the best crew I ever had. They were just awesome individuals. Rick set the stage that ‘Hey, we’re gonna be a warm, happy, fun crew,’ and they were.”

Ann Micklos, the lead airframe engineer for Columbia at KSC, was responsible for structural issues and the thermal protection system on the orbiter. Apart from her official role working with the shuttle, she had a unique relationship with the crew—she and Dave Brown had been dating since before his assignment to STS-107. Their connection further strengthened the personal relationship between the ground crews and Columbia. Ann said, “It wasn’t just personal for me. It was personal for everyone who was working on that vehicle—they all knew me and knew I was dating Dave.”

In June 2002—just prior to Columbia’s originally scheduled July launch date—Ann received a birthday package from Dave while visiting family in Connecticut. Inside was an empty watch box. Fearing that the watch had been stolen, she looked more carefully and found a note taped to the lid, which read, HELP! I’M BEING HELD HOSTAGE ABOARD THE SPACE SHUTTLE! Ann was ecstatic to hear that Dave would be flying with her watch on the mission.

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