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

I would like to share a brief memory of each of the Columbia astronauts. Rick was a man that any astronaut would want as their commander. He was wise and charismatic. People often praised his beautiful singing voice. Willie was so proud of his children! I remember the day he stopped in my office to show me his son’s artwork. Laurel and I had many conversations about the challenges of being both a mom and an astronaut. Mike was also a family man, and he always seemed to have a smile on his face, especially when he was going out to fly the T-38. Ilan often asked me to fly with him in the T-38. He was very humble and quiet, and clearly dedicated to his family. I wish I had gotten to know him better. KC and I worked together in the simulator, trying to solve the sneaky problems presented to us by the training team. She had such a calm and logical way about her. And Dave was an optimist. No matter how tough a problem he faced, Dave was a man of ideas and solutions.

It is still difficult for those of us who knew them to remember them now, as we miss their being physically here with us. But as time passes, I believe we should recall the happiness they brought to the people in their lives. We should celebrate their spirit and their love of space exploration. While I grieved over the loss of our friends, Evelyn Husband would remind me of a quote from Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

My respect and thanks go out to those who designed, built, operated, and maintained the shuttle. Several technicians at Kennedy Space Center remarked to me that the loss of Columbia was in some ways like the loss of a family member. I know that they grieved her loss. Columbia was the flagship of the fleet. I had the privilege of commanding my third mission on Columbia in 1999 when my crew deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory. So I completely understand it when I hear how the folks at KSC felt. They raised and nurtured Columbia throughout her lifetime.

The space shuttle was an amazing and versatile ship. Despite two tragedies, its successes were manifest. It was an engineering marvel. The shuttle was a test program, but it achieved its ultimate goal, which was to assemble the International Space Station. Other accomplishments of the shuttle include learning about the human body, in-space technologies, our planet, and deep space. We have inspired over thirty years of students to study math, science, and engineering. We worked very productively with people from many other countries, on many different levels. People of very diverse backgrounds came together on the shuttle.

The Columbia crew embodied the benefits of diversity. They were adventurers, explorers, and role models. How fortunate they were to have had the opportunity to experience a whole new world. Unfortunately, we will never be able to thank them for their contributions to the great journey of human discovery.

Of course, the Columbia and Challenger accidents have reminded us we need to be ever vigilant. Despite more than two years of careful work to prevent foam shedding from the shuttle’s external tank, my STS-114 mission lost a large piece of foam on ascent, in a circumstance very similar to what happened to Columbia on STS-107. Preventing foam loss was a top objective of the return-to-flight effort, and while this turned out to be an embarrassment, I believe it sent a clear message—future boosters and spacecraft should be designed to protect the ship’s reentry system (the heatshield), because rockets will always shed “stuff” like insulation and ice during the tumultuous minutes of ascent to orbit. This is why we will see future spacecraft designed with the reentry ship on top of the rocket, rather than beside it, as was the case with the space shuttle. The STS-114 incident was a very sobering reminder that a complex system like the shuttle can never be made completely safe, despite everyone’s best efforts. Our future space travelers will be safer due to the lessons learned from the shuttle missions.

I must close by expressing my heartfelt thanks to the many thousands of people who worked tirelessly in East Texas. Because of their focus, passion, and long hours, we were able to recover enough of Columbia to determine the cause of the accident and return the shuttle to flight. I experienced their work firsthand when my crew visited the search areas several times, and we even assisted with a search. Soichi Noguchi from my crew found a piece of tile. We were proud to share in the efforts, but we primarily wanted to meet the people and get a feeling of what they were enduring in this difficult search. They worked under emotional stress, time constraints, cold winter weather, and changing scenarios. They completed their unprecedented mission—never had there been a search effort of this magnitude. Due to their efforts, the shuttle returned to flight, and the Space Station was completed.

So I say to all those who took part in the search effort: you too have made an important contribution to space exploration. I thank you personally, and I thank you on behalf of the Shuttle Program. Your story has now been told, and you can be proud of your role in the great journey of human discovery.

February 1, 2018, marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Columbia accident. Merely counting the years is not in itself a sufficient justification for writing a book. However, the passage of a decade and a half does offer an opportunity to tell such an important story about American courage, compassion, and commitment while firsthand accounts are still available.

Because of the vast number of people involved in preparing Columbia for launch, searching for the crew and the debris of the vehicle, and reconstructing the shuttle, it was impossible for us to include all the stories of heartbreak, heroics, and selfless acts that we heard during our research for this book. Likewise, we deliberately pared back our technical discussions to make this book accessible to a broader audience. And we had to omit some material purely in the interest of producing a book that people could pick up without a forklift.

The authors maintain a blog at www.bringingcolumbiahome.com. Our regular posts supplement this book’s chapters, and we include many more photographs than we could fit into the book. There are also links to related sites, videos, and other material to explore for people interested in Columbia and the Space Shuttle Program. The blog affords readers the opportunity to share their own memories of Columbia and to interact with the authors. We welcome your comments and hope that you will contribute to the recorded history of this remarkable time.

To the citizens of all of the communities throughout Texas and Louisiana where the Columbia ’s debris came down: We hope that you will understand that space limitations and the need to tell a coherent story may have led us to say less about your particular county’s contributions than we should have. Every person in Texas and Louisiana who was part of the recovery effort deserves to be proud of his or her accomplishment. Please know the NASA family is forever in your debt.

We recognize that government contractors did much of the heavy lifting in the recovery and reconstruction. For the sake of brevity, when we discuss a particular agency performing a function, we intend the reference to include both civil servants and the contractors who acted on behalf of that agency. Thus, a reference to “NASA personnel” may imply NASA employees as well as staff from United Space Alliance, Boeing, and other contractors who were working side by side with the civil servants. The transparent, “badgeless” environment that existed during this operation was one of the keys to its success.