Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [142]
By then, television networks and evening entertainment news programs were calling, suddenly wanting me to appear on their shows. Ordinarily I would have been delighted, but our legal advisers said, “No interviews.” Eventually the matter died down. The city of Beverly Hills did not bring charges against me, and there were witnesses to the harassing behavior that provoked my response. It still cost me money to hire a lawyer to defend myself, and the hoax advocate received the publicity he sought, so I suppose, in the end, he won. But the punch provided me with some satisfaction, at least, and I was gratified by the calls and notes of support. CNN Crossfire commentator Paul Begala gave me a thumbs-up, and many others sent encouraging messages. Ironically, some of the most supportive words came from my fellow astronauts, to the effect of, “Hey, Buzz, I wish I’d punched the guy! Finally, somebody has responded to these hoax theory perpetrators.” More than my knowledge of rendezvous techniques, more than my actions under pressure during the initial lunar landing, more than anything in my career as an astronaut—it seemed as if nothing elevated me more in their estimation than “the punch.” From that day on, I was a hero to them.
ON JANUARY 29, 2003, I was in New York to celebrate General Electric Plastics’ fiftieth anniversary of the invention of Lexan at its “Innovation Day,” held at New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Lexan is the highly durable polycarbonate material used in everything from plastic water bottles to space helmets. I donned a replica of my Apollo 11 space helmet with a visor made of the Lexan resin, and shared my space stories with more than 500 sixth graders. As part of the anniversary celebration, I made a spotlight appearance on NBC’s Today show, and talked about the space shuttle Columbia, which was due to land in a few days, and of course how excited I was about the progress we were making toward getting ordinary citizens into space.
Back home, I arose early on the morning of February 1, 2003, and turned on the television. I had penciled into my handwritten calendar the time that the Columbia shuttle was expected to return from its mission to the ISS for its runway landing at the Kennedy Space Center at around 9:00 a.m. (EST), 6:00 a.m. (PST). I brewed some coffee, poured myself a cup, and sat down to watch the reentry. But I could tell that something wasn’t right; it was suddenly too quiet, and at this point in the landing, such a silence was highly unusual. Normally the radio transmissions between ground control and the shuttle would be constant back-and-forth confirming critical data and readings. I turned the television’s volume higher, thinking it might be something malfunctioning on our set, but the interruption of communication from the Columbia was real—and alarming. Unknown to me or to most of the world at that moment, the space shuttle Columbia had already begun to disintegrate as it streaked high above Texas during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven crew members died in the catastrophe.
Apparently the shuttle had been damaged either during or shortly after launch when a piece of foam insulation, no bigger than a small briefcase and weighing slightly more than a pound, broke off from the main propellant tank. The debris struck the edge of the left wing, damaging Columbia’s thermal protection system, which guards it from the intense 3,000-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures generated during reentry. Making matters worse, it was later discovered that NASA engineers suspected the damage the entire time the shuttle was in flight, but it was determined that there was little that could be done to repair the problem. Nobody bothered to tell the Columbia’s crew of the danger they were in as Commander Rick Husband, an experienced shuttle pilot