01x03 - Part Three

[bunniefuu]

-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.

[ expl*si*n ]

-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 t*rror1st-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 expl*sive 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?