Courage (Space Shuttle Columbia)

Eject!Eject!Eject! Weblog ^ | February 15th, 2003 | Bill Whittle

[Luis Gonzalez]

Amazing piece of writing, from a perspective that few have. I did my piece about the Challenger, but nothing like this.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Here's one you might like.

[Bob J]

Thanks for pinging me to this Frank! IH

[Luis Gonzalez]

I just came back and read this again...it's better the second time.

I remember a few years ago Ted Koppel was looking for some sort of tagline to end his Nightline broadcasts. He was looking for one of those closers a la Walter Cronkite "and that's the way it is", or even a Murrow "good night, and good luck".

He settled on the word "courage", and closed the show with it for a while.

What the hell does Tedd Koppel know about courage?

[CARepubGal]

That is a wonderful credit to seven brave fliers.

[Jen]

Georgia - south of Atlanta

[Budge]

Words fail me. Beautiful, not good enough. Touching, certainly, but still not good enough. Powerful, by all means, but not good enough. Excellent, yes indeed, but still not good enough. So I'll quit trying.

Bill Whittle knows.

[fatima]

love Georgia,was there when my Father was stationed outside of there,red clay,small churches,snakes,but trees which I use to gather nuts in my skirt,first time I lied-to a preacher said it was my birthday and had to put so many pennies in the pot.Came back from Georgia and I talked like a southern gal,fast -in the east no-one know what the heck I was saying-1st grade.

[Auntie Mame]

Wow! Thanks for the ping. A definite MUST READ.

[Budge]

Ping isn't powerful enough.

[Black Agnes]

To the brave belong all things. (Ancient Celtic saying).

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Bill Whittle-Columbia bump/bookmark/ping

[sweetliberty]

You're sure up late.

[sweetliberty]

Thanks for the ping. I may have to get this one printed out to take with me tomorrow. I've been reading all day. My eyes are crossing.

[fish70]

Excellent.

[RadioAstronomer]

Beautiful essay! Thank you so much for posting it.

I thought I might share a bit from a mission control room perspective.

At night the control room is quiet and empty. There are only three of us working tonight and duties frequently require the other two people to work in other areas. So for a majority of the time I am alone in a darkened control room lit only by the various displays from the computers and the two large wall displays at the end of the room. The only noise is the muted whispers of the numerous fans that keep the computers cool. As I sit here tonight and look around, I see lots of displays scrolling various data, graphs, and numbers. The big screens at the end of the room are typical for most satellite control rooms. One of the screens display a big map of the world with our orbits overlaid on top, and the other is a three dimensional display of the satellite with the earth and stars in the background.

In the solitude and quite, if I strain really hard I can almost hear voices, faint echoes from the past, “main engine sequence start, that’s one small step, go at throttle up, we have liftoff” whispering their soft messages of the past to my very soul.

My mind keeps drifting back to the early hectic days of the space program. There was a bustle and flurry of activity across this entire nation as we tried to do what has never been done in the entire history of all mankind. My little control room is the end result of that monumental effort. I am reminded of a quote; "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."--Sir Isaac Newton.

Over the years the flavor/feel of the control room has changed also. When I first started, we were using the original NASA consoles with the black and white monitors, lit push buttons, and dials/meters in the panels. There also was quite a cadre' of personnel to get the job done. We had "crews" (a team of engineers) that were larger than all of the operations people here combined. All of those consoles have long been replaced. They now sit forlorn in some corner of a junkyard their sides rusting and their speakers quiet. Now a control room does not look much different than a very fancy college computer science lab. Instead of a crew of 15 or so, we now can do it with 2 (1 in a pinch).

I do miss those bustling days and flurries of paper. We had strip charts running, teletypes chattering, blinking lights and alarm bells on both the consoles and printers. Now that is what a control room should look like! Impresses the hell out of people who come in on a tour. Now a days It's just scrolling data on a workstation. When people come in for a tour, the first words that get uttered are "this is it?"

I was in a mission control room monitoring the Challenger launch. My heart still hurts from that day. Even though I was home during Columbia accident, it hit just as deeply.

[sweetliberty]

Got through it after all. Great read. Intense.

[sweetliberty]

And now I really am going to bed. Talk to you when I get back. Wishing you gentle thoughts and pleasant dreams. Goodnight.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[MeekOneGOP]