While we await the launch of the Return to Flight mission of space shuttle Discovery, here is a moving essay on the people who fly these ships. On the final flight of the shuttle Columbia:
Perhaps ten minutes before eight am on Saturday morning, Rick Husband and Willie McCool started to pay attention to the data coming from the left wing sensors. It was 30 degrees warmer than normal in the left wheel well. Not much, considering the 2-3000 degrees on the leading edge of their wings and nose, but something to pay attention to. Anomalies are never good. There are no pleasant surprises in the flying business.
By 7:55 things were looking worse — a lot worse. Unbenownst to the crew, telemetry beamed to the ground showed that readings from the heat sensors in the left wing started to rise, and then dropped to zero. They were failing, in a pattern expanding away from the left wheel well. Tire pressures were way high on the left side, and then those sensors failed too.
Sensors fail all the time. But this was different. This was a pattern, and it was spreading. And something was starting to pull the ship to the left.
I don’t know the words he used, but I can hear the tone perfectly in my head, because it’s exactly the same tone I’ve heard dozens of times on cockpit voice recorders. It’s concern. Alarm, even. But it’s cool. Disciplined.
All right, we’ve got a problem here…
It’s a long piece, well worth reading.
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