Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight (2024) s01e03 Episode Script
PART THREE
1
♪
-Columbia, houston,
good burn, no trim required.
-Houston, thanks.
-We will meet you in post-burn.
[ laughter ]
♪
♪
♪
-Columbia approaching
the coast of california now.
The shuttle speed is
16,400 miles per hour.
♪
-Flight back. Go ahead mmacs.
-Fyi, I've just lost four separate
temperature transducers
On the left side
of the vehicle ,
Hydraulic return temperatures.
♪
-We start seeing anomalies.
Sensors are starting to fail.
-Okay, is there anything
common to them?
Dsc or mdm or anything?
I mean, you're telling
me you lost them all
At exactly the same time.
-No, not exactly.
They were within probably four
or five seconds of each other.
♪
-There was something that
we didn't understand going on.
And I remember asking my team,
You know, "just
make double sure.
Let's double-check
all of our data. "
-Okay. Where are those ?
Where is that
instrumentation located?
-All four of them are located
in the aft part of the left wing.
♪
-Something has gone very
wrong , and it is the left wing.
♪
That's the stomach
punch right there.
♪
-And columbia, houston,
We see your
tire-pressure messages ,
And we did not copy your last.
-Roger.
♪
-I remember that
clipped call that rick had ,
Knowing you can have
communications that drop out
Or are intermittent
at that point.
♪
-We lost comm with the crew,
but that's actually common.
I mean, you don't
have communications
All the way through entry .
So that didn't initially
get my attention.
♪
-Good morning to
you. I'm miles o'brien.
It is now 9:00 a.M.
On the east coast,
6:00 a.M. Out west.
Take a look outside.
You should see
What looks like a
streaking meteor.
It's actually the space
shuttle columbia coming back.
We're watching it. Landing
about 15 minutes away.
♪
-We've also lost the
nose gear down talkback
And the right main
gear down talkback.
♪
-Columbia, houston. Comm check.
♪
-And then everybody
started to lose sensors.
They were getting no
telemetry whatsoever.
The screens were just
going blank, reading nothing,
Just turning off.
-Columbia, houston,
uhf, comm check.
♪
♪
-There was a tenseness
coming into the room.
My focus was forward
You know, trying
to get something
To report to flight
that was useful.
But there wasn't anything.
♪
-Mila's not reporting
any r.F. At this time.
-Fdo, when are you
expecting tracking?
♪
-One minute ago, flight.
♪
-Columbia, houston,
uhf comm check.
♪
-He makes the call.
We hear nothing.
♪
You look at the
screen, and the tracking
Hadn't moved
from the dallas area.
Oh, it was painful.
♪
-I mean, we were just waiting
on the runway for him to land.
It's gonna happen
right in front of us
And we're very excited.
All the crew kids are just
enjoying each other, too,
So running up and
down the bleachers
And just enjoying being there.
♪
-At the runway, there was
just a lot of energy in the air.
And so as a kid, you kind of
just kind of ride that energy.
But all of the waiting
just felt like an eternity.
-Here we go.
-There's this big
countdown clock.
I just remember
staring at that clock,
Like, watching every
second go down,
Like, "is it now? Is it now?"
-I don't know what I expected
When I saw that clock like,
For them to just magically
arrive when it reached zero.
-Iain was very excited.
-Mom's coming
home, and, you know,
He's gonna get mom
hugs, great meals.
You know, life will
be back to normal.
♪
-Somebody from nasa
said, "you'll see the big
Kind of parachute that
pops out of the back."
And I think that's probably
what I was most excited about
[laughs] was watching
the parachute come out.
♪
-There was something not right.
I remember our
capcom, charlie hobaugh,
Trying to re-establish
communications.
And he said, over
and over again,
"columbia, houston, comm check."
-Columbia, houston, comm check.
♪
-And I had not lost hope
That we would re-establish
communications to the crew.
♪
-No c band yet.
-Copy.
♪
-C band's a radar
that sits on the ground.
And literally, it
sends out a signal,
And it bounces it
off of the spacecraft
To tell us where it is.
But we were getting nothing.
♪
You know, the
room was just silent.
♪
-Alright. Miles,
back over to you.
-Alright. We've
got a little problem
On the space shuttle columbia.
It has been out of communication
now for the past 12 minutes.
Let's take a look
at a live picture
Of mission control in houston.
I was live on morning
tv at that point,
So dialled into nasa
on a cellphone I had.
There was a secret phone
number you could dial into
And hear the mission audio.
The people in the
control room were going,
"are you hearing
this?" I'm, like, nodding.
-No further communications
with the spacecraft
About 8:00 a.M. Central time.
-Hang on. Let's listen in.
-And no further tracking
data from the spacecraft
Was gained from c
band tracking radar
At the merritt island
tracking station in florida.
-My team was in
the control room,
And they were
like, "this is serious.
We need to get
miles off that couch."
And as I was making my
way across the newsroom
To this other set, I
literally started heaving.
♪
-The console that I was at,
We had an off-duty flight
director who called our console
And said, "hey. I'm
watching the landing on tv,
And they're showing
this debris in the sky."
♪
♪
That's when we
realized it really was bad.
♪
-We're going to suspend
our normal format right now,
Because we've got
some breaking news.
This is the space
shuttle columbia,
On its way to a scheduled
landing this morning.
But then we began to see this.
It looks like you can see
pieces of the shuttle coming off.
There you can see
numerous streams
Leaving some kind of
trail over the skies of texas.
♪
-It was a Saturday morning.
I was preparing to come to work.
It was beautiful
day, beautiful drive.
And as I turned
onto park street,
I heard a loud boom.
[ explosion ]
-All of a sudden,
our house just shook.
We, you know,
looked at each other,
And we said, "what is that?
The space shuttle
over nacogdoches?
What is happening?"
We had just gone through 9/11.
And at first I thought,
"did somebody blow it up?"
-It was probably a
reasonable thought
That a lot of people had,
That it could be
something terrorist-related,
Even in this small, rural area,
Because you never know
where that might take place.
Phones were
ringing off the hook,
Much more than our
dispatch staff could handle.
There was mass confusion.
-We can only hope that what
we're seeing is not the worst,
But we don't have
any confirmation.
-They were reporting
what they knew on tv,
But here we knew that it
was falling all over our county.
♪
-Gc, flight.
- Flight, gc.
- Lock the doors.
-Copy.
♪
-I was starting to see the
beginning of the process
For shut down,
preserve your data
Because it's going to be
needed later for investigation.
-Fdo, do you have any tracking?
-No, sir.
♪
-No phone calls off-site,
outside of this room.
Our discussions
are on these loops
On the recorded dvs loops only.
-You go into records-retention
and data-preservation mode,
Which is something you
hope to never have to run,
But is part of your training.
♪
At that point, you're not
gonna solve the problem.
You're just there to ensure
That somebody can help
understand what had happened.
♪
-If you work in
human space flight,
This is the worst possible
thing that can ever happen.
♪
-We are a minute and a half
past the scheduled landing time.
The space shuttle is not here.
This has never happened before.
-We were all waiting for the
space shuttle to come back.
I thought as soon
as the clock hit zero,
We would hear something
or see the shuttle come in.
♪
But, then, the clock
started counting back up.
It went zero, negative
one, negative two.
-Where's the double sonic boom?
No sonic boom.
-I'm kind of looking
at all the other families,
But no one was
really saying anything.
♪
-You can kind of feel
the air shift a little bit.
-There's no space shuttle.
I just got this incredible
pit in my stomach
Of fear and of anxiety
A rush of adrenaline that
you know something's wrong.
Something's wrong.
-The astronaut family escorts,
All of their cellphones
start simultaneously ringing.
-We realized something's
seriously wrong.
And I said, "let's
get the families.
Let's get them back
to crew quarters."
-Wow.
Oh, my goodness.
Oh.
-It looks like we've got a van,
Probably full of family
members of the astronauts,
Being driven away.
That's not good.
-And I'm standing at the runway.
I'm listening to the radio,
and I'm listening to the calls.
I knew my biggest
fear is coming true.
Turned around, shaking
my head. Just walked away.
There wasn't anything
else you could do.
♪
I remember grabbing
mom's arm and saying,
"mom, is daddy okay?"
-And I was just kind of
staring out of the window,
Trying to figure out
what was happening.
I can just hear my
mom and the driver
Just kind of whispering
in a hushed tone.
Like, "what does this mean?"
♪
♪
-It was scary when
I left this house
And I was driving into town.
You could see there was
a large piece of something
On the ground.
And immediately, you thought,
"well, that's part of
the space shuttle."
I picked up my camcorder.
This was something
that was gonna be big.
Oh, my goodness.
♪
I wonder what that is.
-There was a
large piece of debris
Right in the middle of their
parking lot, behind the bank.
♪
-Well, happy thought he heard
something hit a tree over here.
- Mm.
- It came through these trees.
-At 8:00 this morning?
Is that the biggest
one you've seen?
-That's pretty big.
♪
-You see this?
This is parts of it.
That's where it hit.
-That's where it
hit and bounced.
- And bounced.
- Golly!
-Came through here,
and it hit right there.
-It was just chaos.
-Y'all didn't touch it
or anything, did you?
-No, ma'am.
-The woods must
be full of stuff.
♪
-I started driving.
And everywhere you
looked along the highway,
There's debris everywhere.
There were many items
that were recovered
Chunks of twisted metal,
Large pieces, small
pieces, huge pieces.
There's every shape
and size you can imagine.
The environment
was absolutely surreal.
♪
-You don't understand.
You don't comprehend the
massiveness of what's happening.
♪
-No data, no phone calls,
No transmissions
anywhere, into or out.
♪
-I remember turning
around and seeing leroy.
And he had a tear
going down his cheek.
♪
That was a hard moment.
♪
-I glanced up, and
I saw an engineer.
I remember her eyes
and cheeks were wet.
She was sobbing and crying.
And she looked at
me, and she said,
"there's nothing we
could have done."
And all my pent-up
frustration and anger
Just came out, and I said,
"I've been hearing
that damn stuff all week,
And I'm sick and tired of it."
♪
I think I was more
angry than sad,
Thinking "this didn't
have to happen.
It didn't have to happen."
♪
-We were told, "we're gonna
take you to crew quarters."
♪
And so we were just kind of
taken to this huge boardroom.
There's this big, long
table, many chairs,
And all of these tv screens.
And all of the screens were off.
Everything was off.
We're all together,
waiting in this room.
But as a kid I was just
looking around to see
If I could kind of figure
out was what going down.
♪
-I remember going in
the conference room.
And
It was my job to
tell the families.
♪
I can't remember
exactly how I said it, that
That the crew is lost, that
they were not coming home.
I didn't want them to have
any kind of false hope.
And I just did it in the most
Caring, compassionate
way that I could.
-It's almost like, from
what I remember,
There's, like, a
ringing in my ear.
Like, I don't know what
was being said or what, like
♪
-[ sighs ]
And, you know, I just
you can't even process that.
♪
-This is not happening.
There's no way
this is happening.
Time stops. Nobody spoke.
It was just
You know, we were very quiet.
-In my mind, I'm
thinking kind of like
The spaceship is
like a cruise ship.
There are lifeboats.
Surely they got on
a lifeboat, you know,
And, you know, somebody's
just got to, like, go get them.
'cause, you know,
I'm thinking of, like,
You know, all of the
science-fiction movies
Where they get
into the little pods,
And they zoom
away from the danger.
♪
-Somehow, they
have survived the crash
In the ocean somewhere,
And they were all
out living on an island.
♪
-There was explosive crying.
If you've ever heard an
animal scream in agony or
It was primal.
It was horrific.
♪
-And then they told us that
the shuttle had broken apart.
And as a 9-year-old,
I didn't really understand
what that meant.
And so, in my mind, I was like,
"mom, like, what does that mean?
What does that mean?"
I was waiting for
someone to explain.
But then it was just
Everything just fell apart.
[ voice breaking ] the
shuttle wasn't coming home.
Dad wasn't coming home.
Sorry.
♪
♪
-People waking up
to this horrible news.
-Quite frankly, I turned
and looked across
A big, open, ploughed field.
And there in fact is a
piece of smoking wreckage.
-This blackened material
letting out white-hot smoke.
-There's some rubber
burning in our pasture.
-They're reporting
a piece of wreckage
Came through an apartment
roof and started a fire.
-Right now, nasa will be trying
to make sense of what happened
In the skies over texas.
-Searching for wreckage
from the columbia shuttle,
They've already made
hundreds of finds,
From tiny scraps of
metal to whole panels
And the tragic, but inevitable
discovery of human remains.
♪
-A spacecraft breaking
up at 190,000 feet
It's something you couldn't,
like, get out of your mind.
And I'd been in space before.
This was something I
was about to do again.
And then this horrific thing
happens to my classmates,
My co-workers, friends.
♪
So I call a constable, and I
said, "hey, I need a helicopter.
I've got to get to east texas."
♪
On the way, I could see there
are pieces of space shuttle
Thousands and thousands
of pieces all over the place.
♪
I was the first person
there from nasa.
♪
-There's a guy called terry
lane who's an fbi agent.
He said to me,
"we have a report of one of
the crew member's bodies."
Um
♪
So, that was the
first of my classmates.
♪
This was not something
I was trained for.
-Astronaut mark
kelly came in and said,
"" this is what we
would like to do.
We want to be very respectful of
our friends and our colleagues."
He wanted to not do anything
Until they had a
priest or a pastor.
-We just tried to do
the best job we can
To handle this as
respectfully as possible.
-We placed the human
remains into the hearse,
And it was taken back
to the sheriff's office.
♪
Eventually, all seven
astronauts were recovered.
♪
-You know you're thinking,
"we've got to all figure
out what to do now."
There's a catastrophic failure.
A space shuttle accident
is usually not one thing.
It's a series of events.
We need to figure out
what the hell happened.
-What is this going to
do to the space program,
The second shuttle craft lost?
-It was my worst nightmare.
♪
Painful.
♪
Such a searing
memory of challenger
And how much it
had defined nasa.
This was the very
last thing I had thought
That I would be
reporting to the president,
On this day or any other day.
I called the white
house, told him that
"we don't know a lot,
But we have just
lost shuttle columbia."
This was my duty, to be
responsible for this accident.
♪
My fellow americans, this
day has brought terrible news
And great sadness
to our country.
The columbia's lost.
There are no survivors.
♪
All americans today
are thinking, as well,
Of the families of
these men and women
Who have been given
this sudden shock and grief.
You're not alone.
Our entire nation
grieves with you
And those you
loved will always have
The respect and
gratitude of this country.
♪
-They gave their lives for us.
And we want everybody to know
how much we appreciate that,
Especially their families,
Because it's the most
precious gift they could give.
♪
-When we drove up
in front of our house,
Our whole street,
all of our neighbours
Were standing outside of
our house to welcome us.
Just hugged and
cried in the street.
♪
-We walk into the house
that my brother and I
Had decorated to
welcome my dad home.
And now we have
to take this down.
Like, this is he's not here.
♪
-We were home,
But it wasn't the same.
♪
-The solution for the first day
Was drink alcohol and talk
I mean drinking a lot,
Until I'm just passed out.
-Going home, you go
through it all over again.
You realize
♪
She's not gonna come back.
♪
So it was kind of hopeless.
Nothing really matters anymore.
♪
-He said, "I'm gonna
grow up to be a scientist
And invent a time machine
and go back and warn her."
How does a kid have
that kind of insight?
On occasion, he would
have one of these moments
Where he would say, "I
wish she had listened to me,"
Almost like a parent would
talk to a child about it
"I told you you
shouldn't do this,
And look what happened."
I don't know how to answer
that, because he was right.
I mean, honestly,
the only goal I had
Was simply just
to keep him alive.
I mean, literally,
It's like I don't want him to
get to that despondent stage
Where he just says, you know,
"I'm gonna check out
and join mom now."
♪
-Parents, husbands, and
fathers and wives gone.
I was sickened,
like a body blow.
♪
And so somehow, I
just got my act together,
And I just started talking.
The tragic loss of the
space shuttle columbia
On her 28th flight, the
113th shuttle mission,
16 days seemingly
flawless ending
With a sudden and seemingly
inexplicable disintegration
Over northeast texas.
♪
Things happened very quickly.
There was a conversation, a
transmission from rick husband,
The shuttle commander, sort
of half of a "roger," if you will,
That kind of thing,
and it was all over.
Let's try to put
together what we know
And give you a sense of where
This investigation
might be headed.
I felt like it was
my responsibility
To talk about the foam strike,
To get it out
there in the public.
If you take a close-up
here, that bipod is the place
Where they think a
little piece of foam fell off
And hit the leading
edge of that wing.
I talked to the folks
in the control room,
And I said, you know,
"can you cue up
the launch replays?"
Alright. Let's take
a look at this launch.
"look what happened
a minute after launch."
Got this very, very slow
Look at that piece
of foam right there
That struck the
shuttle as it came off.
The question
was, what did it do?
♪
I didn't know for sure.
I still was the
armchair analyst.
But challenger was
deep in our memory
♪
And this was kind
of a similar scenario.
♪
In the wake of challenger,
Nasa management just
tried to shut everything down,
And it created a huge amount
of bad blood between the media.
It made nasa
look guilty as hell.
♪
How will they respond to this?
♪
-Columbia, houston,
good burn, no trim required.
-Houston, thanks.
-We will meet you in post-burn.
[ laughter ]
♪
♪
♪
-Columbia approaching
the coast of california now.
The shuttle speed is
16,400 miles per hour.
♪
-Flight back. Go ahead mmacs.
-Fyi, I've just lost four separate
temperature transducers
On the left side
of the vehicle ,
Hydraulic return temperatures.
♪
-We start seeing anomalies.
Sensors are starting to fail.
-Okay, is there anything
common to them?
Dsc or mdm or anything?
I mean, you're telling
me you lost them all
At exactly the same time.
-No, not exactly.
They were within probably four
or five seconds of each other.
♪
-There was something that
we didn't understand going on.
And I remember asking my team,
You know, "just
make double sure.
Let's double-check
all of our data. "
-Okay. Where are those ?
Where is that
instrumentation located?
-All four of them are located
in the aft part of the left wing.
♪
-Something has gone very
wrong , and it is the left wing.
♪
That's the stomach
punch right there.
♪
-And columbia, houston,
We see your
tire-pressure messages ,
And we did not copy your last.
-Roger.
♪
-I remember that
clipped call that rick had ,
Knowing you can have
communications that drop out
Or are intermittent
at that point.
♪
-We lost comm with the crew,
but that's actually common.
I mean, you don't
have communications
All the way through entry .
So that didn't initially
get my attention.
♪
-Good morning to
you. I'm miles o'brien.
It is now 9:00 a.M.
On the east coast,
6:00 a.M. Out west.
Take a look outside.
You should see
What looks like a
streaking meteor.
It's actually the space
shuttle columbia coming back.
We're watching it. Landing
about 15 minutes away.
♪
-We've also lost the
nose gear down talkback
And the right main
gear down talkback.
♪
-Columbia, houston. Comm check.
♪
-And then everybody
started to lose sensors.
They were getting no
telemetry whatsoever.
The screens were just
going blank, reading nothing,
Just turning off.
-Columbia, houston,
uhf, comm check.
♪
♪
-There was a tenseness
coming into the room.
My focus was forward
You know, trying
to get something
To report to flight
that was useful.
But there wasn't anything.
♪
-Mila's not reporting
any r.F. At this time.
-Fdo, when are you
expecting tracking?
♪
-One minute ago, flight.
♪
-Columbia, houston,
uhf comm check.
♪
-He makes the call.
We hear nothing.
♪
You look at the
screen, and the tracking
Hadn't moved
from the dallas area.
Oh, it was painful.
♪
-I mean, we were just waiting
on the runway for him to land.
It's gonna happen
right in front of us
And we're very excited.
All the crew kids are just
enjoying each other, too,
So running up and
down the bleachers
And just enjoying being there.
♪
-At the runway, there was
just a lot of energy in the air.
And so as a kid, you kind of
just kind of ride that energy.
But all of the waiting
just felt like an eternity.
-Here we go.
-There's this big
countdown clock.
I just remember
staring at that clock,
Like, watching every
second go down,
Like, "is it now? Is it now?"
-I don't know what I expected
When I saw that clock like,
For them to just magically
arrive when it reached zero.
-Iain was very excited.
-Mom's coming
home, and, you know,
He's gonna get mom
hugs, great meals.
You know, life will
be back to normal.
♪
-Somebody from nasa
said, "you'll see the big
Kind of parachute that
pops out of the back."
And I think that's probably
what I was most excited about
[laughs] was watching
the parachute come out.
♪
-There was something not right.
I remember our
capcom, charlie hobaugh,
Trying to re-establish
communications.
And he said, over
and over again,
"columbia, houston, comm check."
-Columbia, houston, comm check.
♪
-And I had not lost hope
That we would re-establish
communications to the crew.
♪
-No c band yet.
-Copy.
♪
-C band's a radar
that sits on the ground.
And literally, it
sends out a signal,
And it bounces it
off of the spacecraft
To tell us where it is.
But we were getting nothing.
♪
You know, the
room was just silent.
♪
-Alright. Miles,
back over to you.
-Alright. We've
got a little problem
On the space shuttle columbia.
It has been out of communication
now for the past 12 minutes.
Let's take a look
at a live picture
Of mission control in houston.
I was live on morning
tv at that point,
So dialled into nasa
on a cellphone I had.
There was a secret phone
number you could dial into
And hear the mission audio.
The people in the
control room were going,
"are you hearing
this?" I'm, like, nodding.
-No further communications
with the spacecraft
About 8:00 a.M. Central time.
-Hang on. Let's listen in.
-And no further tracking
data from the spacecraft
Was gained from c
band tracking radar
At the merritt island
tracking station in florida.
-My team was in
the control room,
And they were
like, "this is serious.
We need to get
miles off that couch."
And as I was making my
way across the newsroom
To this other set, I
literally started heaving.
♪
-The console that I was at,
We had an off-duty flight
director who called our console
And said, "hey. I'm
watching the landing on tv,
And they're showing
this debris in the sky."
♪
♪
That's when we
realized it really was bad.
♪
-We're going to suspend
our normal format right now,
Because we've got
some breaking news.
This is the space
shuttle columbia,
On its way to a scheduled
landing this morning.
But then we began to see this.
It looks like you can see
pieces of the shuttle coming off.
There you can see
numerous streams
Leaving some kind of
trail over the skies of texas.
♪
-It was a Saturday morning.
I was preparing to come to work.
It was beautiful
day, beautiful drive.
And as I turned
onto park street,
I heard a loud boom.
[ explosion ]
-All of a sudden,
our house just shook.
We, you know,
looked at each other,
And we said, "what is that?
The space shuttle
over nacogdoches?
What is happening?"
We had just gone through 9/11.
And at first I thought,
"did somebody blow it up?"
-It was probably a
reasonable thought
That a lot of people had,
That it could be
something terrorist-related,
Even in this small, rural area,
Because you never know
where that might take place.
Phones were
ringing off the hook,
Much more than our
dispatch staff could handle.
There was mass confusion.
-We can only hope that what
we're seeing is not the worst,
But we don't have
any confirmation.
-They were reporting
what they knew on tv,
But here we knew that it
was falling all over our county.
♪
-Gc, flight.
- Flight, gc.
- Lock the doors.
-Copy.
♪
-I was starting to see the
beginning of the process
For shut down,
preserve your data
Because it's going to be
needed later for investigation.
-Fdo, do you have any tracking?
-No, sir.
♪
-No phone calls off-site,
outside of this room.
Our discussions
are on these loops
On the recorded dvs loops only.
-You go into records-retention
and data-preservation mode,
Which is something you
hope to never have to run,
But is part of your training.
♪
At that point, you're not
gonna solve the problem.
You're just there to ensure
That somebody can help
understand what had happened.
♪
-If you work in
human space flight,
This is the worst possible
thing that can ever happen.
♪
-We are a minute and a half
past the scheduled landing time.
The space shuttle is not here.
This has never happened before.
-We were all waiting for the
space shuttle to come back.
I thought as soon
as the clock hit zero,
We would hear something
or see the shuttle come in.
♪
But, then, the clock
started counting back up.
It went zero, negative
one, negative two.
-Where's the double sonic boom?
No sonic boom.
-I'm kind of looking
at all the other families,
But no one was
really saying anything.
♪
-You can kind of feel
the air shift a little bit.
-There's no space shuttle.
I just got this incredible
pit in my stomach
Of fear and of anxiety
A rush of adrenaline that
you know something's wrong.
Something's wrong.
-The astronaut family escorts,
All of their cellphones
start simultaneously ringing.
-We realized something's
seriously wrong.
And I said, "let's
get the families.
Let's get them back
to crew quarters."
-Wow.
Oh, my goodness.
Oh.
-It looks like we've got a van,
Probably full of family
members of the astronauts,
Being driven away.
That's not good.
-And I'm standing at the runway.
I'm listening to the radio,
and I'm listening to the calls.
I knew my biggest
fear is coming true.
Turned around, shaking
my head. Just walked away.
There wasn't anything
else you could do.
♪
I remember grabbing
mom's arm and saying,
"mom, is daddy okay?"
-And I was just kind of
staring out of the window,
Trying to figure out
what was happening.
I can just hear my
mom and the driver
Just kind of whispering
in a hushed tone.
Like, "what does this mean?"
♪
♪
-It was scary when
I left this house
And I was driving into town.
You could see there was
a large piece of something
On the ground.
And immediately, you thought,
"well, that's part of
the space shuttle."
I picked up my camcorder.
This was something
that was gonna be big.
Oh, my goodness.
♪
I wonder what that is.
-There was a
large piece of debris
Right in the middle of their
parking lot, behind the bank.
♪
-Well, happy thought he heard
something hit a tree over here.
- Mm.
- It came through these trees.
-At 8:00 this morning?
Is that the biggest
one you've seen?
-That's pretty big.
♪
-You see this?
This is parts of it.
That's where it hit.
-That's where it
hit and bounced.
- And bounced.
- Golly!
-Came through here,
and it hit right there.
-It was just chaos.
-Y'all didn't touch it
or anything, did you?
-No, ma'am.
-The woods must
be full of stuff.
♪
-I started driving.
And everywhere you
looked along the highway,
There's debris everywhere.
There were many items
that were recovered
Chunks of twisted metal,
Large pieces, small
pieces, huge pieces.
There's every shape
and size you can imagine.
The environment
was absolutely surreal.
♪
-You don't understand.
You don't comprehend the
massiveness of what's happening.
♪
-No data, no phone calls,
No transmissions
anywhere, into or out.
♪
-I remember turning
around and seeing leroy.
And he had a tear
going down his cheek.
♪
That was a hard moment.
♪
-I glanced up, and
I saw an engineer.
I remember her eyes
and cheeks were wet.
She was sobbing and crying.
And she looked at
me, and she said,
"there's nothing we
could have done."
And all my pent-up
frustration and anger
Just came out, and I said,
"I've been hearing
that damn stuff all week,
And I'm sick and tired of it."
♪
I think I was more
angry than sad,
Thinking "this didn't
have to happen.
It didn't have to happen."
♪
-We were told, "we're gonna
take you to crew quarters."
♪
And so we were just kind of
taken to this huge boardroom.
There's this big, long
table, many chairs,
And all of these tv screens.
And all of the screens were off.
Everything was off.
We're all together,
waiting in this room.
But as a kid I was just
looking around to see
If I could kind of figure
out was what going down.
♪
-I remember going in
the conference room.
And
It was my job to
tell the families.
♪
I can't remember
exactly how I said it, that
That the crew is lost, that
they were not coming home.
I didn't want them to have
any kind of false hope.
And I just did it in the most
Caring, compassionate
way that I could.
-It's almost like, from
what I remember,
There's, like, a
ringing in my ear.
Like, I don't know what
was being said or what, like
♪
-[ sighs ]
And, you know, I just
you can't even process that.
♪
-This is not happening.
There's no way
this is happening.
Time stops. Nobody spoke.
It was just
You know, we were very quiet.
-In my mind, I'm
thinking kind of like
The spaceship is
like a cruise ship.
There are lifeboats.
Surely they got on
a lifeboat, you know,
And, you know, somebody's
just got to, like, go get them.
'cause, you know,
I'm thinking of, like,
You know, all of the
science-fiction movies
Where they get
into the little pods,
And they zoom
away from the danger.
♪
-Somehow, they
have survived the crash
In the ocean somewhere,
And they were all
out living on an island.
♪
-There was explosive crying.
If you've ever heard an
animal scream in agony or
It was primal.
It was horrific.
♪
-And then they told us that
the shuttle had broken apart.
And as a 9-year-old,
I didn't really understand
what that meant.
And so, in my mind, I was like,
"mom, like, what does that mean?
What does that mean?"
I was waiting for
someone to explain.
But then it was just
Everything just fell apart.
[ voice breaking ] the
shuttle wasn't coming home.
Dad wasn't coming home.
Sorry.
♪
♪
-People waking up
to this horrible news.
-Quite frankly, I turned
and looked across
A big, open, ploughed field.
And there in fact is a
piece of smoking wreckage.
-This blackened material
letting out white-hot smoke.
-There's some rubber
burning in our pasture.
-They're reporting
a piece of wreckage
Came through an apartment
roof and started a fire.
-Right now, nasa will be trying
to make sense of what happened
In the skies over texas.
-Searching for wreckage
from the columbia shuttle,
They've already made
hundreds of finds,
From tiny scraps of
metal to whole panels
And the tragic, but inevitable
discovery of human remains.
♪
-A spacecraft breaking
up at 190,000 feet
It's something you couldn't,
like, get out of your mind.
And I'd been in space before.
This was something I
was about to do again.
And then this horrific thing
happens to my classmates,
My co-workers, friends.
♪
So I call a constable, and I
said, "hey, I need a helicopter.
I've got to get to east texas."
♪
On the way, I could see there
are pieces of space shuttle
Thousands and thousands
of pieces all over the place.
♪
I was the first person
there from nasa.
♪
-There's a guy called terry
lane who's an fbi agent.
He said to me,
"we have a report of one of
the crew member's bodies."
Um
♪
So, that was the
first of my classmates.
♪
This was not something
I was trained for.
-Astronaut mark
kelly came in and said,
"" this is what we
would like to do.
We want to be very respectful of
our friends and our colleagues."
He wanted to not do anything
Until they had a
priest or a pastor.
-We just tried to do
the best job we can
To handle this as
respectfully as possible.
-We placed the human
remains into the hearse,
And it was taken back
to the sheriff's office.
♪
Eventually, all seven
astronauts were recovered.
♪
-You know you're thinking,
"we've got to all figure
out what to do now."
There's a catastrophic failure.
A space shuttle accident
is usually not one thing.
It's a series of events.
We need to figure out
what the hell happened.
-What is this going to
do to the space program,
The second shuttle craft lost?
-It was my worst nightmare.
♪
Painful.
♪
Such a searing
memory of challenger
And how much it
had defined nasa.
This was the very
last thing I had thought
That I would be
reporting to the president,
On this day or any other day.
I called the white
house, told him that
"we don't know a lot,
But we have just
lost shuttle columbia."
This was my duty, to be
responsible for this accident.
♪
My fellow americans, this
day has brought terrible news
And great sadness
to our country.
The columbia's lost.
There are no survivors.
♪
All americans today
are thinking, as well,
Of the families of
these men and women
Who have been given
this sudden shock and grief.
You're not alone.
Our entire nation
grieves with you
And those you
loved will always have
The respect and
gratitude of this country.
♪
-They gave their lives for us.
And we want everybody to know
how much we appreciate that,
Especially their families,
Because it's the most
precious gift they could give.
♪
-When we drove up
in front of our house,
Our whole street,
all of our neighbours
Were standing outside of
our house to welcome us.
Just hugged and
cried in the street.
♪
-We walk into the house
that my brother and I
Had decorated to
welcome my dad home.
And now we have
to take this down.
Like, this is he's not here.
♪
-We were home,
But it wasn't the same.
♪
-The solution for the first day
Was drink alcohol and talk
I mean drinking a lot,
Until I'm just passed out.
-Going home, you go
through it all over again.
You realize
♪
She's not gonna come back.
♪
So it was kind of hopeless.
Nothing really matters anymore.
♪
-He said, "I'm gonna
grow up to be a scientist
And invent a time machine
and go back and warn her."
How does a kid have
that kind of insight?
On occasion, he would
have one of these moments
Where he would say, "I
wish she had listened to me,"
Almost like a parent would
talk to a child about it
"I told you you
shouldn't do this,
And look what happened."
I don't know how to answer
that, because he was right.
I mean, honestly,
the only goal I had
Was simply just
to keep him alive.
I mean, literally,
It's like I don't want him to
get to that despondent stage
Where he just says, you know,
"I'm gonna check out
and join mom now."
♪
-Parents, husbands, and
fathers and wives gone.
I was sickened,
like a body blow.
♪
And so somehow, I
just got my act together,
And I just started talking.
The tragic loss of the
space shuttle columbia
On her 28th flight, the
113th shuttle mission,
16 days seemingly
flawless ending
With a sudden and seemingly
inexplicable disintegration
Over northeast texas.
♪
Things happened very quickly.
There was a conversation, a
transmission from rick husband,
The shuttle commander, sort
of half of a "roger," if you will,
That kind of thing,
and it was all over.
Let's try to put
together what we know
And give you a sense of where
This investigation
might be headed.
I felt like it was
my responsibility
To talk about the foam strike,
To get it out
there in the public.
If you take a close-up
here, that bipod is the place
Where they think a
little piece of foam fell off
And hit the leading
edge of that wing.
I talked to the folks
in the control room,
And I said, you know,
"can you cue up
the launch replays?"
Alright. Let's take
a look at this launch.
"look what happened
a minute after launch."
Got this very, very slow
Look at that piece
of foam right there
That struck the
shuttle as it came off.
The question
was, what did it do?
♪
I didn't know for sure.
I still was the
armchair analyst.
But challenger was
deep in our memory
♪
And this was kind
of a similar scenario.
♪
In the wake of challenger,
Nasa management just
tried to shut everything down,
And it created a huge amount
of bad blood between the media.
It made nasa
look guilty as hell.
♪
How will they respond to this?