i apologize for the lack of updates. as you can imagine, it has been a very long and exhausting (but productive and healing) first two days back at work since the columbia accident on saturday. just to avoid retyping, i will paste an edited version of an email i sent earlier to friends:
Hello all,
I’ve had calls and emails from many of you wondering how I’m doing and how work is going. As many of you know, I work in the Descent Analysis Group, which as you can probably tell from the name, means that we are swamped with work as the investigation into the Columbia STS-107 accident gets underway.
I was at work yesterday from 7:30 until 9:20 with no break, and today from 7:30 until 7:45 breaking only for the memorial service. I had never seen a president in person before today, and certainly didn’t want to see one under these conditions.
The memorial service was very nice. The head of the astronaut office spoke and shared his recollections, serious and humorous, of each of the 7 crew members, and the NASA Administrator spoke as well. President Bush’s words were polite and appropriate, and though it is unfortunate that it took an occasion such as this to bring him to JSC for the first time, his presence was much appreciated. Having recovered from a very emotional Saturday and Sunday, I was doing ok until the end of the ceremony, but the missing man flyover and a glance at my coworkers brought me to tears. I saw one of my coworkers who was on console Saturday morning wiping tears from his eyes, and it was difficult for me to see a normally happy, nice, extremely professional guy like him break down.
It has been hard for all of us in my division, because we work so closely with the shuttle, and many of us work closely with the crew. I had not met any of the members of this particular crew, but the news reports that call NASA a “family” are not simply making up the term. We are a sort of family and we share the bond of feeling very strongly about our work, and a loss like this is hard. As I’ve told some people, for me, this is more difficult than September 11. Though 9/11 was horrible on a much larger scale, it was easy to detatch myself from New York and Washington. The loss of the Columbia is much more personal. On Saturday and Sunday, it was hard for me to comprehend that you were all going on with your normal weekend routines while my whole world had just been turned upside down. On Friday night I went out to the movies with Becca and our friend Jen, who had been training on console during the mission. I asked her, almost as an afterthought, how the weather in Florida looked for landing, and everything looked great. I never expected to be woken up 8 hours later with the horrible news.
I watched the launch back on the 16th with other people in my branch, and I remember distinctly how we all breathed the Challenger-induced sigh of relief when the solid rocket boosters separated. Talking to friends later, many said that they’d never seen a launch go more smoothly and issue-free. Obviously concern emerged after launch imagery was analyzed about the external tank foam, but on the day-of-launch, things went beautifully. Launches are always fraught with excitement but also with anxiety, and now landings will be no different. It is shocking to know that things can go so well for 16 days only to end so tragically, and so close to home.
My group has a lot of expertise that should prove useful to the investigation. It appears that things will calm down in terms of getting back to a normal 8-hour day soon, but my group will likely be working on this accident for weeks or months. It’s not what I would have asked to work on, but I am glad that I’m in a position to do meaningful work that will play an important role in this investigation. Trying to figure out what went wrong turns out to be pretty therapeutic.
Talk to you all soon,
Sarah
