STS-107 - Tumblr Posts

21 years ago today, the shuttle orbiter Columbia and all seven astronauts she carried disintegrated on reentry. They were roughly fifteen minutes from landing.

Sometimes I watch the mission control recordings of that morning. It's a reminder of what —of who— we've lost on our path to the stars. it's a reminder that things can go so wrong so quickly in spaceflight.

HOBAUGH: Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last. HUSBAND: Roger, uh—

The loss of Columbia was the nail in the proverbial coffin for the shuttle program. NASA kept the other three orbiters flying without incident until 2011, but... we were supposed to go further. The shuttles were meant to be the dawn of the new age of spaceflight. We were meant to keep new shuttles, better shuttles, flying higher and higher for thirty more years. We were meant to get back to the Moon by 2011, and Mars by now. And instead, the swans of the space age were grounded. We're making a halfhearted, direly underfunded push for the Moon only now.

CAIN: FDO, when you expecting tracking? JONES: One minute ago, Flight.

I hope all this waiting has been worth it. I hope the contractors that NASA has been forced to buy spacecraft from (instead doing everything in-house like they always have) did not cut corners. I hope we make up for lost time, and we get to touch the sky again without losing anyone else.

CAIN: GC, Flight. GC, Flight. FOSTER: Flight, GC— CAIN: Lock the doors. FOSTER: ...Copy.

Lock the doors. The most horrible sentence in spaceflight. It means no information leaves the building. It means the emergency protocols are kicking in. It means the mission is over because everyone died, and now all we can do is try to figure out what happened so that it doesn't happen ever again.

I hope I never hear that phrase spoken in my lifetime.

Thunder on, STS-107.