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On the morning of February 1, 2003, I was in my car and tuned in to the local NPR radio station. Despite working in the space industry, I hadn't been following shuttle missions very closely, so I wasn't expecting to hear anything in particular about Columbia's return. But I was confused to hear an audio feed from mission control in Houston, with the call, "Columbia, Houston. Comm check." repeated over and over. What was going on? Why were they broadcasting this? Of course the grim situation soon became clear, and in the years since I've become a spacecraft flight controller—albeit on uncrewed, interplanetary missions—those words took on a particular poignancy for me, as I could imagine myself in the shoes of the person speaking them.
I very much enjoyed this story-driven account of the Columbia disaster, the resulting immense ground search and recovery operation, and the effort to identify the cause of Columbia's breakup on re-entry. The authors include technical information in a way that I think would be accessible to a layperson, especially with the support of the included diagrams. But what makes this book so much more compelling than, e.g., the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, are the human details. The authors interviewed dozens of people involved in the recovery effort, from high-level officials in the investigation to local East Texas residents who simply turned up to help in any way they could. The stories of interviewees' personal relationships with the Columbia crew; the sometimes solemn, sometimes amusing accounts of searchers and residents finding debris and remains; and even the anecdotes of little old ladies dropping off homemade cornbread to help feed the throngs of recovery personnel all contribute to an appreciation for the emotional and physical difficulty of the effort, not to mention its unprecedented scale.
If logistics and infrastructure interest you as they do me, you'll find plenty to engage you. On very short notice and with little in the way of policies or models to work from, recovery personnel had to figure out how to set up communications in a rural area with sparse cell phone coverage or internet access, respectfully and privately recover crew remains, assess where they were most likely to find debris, protect the public from hazardous materials strewn over a vast area, and assemble debris in a way that would facilitate understanding of what happened to the shuttle on re-entry. That said, the profusion of agencies involved in the effort lost me at times; I found the descriptions of their reporting structure dry reading.
As much as I enjoyed most of the book, I found the ending parts deplorable. Specifically, the final chapter, entitled "Celebrating 25,000 heroes" (overuse of the word 'hero' much?), took a jingoistic turn, repeatedly attributing volunteers' motivation to a dedication to their country, as opposed to a shared sense of humanity or a desire to honor the sacrifice made by the STS-107 crew. Even worse, though, is the colonialism expressed in retired astronaut Eileen Collins' epilogue:
I very much enjoyed this story-driven account of the Columbia disaster, the resulting immense ground search and recovery operation, and the effort to identify the cause of Columbia's breakup on re-entry. The authors include technical information in a way that I think would be accessible to a layperson, especially with the support of the included diagrams. But what makes this book so much more compelling than, e.g., the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, are the human details. The authors interviewed dozens of people involved in the recovery effort, from high-level officials in the investigation to local East Texas residents who simply turned up to help in any way they could. The stories of interviewees' personal relationships with the Columbia crew; the sometimes solemn, sometimes amusing accounts of searchers and residents finding debris and remains; and even the anecdotes of little old ladies dropping off homemade cornbread to help feed the throngs of recovery personnel all contribute to an appreciation for the emotional and physical difficulty of the effort, not to mention its unprecedented scale.
If logistics and infrastructure interest you as they do me, you'll find plenty to engage you. On very short notice and with little in the way of policies or models to work from, recovery personnel had to figure out how to set up communications in a rural area with sparse cell phone coverage or internet access, respectfully and privately recover crew remains, assess where they were most likely to find debris, protect the public from hazardous materials strewn over a vast area, and assemble debris in a way that would facilitate understanding of what happened to the shuttle on re-entry. That said, the profusion of agencies involved in the effort lost me at times; I found the descriptions of their reporting structure dry reading.
As much as I enjoyed most of the book, I found the ending parts deplorable. Specifically, the final chapter, entitled "Celebrating 25,000 heroes" (overuse of the word 'hero' much?), took a jingoistic turn, repeatedly attributing volunteers' motivation to a dedication to their country, as opposed to a shared sense of humanity or a desire to honor the sacrifice made by the STS-107 crew. Even worse, though, is the colonialism expressed in retired astronaut Eileen Collins' epilogue:
We still carry the spirit and adventure of those we read about in history, the Bible, the Greek plays, the discoveries of Columbus, and the exploration of the Americas.This passage especially stings in light of the significant contributions of Native American fire crews to the Columbia search and recovery effort.
