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

For more than 20 years, John and Claire had been coming to Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral. “If I don’t come with you, I’ll never see you,” Claire had often said. Business mixed with pleasure. Like young lovers desperate to see each other, they would find ways to meet during John’s workday, between the assignments, press meetings, and live TV appearances. Claire would pack a lunch and a bottle of 2001 Richard Perry Syrah, their favorite from Napa. Then she’d page him—some romantic text message sent in the midst of a press conference, leaving John’s mind whirling as he figured out a way to make their rendezvous work. But that was long before Claire became ill.

Outside the bathroom door, he could faintly hear the news playing from the hotel TV in the armoire. For once he did not focus on the content. For once he did not talk back to the TV reporters about how their angle was wrong. Instead, he just stood looking at himself in the mirror, his image clarifying in the thinning fog, thinking about the lifeless days he had endured without Claire. One memory after another flashed by like pages of a flip-book and the loneliness came rushing.

He was back to work, it was official. But during the months he had taken off he had grown increasingly sick of the media—so sick of the news, of the headlines, the deadlines, and the racing around.

Chapter 4

Johnson Space Center, Houston

Space Shuttle Program Office

Friday, Jan. 17, 2003

11:05 AM EST

EVEN AT AGE 52, it was obvious Julie Pollard had been blessed by a genetic windfall. She had a mind for numbers, a body made strong and lean from running 20 to 30 miles per week, and a heart swollen with passion for her work. No matter what scale or graph one used to measure her success, she was there at the top, wondering sometimes herself what was fueling her good fortune. In life and in her work, she favored a windward tack, always pushing herself to do more, to stay focused.

She had the requisite brains for her job, graduating at the top of her class, with a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from MIT. Two years later, she had her MBA. But at NASA, brains were common, a given, a requirement. What set her apart in this land of giants was her way of interacting with people, of getting them to do their career-best work on a project with little or minimal guidance. She was so competent in her work, so well respected by those she managed, that her employees often petitioned to be part of her future projects. The assignments varied in scope and complexity, but she handled each one with the same poise and control top management had come to expect from her. Some assignments were quite simple, requiring only that her critical eye reassess an existing program. Other assignments were significantly more complex and challenging, providing a chance for her to show off her management skills. “Oh, I just needed to nudge the right people in the right direction,” would be her humble remark when complimented on her work.

Pollard’s most recent assignment was Program Integration Manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA’s Mission Control. She was responsible for integrating the teams from Kennedy, Johnson and Marshall Space Flight Centers. She also collaborated with outside contractors such as United Space Alliance (USA), a relatively recent joint venture between Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. USA was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Space Shuttle Program.

Pollard acted as the Chair for STS-107’s Mission Management Team (MMT). The team consisted of managers from every major mission component, such as Payload Processing, the Weather Office, Space and Life Sciences, Launch Integration and Safety.

Every shuttle mission was assigned an MMT. Any problems that arose during a mission with any shuttle subsystem, such as hardware issues, electrical problems with the orbiter, problems or concerns with payloads, extravehicular activities—anything that fell outside the authority and responsibility of the Flight Directors at Mission Control—were handled by the MMT. Pollard remembered a colleague in her early years at NASA explaining that the flight directors made sure the orbiter stayed on course, and the Mission Management teams made sure that an astronaut’s time in space was well spent—that he or she completed mission objectives.

Pollard was standing at her desk, arranging her final thoughts before her next meeting, gathering some papers she needed, when her computer’s e-mail application sounded its new-message tone and forced itself to the forefront. She was far too compulsive to leave the e-mail until after the meeting. She checked her watch again.

Still time to read this one e-mail.

She moved closer to the monitor to read the header. The message was marked “Urgent, Open Immediately!”

    Original Message

From

:

Brown, K. (Ken)(KSC)(NASA)

Sent

:

Friday, Jan. 17, 2003 11:07 A.M. EST

To

:

Pollard, J. (Julie)(JSC)(NASA)

Cc

:

Dept. Heads, United Space Alliance, Boeing

Subject

:

L+1 Report—STS-107 Debris Strike

Attachment

:

Video clip from launch camera E208

Launch + 1 Day Report

Intercenter Photo Working Group

Preliminary high-resolution photo analysis of launch revealed that at T-plus-approximately-81 seconds a large piece of debris thought to be insulating foam from the -Y ET bipod strut broke loose and subsequently struck the lower leading edge of the orbiter’s left wing. Upon contact with the wing, in the area of transition from chine to main wing, the debris appears to fragment on impact, showering the lower aspect of the wing in varisized particles and shards. No debris is seen traveling over the upper wing surface.

Further analysis is in progress and will include estimates of debris size, impact velocity and angularity.

Due to limited imaging for this debris strike, the lateness of the strike during ascent and the apparent size of the debris, outside imaging in the form of ground-based or satellite-based national assets is highly recommended