Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [68]
Claudia, my older daughter, then nine years old, was especially adamant. She begged me to quit the astronaut program. She knew Laurel Clark well through astronaut family gatherings, and was friends with Laurel’s son, Ian. “That could easily have been you on that mission,” she said. “I could be like Ian, the one without a parent!”
“NASA is fixing this problem,” I’d say, and that was true. But we all knew there was no way to make the shuttle fail-safe.
I did my best to speak honestly and directly to my kids. The shuttle is a complex machine with hundreds of thousands of parts. It operates near the limit of what humans have been able to engineer. “Design changes are going to help stop the shedding of foam from the tank, so what happened to Columbia is far less likely to happen again,” I told them. “I know I’m in a risky business, but sometimes we have to take risks in life, because the rewards are so big. Those of us who are astronauts, that’s how we feel about the importance of space exploration.”
For a while, I thought about the Columbia disaster every single day. Now, maybe it comes into my head a couple times a week.
Gabby knew when she met me that there were dangers in my line of work, from my thirty-nine combat missions in the Navy to my missions into space. And though she accepted the anxiety that comes with being an astronaut’s spouse, she also felt a need to be proactive. As ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, she held hearings on flight safety, focusing not just on NASA but also on the commercial rocket companies now gearing up to deliver astronauts into space.
Gabby began one of her hearings by saying, “I am under no illusion that human spaceflight can ever be made risk-free. Nothing in life is . . . But this subcommittee is holding today’s hearing because we need to be sure that any decisions being contemplated by the White House and Congress are informed by our best understanding of the fundamental crew-safety issues facing our human spaceflight program. And in making those decisions, we should not let either advocacy or unexamined optimism replace probing questions and thoughtful analysis.”
It’s ironic. When Gabby was elected to Congress, we didn’t consider that she was the one with the risky job, or that she’d be the one nearly losing her life while serving her country. We never imagined that it could be Gabby who’d draw the ace of spades.
My maiden mission into space was as the pilot of Endeavour in December 2001. It was the first shuttle flight after the September 11 attacks, and we were told that security was higher than at any time in NASA history.
The U.S. government was so concerned about a terrorist’s aircraft flying into the space shuttle on the launchpad that it allegedly positioned antiaircraft artillery around the Kennedy Space Center. At least, that was the word that leaked out from government sources. It wasn’t until years later that I found out there were no antiaircraft guns. It was just misinformation. Tricky but effective. We were all fooled.
That’s not to say there wasn’t tight security. Guards with automatic rifles escorted us when we departed for the pad. On the road, we passed a Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun. During the countdown, fighter jets and helicopter gunships were on patrol.
It was a time of high emotion for the country, of course. We’d carry with us six thousand postcard-size flags, which would be distributed after our flight to the relatives of 9/11 victims, and to some survivors of the attacks. (There aren’t many things that have left the planet and safely returned. From the Mercury program to today it has been a tradition to take items into space that can be given away as mementos. People collect and treasure these keepsakes.)
We also brought along a flag that had flown at the World Trade Center on September 11. It was torn and still smelled of smoke. We worried that