Launch on Need by Daniel Guiteras (small books to read txt) 📗

to the large whiteboard at the front of the room. With a red Dry Erase marker, she wrote in large all-caps, a single word, then circled it for emphasis.

A sudden hush fell about the room, except for those who were way in the back or out in the hallway, who couldn’t read what she had written.

“What does it say? What did she write?” voices demanded.

Chapter 9

Johnson Space Center, Houston

Mission Evaluation Room

Mission Management Team Meeting (unscheduled)

Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003

POLLARD ARGUABLY had a lot going for her. She had led a good mission so far, and had proved she was thinking ahead. But Brown had one thing she did not have, and that was decades of experience. And so when the moderator of NASA’s digital-reply service advised Brown what Pollard had written on the whiteboard, Brown realized he had heard enough.

As the noise from the mission management team meeting grew in response to what Pollard had written, the tiny speaker in Brown’s phone labored to keep up. From his office at the Kennedy Space Center, several states away, Brown had listened quietly to all that had been presented. He had been as patient as could be expected. But now it was his turn. He slid his feet off the desk, wincing at the back pain it produced, then leaned forward to get closer to the phone.

“Julie, I’d…,” Brown paused. He hated speakerphones and conference calls. He never remembered if he was supposed to pick up the handset or just talk loudly into that tiny hole at the base of the phone. How could there be a microphone in there?

He heard Pollard say his name, so he tried again. “Julie, I’d like to make a few comments before we end this meeting,” Brown said tentatively, wondering if anyone had heard what he said.

“Go ahead Ken, we can hear you,” Pollard said, smiling, realizing she sounded a bit patronizing. She felt no disdain for Brown; in fact, in the half-dozen times they had met, she had got on quite well with him. But Brown could be intimidating. He consistently demonstrated a gift for stripping a problem to its most critical elements, and if you were the one giving a presentation, there was a chance he would make you feel unqualified to be at the podium, feel somewhat smaller up there in front of some of the brightest minds in the universe. Easy now, get the job done through the people, Pollard reminded herself. Brown is simply a resource.

“Yeah, I’ve been listening to the meeting from here at Kennedy and there’s one thing I think we need to think about and discuss before we get outside imaging help.” Brown listened for a response, but heard nothing except a few coughs and muffled talking, so he continued. “For one thing, none of us really knows what the military’s capabilities are for imaging. It’s my understanding that no one in the operational team there for STS-107 has that level of security clearance.”

“Ah, that is true, Ken,” Pollard said, wondering where he was going with this.

“We’ve all seen satellite photos of Earth from space and pictures of orbiters docked at the space station. From an imaging standpoint, those are relatively simple images to get. But to get a quality picture of Columbia’s wing on orbit, one that can really help us quantify the damage, if there is any, seems like a time-intensive task. My concern is the amount of time it will take to get such an image, having to first tell the crew what’s up, coordinate with Cheyenne Mountain for necessary vector changes on Columbia, and then wait for an imaging window to open. What I mean is, we don’t want to waste any time here.”

“What are you suggesting we do instead, Ken?” Pollard asked as she paced back and forth behind the management team with a puzzled expression—her chief image guy was suggesting imaging was not the way to go. This can’t be happening, she thought.

“Well, I say we tell the crew about the debris strike and then fast-track the procedure development to get them out there on the wing so they can physically inspect the damage.”

Brown’s voice rang throughout the conference room in a scratchy, distorted telephone voice, but what he had said hung like a sledgehammer at the end of its backswing.

“If we get imaging,” Brown insisted, “we’ll likely still want to quantify the damage anyway, which means we do a spacewalk. I’m telling you, when the crew finds out about the debris strike, they’ll all be at Columbia’s aft flight-deck windows, craning to see the wing. And when they realize the open payload-bay doors block the view of RCC panels 1 through 11, they’re gonna want to go out there. They’re gonna want to see for themselves whether their spacecraft is damaged.”

Chapter 10

Johnson Space Center, Houston

Mission Control Center

Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003

“HELLO,” ALLAN WARNER SAID after pushing the flashing intercom button on his phone.

“I have a call for you, Mr. Warner. It’s coming through the JSC Message Center, line two. He did not offer his name, but said only that he’s calling from the Cheyenne Mountain Space Defense Operations Center. Do you want…”

“No, no, I’ll take it, thank you.” Warner had been reviewing the recommendations from the Mission Management Team meeting. He pushed the button for line two and identified himself.

“Mr. Warner, yes, Commander Scheckter here.”

As the Flight Dynamics Officer (FDO, pronounced “Fido”), Warner was responsible for overseeing the general flight path of Columbia and her payloads. The FDO was also NASA’s designated position for all verbal communications with SPACECOM, including “threat and warning” messages for orbiters in space. If an orbiter was in a position to run into space junk, Warner was the person Space Control would contact.