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

Columbia was finished. She was a proud bird that had tried to make it home, and did make it at far as Texas—nearly to the doorstep of Mission Control.

The crew never had a chance.

At the Kennedy Space Center, thousands were getting impatient. Seasoned viewers knew Columbia was late, and that NASA didn’t do late. They checked their watches, and gazed in horror at the countdown clock that was now displaying the number of seconds she was overdue. L+10, +30, +60—a telltale sign something was wrong—that Columbia wasn’t coming back.

“No!,” John Stangley heard himself yell into the live TV camera. “This can’t be happening!” He had waited for NASA to break the silence—to negate the certain agony he sensed was coming. He had hoped for a miracle—a crackle over the radio that hinted communication with the crew might return.

Stangley sat up sharply in his bed, still yelling, carrying the horror of his dream into reality. His hair, pajamas and bed nearly dripped with sweat. He felt an immediate chill in his fiercely air-conditioned hotel room. He grabbed the remote control and began frantically switching between CNN, Fox News, and the three major networks, desperate for any news of the shuttle. The time was 2 A.M.

“Damn commercials!”

On his third go-around, he saw a flash of the NASA logo and fingered the volume-up button.

“At the Kennedy Space Center yesterday,” Stangley heard himself say, and then watched his own face as he gave the report he’d taped hours before. “A panel of engineers reported continued progress in preparing Atlantis for her upcoming late-February rescue mission…”

Stangley fell back in exhaustion, allowing the icy-damp sheets to calm his mind and slow his racing heart.

Chapter 39

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

CNN Mobile Studio

Columbia Flight Day 10

Saturday, Jan. 25, 2003

JOHN STANGLEY GAZED down at the ground while holding two fingers to his earpiece, waiting for his cue. Stephanie Lance focused intently and self-consciously at the papers on the set’s broadcast desk while waiting for the CNN promo audio to finish. Then in the professional, practiced way she had done thousands of times before, she looked up from her papers directly into camera one, and began reading from the prompter.

“Good morning. It’s Saturday, January 25th, I’m Stephanie Lance, and these are our top stories.” Then Lance looked down, turned her head to the right, shuffled her papers and looked up into camera two.

“In a press conference held late yesterday afternoon,” Lance continued, “a panel of NASA engineers and managers expressed their continued optimism for the Columbia rescue mission, and assured reporters who were on hand at the Kennedy Space Center that Atlantis was in fact on schedule. Standing by live with us now from the Kennedy Space Center is John Stangley. Good morning, John.”

“Good morning, Stephanie.”

“Now, John, you were at the press conference yesterday, correct?”

“That is correct, Stephanie.”

“John, were you surprised when the representatives from NASA reported everything was going relatively well? That Atlantis was only 10 hours behind schedule, and that the accident that occurred early yesterday morning had not produced days of delay but merely minimal damage to the orbiter?”

“Well, I can tell you that the other reporters present at the conference, as well as myself, were quite surprised, dare I say even shocked. For those viewers out there who missed this story yesterday, NASA revealed in a press bulletin that a worker had accidentally fallen on a catwalk in NASA’s orbiter processing facility, or OPF, and had dropped a bucket—a 5-gallon bucket—onto Atlantis’s open payload bay door. At the time, NASA seemed concerned that the damage might be severe enough to cancel the rescue mission altogether. But, as you said, Stephanie, NASA now reports processing is only 10 hours behind schedule.”

“Just another hill in this roller coaster of a story, John.”

“Yes, it certainly is. And let me add one more thing, Stephanie. We’ve had reports that the OPF supervisor, a man named Wally Jensen, died at his desk yesterday of a heart attack. Jensen was the supervisor of the worker who had the accident, and many are speculating that Jensen may have succumbed to the incredible pressure he was under to get Atlantis ready for launch, and that the accident and its potential to foil the rescue attempt mounted the pressure even higher. I talked to several OPF frontline workers after hearing the news about Jensen. They all said the same thing about him, that he always had passion for his work. That he demonstrated a lot of pride every day, and expected others to do the same. One worker told me that there’s a further heightened vigilance to ready Atlantis for flight with the passing of Jensen. That worker told me and I quote, ‘We owe it to him to make this rescue happen.’

“There is one final tragically ironic note, Stephanie. We’re told Jensen’s heart attack occurred just minutes before the damage assessment team determined that there was no significant damage to Atlantis from the accident.”

“Thank you, John, for that report. Our sympathies go out to the Jensen family.” Lance paused, attempting to show authentic respect for the dead man, then continued.

“Tomorrow, Atlantis is scheduled to be moved from the orbiter processing facility to the vehicle assembly building, where huge cranes will lift Atlantis to a vertical position, allowing Atlantis to be mounted to the huge brownish-colored external fuel tank and white solid rocket boosters…”

Chapter 40

NBL, Houston, Texas

Columbia Flight Day 11

Sunday, Jan. 26

6:20 AM EST

BOTH THE ENVIRONMENTAL-CONTROL and the breathing-gas teams were nearly finished with their morning start-up procedures at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Within 10 minutes, the NBL’s test team, consisting of 50 personnel, would begin its pretest checklist. Lap swimming for the staff would come next. And before 7:30, before Garrett and Mullen arrived for their pre-brief with