Original subtitles

♪

- This is mission control houston.

You're looking at live video coming

From space shuttle columbia

As columbia continues to orbit the earth

At an altitude of about 150 statute miles.

Columbia, houston, laurel,

You're loud and clear on air to ground one.

- The second day, I drive in to work

Kind of euphoric because another launch,

Another successful launch.

You know, the flight director's office

And the mission control center in houston

Is working with them.

They're... everything's good.

I walked into the analysis lab to

Start reviewing film from the launch.

We started the film at the beginning.

[ rockets roaring ]

We're watching this liftoff.

You see the roll maneuvers, beautiful blue sky.

We do the normal review, and we start pointing out

All the things that we normally see.

And we got to 81 seconds,

And then we see this object

Come off of the external tank area.

♪

It moved down, and then striked the vehicle

And explode into a white cloud.

My reaction was, "oh, shit."

♪

♪

- ♪ you'll always find me sunny side up ♪

♪ you'll always find me sunny side up ♪

[ music playing indistinctly on radio ]

-Columbia, houston.

-Turned off?

-Hey, good morning to all,

And a special good morning to my wife, rona,

The love of my life.

- I remember myself going to sleep and imagining

Where he is right now.

"I wonder where he is right now.

He's somewhere over us,

Maybe going around in the circles around the earth."

♪

[ laughter ]

It's surreal.

These seven people who are,

You know, living in space.

Eating and working and...

Going to the bathroom and...

♪

Seeing earth from space.

♪

- Well, actually, things are going really well.

And, uh, things have been working well.

Columbia is in great shape

And working absolutely perfectly.

We had a great ride to orbit.

- After the launch, we came home for the next 16 days.

We knew that the crew was going to be in space.

By that point, I mean, I turned on nasa tv here

And just started watching the mission.

♪

-Next up for the blue shift

Was a blood draw experiment here.

Here, laurel is telling mike

That this isn't going to hurt her a bit.

-I was just thrilled for them.

They were... They were doing great.

There's pride, excitement.

But more than anything, I just loved listening to rick's voice.

I loved listening to him talk back and forth

With mission control.

♪

- As a kid, it mostly just felt...

Exciting and new and just kind of made your world

Feel more magical and bigger.

I was just like, "yeah, that's just awesome.

Space is so cool."

♪

-All of us as a group

Were extremely concerned about what we had just seen.

Looking at that film, we were all discussing

How big are we talking about a problem?

How much damage are we talking about?

Worst case would have been

Damage all the way down to the skin of the vehicle.

♪

That would have given us a problem during landing.

Well, that probably would have been loss of vehicle

And loss of crew.

♪

So I went to see wayne, my boss.

♪

- Based on my 20-plus years of experience,

I can tell you every shuttle flight that flew had issues.

People came to me as a flight director

Or as manager every day.

In this case, bob page knocked on my door,

Came in my office, and said... - "we've got a problem.

This is the largest strike of the vehicle

That we have ever seen."

- He's a little bit of a high-energy guy,

So it wasn't unusual, I didn't think.

But he had a little video clip that he showed me.

It's really hard to tell if anything bad had happened.

I mean, this is insulating foam. It's lightweight.

- So the orange, um, is the external tank

Which is covered in foam on the outside.

- It's carrying cryogenically cold liquid oxygen and hydrogen,

And it's going to sit out on the launch pad

In the sunshine in florida.

You don't want that to start boiling off,

So over the outside of the tank

There is this spray-on insulating foam.

Cheap, very effective.

But it's got this property

That, as you go through supersonic flight

In the atmosphere, bits of it come.

- The question is how bad of shape is the orbiter in?

- And bob said, "I really wish there was some way

To get more information."

- I knew this mission passed over places

Where there were some high-altitude telescopes.

These are looking at stars.

So if you want to look at the orbiter,

You could probably get the entire orbiter

Fit in the field of view

And have extremely good resolution.

-And I said, "well,

I don't really know much about that, bob.

We'll have to check."

- And so I got the assurance from wayne that, um,

He would make some calls and he would see what...

What could be done, and, um, things were put into motion.

♪

No. You don't want to alarm the crew that early.

They had just gotten onto orbit. They have a job to do.

When we have the complete story,

Then that's when we pass it on to them.

And we did not know what the problem was.

♪

♪

[ radio crackling ]

-Mom? Mom?

I miss you.

-Hi.

-We talked using the early

Tele-video conferencing capability

And super low-tech bandwidth.

It's ratty comm, but it's a very special time.

-Mom?

- It was a huge relief being able to...

See her again.

[ giggles ]

[ laughs ]

I really couldn't comprehend that she was in space.

Like, it didn't... Make sense to me at all.

[ laughs ]

♪

It felt like...

Counting down to christmas waiting for her to get back.

♪

♪

♪

- The second day of the mission was just an ordinary day for me.

I was ready to go home about 5:00 on a Friday evening...

[ telephone ringing ]

And then I got a call from my manager.

She said, "rodney,

Do you know that a large piece of foam hit the left wing?"

And I think I gasp and I said "ooh" or "ahh."

I made some exclamation. "no, I did not hear that."

And she said, "they have just released a video."

♪

Every time I watched the video,

I'm looking at portions of the video or a sector of it,

Just to see if I can glean one more piece of detail out of it.

And the question I had,

"what is that cloud of expanding white stuff?"

One can't help but ask,

Is that part of the wing coming apart?

♪

[ upbeat music playing on radio ]

♪

♪

♪

I was thinking about this foam strike all weekend.

And I thought, "can't we get the astronauts

To look through this side hatch window?"

There's a little window right here.

This little dark circle.

Could they have looked back to this area in here to see

If there's any damage... Debris, residue, anything?

What I was expecting is you first look with your eyes.

Just look.

♪

- So let's see. Rodney sent me an e-mail.

"we know that the remote manipulator system arm

And cameras are not available,

But what about the left side hatch window?"

Uh, he's questioning whether there's been any action,

Uh, to ask the crew to look for damage.

Uh, no.

The area that was struck was not visible from the orbiter cabin.

♪

- Okay, well, good morning or good evening as the case goes

For all you guys working around the clock

There in houston.

- You have to understand... Nasa works on procedures.

We have a mission plan. - Red shift is

Just finishing up their day.

- Any deviation needs to be evaluated and assessed

On how it will impact everything.

-Laurel, just to be advised,

You have about two minutes of video.

- To deviate from the processes and the procedures,

You need to have a reason,

And the reason needs data.

It's not just "I have a bad feeling about this."

- And I got no reply to my e-mail.

My request was never answered.

- Columbia, this is cnn. How do you read me?

- Hey, cnn. We've got you loud and clear.

- Stand by, and we'll have you on the tele here very shortly.

Say hello to the crew of the space shuttle columbia,

Now traveling above the pacific at 17,300 miles an hour,

150 miles above us, waving to us.

Let's give you an idea of who's who.

I remember interviewing the crew in space.

Rick husband, the commander, second mission.

Laurel clark...

Prepping for that interview, I thought about

The foam strike and how to handle it.

But on launch day, when I saw that... Footage,

I wasn't sure what to think about it.

I'm not a rocket scientist, so I called to somebody

Who I know... Knew very well at nasa.

I said, "help me understand how worried I should be for this."

And he said, "oh, it's foam. It's very light material.

Probably doesn't cause any damage."

But it nagged me the whole mission.

Colonel ramon, um, I'm curious,

Was the launch what you expected?

I was thinking about the foam.

I just didn't know how to, in a five-minute interview,

Set that up.

Are all these experiments working?

They couldn't all be working as planned.

- Well, things are going very smoothly.

As expected, there's some minor glitches.

- I had gone through this process of convincing myself

That it was going to be okay.

Alright. We're going to have to leave it at that.

But I had this sinking feeling.

Didn't feel right.

♪

♪

- We spent the weekend analyzing this film.

We estimated the size of the foam 16 inches across,

18 inches long... suitcase size.

So it's a big chunk of foam moving at 750 miles an hour.

But in the end, what we did not know

Was the condition of the vehicle post-strike.

♪

-Returning from space,

A craft that is going 17,500 miles an hour

Heats up gases,

And very hot gases become something we call plasma.

The shuttle is enveloped in this inferno,

And it's kind of beautiful.

But obviously you want to be protected from it.

- Well, they came to the conclusion

That the best way to deal with that

Was to arrange a system of tiles to cover the shuttle.

- All of the black here shown is all tiles.

- And these tiles are made of a silica fiber material

Which is very heat-resistant.

- I can show you. This is a test tile.

- There are about 31,000 of them all together,

And we hope those tiles will stay on

When the orbiter comes back into the atmosphere,

Because otherwise the craft itself could be damaged.

- During the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s,

There was quite an effort to develop a way

To repair damaged tiles on orbit.

It was a huge effort...

And it was an utter failure.

They could not develop anything,

And that was one of the "accepted risks"

Of flying in space.

♪

- Okay. Good morning. We're ready for roll.

- In a meeting, there's 20, 30 people in the room.

There's people joining from kennedy.

There's people from huntington beach, california,

Representative from engineering, a representative from the crew.

The chairman of the meeting was linda ham.

-She basically ran this mission.

- If there were going to be any changes,

She headed up this team

That would have to approve any changes.

- She was effectively the deputy to ron dittemore,

The program manager in those days.

Linda has excellent judgment,

Can grasp complicated problems very quickly.

She was the first woman to be certified as a flight director.

Linda was recalling sts-112, a flight two flights before.

-[ indistinct ]

-Main engine start.

Two... One...

We got booster ignition and liftoff

Of the space shuttle atlantis.

- Sts-112 had a very similar piece of foam come off

From almost the same location,

But in that case, the foam hit solid rocket booster

And put a dent in it.

- The foam traveled... Traveled down.

It struck right here, these three lines.

- It didn't hit the orbiter, so it was no effect

To the flight.

The management team, they analyzed it

And came up with the conclusion

That no safety of flight issue existed.

- We dodged a bullet on that one.

Here's your warning, and you only get one.

♪

-A special team was forming,

And I was told that I would be on it.

The mission management wanted to know how bad is it...

No damage, minimal damage or grave damage.

In that room on the first meeting,

There were probably 12 to 15 people.

They were the best experts in different fields,

But all we knew was this was foam

And it hit the left wing.

But where on the left wing...

We did not know.

♪

This is why we naturally came to the conclusion

We cannot initiate a credible analysis

Until we know the damage location and extent of damage.

We must have another piece of data,

Another image.

I knew that the military satellites at that time

Were extremely good.

There were stories like

They could read license plates from space.

- We have quite a fleet of spy satellites out there,

And mostly are trying to, at that time,

Chase down terrorists in afghanistan

And iraq or whatever.

Aiming it at the shuttle was a possibility.

- That's why the whole group thought it was a good idea.

Let's ask for military assets.

The meeting participants all agreed.

"we will always have big uncertainties

Until we get definitive, better,

Clearer photos of the wing and body underside."

So, in boldface, I put, "can we petition,

Beg for outside agency assistance?"

♪

♪

-Good morning, blue.

-You know, as a kid,

Your imagination just like, runs wild.

And I'm like, do they just float and sleep

Or, you know, does he get to go out in actual space?

Did he see aliens?

Mostly just thought, like, he was an explorer.

Kind of like, I don't know, like a space indiana jones.

- You know, we make it a point to get out and go to schools

And talk to kids all the time.

And when I do that, I really try to let them know

What it was like for me when I was a kid growing up,

And how I had this dream of one day

Becoming an astronaut, and that really,

If you work hard and you're always persistent,

You can really make those dreams come true.

- He wanted to always be involved in something

That was kind of bigger than him,

That contributed to to society, that had a purpose.

It was fun to watch him.

He looked like he was enjoying himself.

The crew looked like they were doing

What they needed to be doing,

And everything was going off really well.

And I didn't know at that time that...

Anything concerning had happened.

There were people that did, though,

But I wasn't one of them.

♪

♪

-I was in my office in florida,

And I got a phone call from the head

Of what we call systems integrations.

He's an engineer who I respect very highly,

But he said, "hey, we really don't have all the information

We'd like to have on this debris strike.

Do you know of anybody that's got a way

To get better pictures?"

Now, I had this engineer as well as bob,

Asking me to see if I could find out some more information.

Nasa does not own any military satellites,

But at that time we had a close working relationship

With the patrick air force base, so I put in a request with them.

- There's a lot of work to get a photo.

One would have to interrupt the mission

To get the right lighting, to make sure you're over,

The right satellite is in position.

And then now you have an army of people on the ground.

We have to reorient the shuttle

For the proper exposure angles and all that.

And to do that means they may have to terminate

Their science experiments.

In a program manager's mind,

That's responsible for getting shuttles up there on schedule,

If you interrupt the science mission,

You have the ire of all the people

And the science objectives were now ruined.

And that looks badly on nasa.

-A little bit later in the day,

In the afternoon, I got a call from linda,

And she said, "hey, I heard

That you were trying to get some better pictures."

And she said that she had talked to all the appropriate managers

And no one had a requirement for any more information.

They had what they needed to do the analysis.

She said, "I want you to turn this off

Because we don't need to bother those other people."

- How did you feel when she said that?

-I was mad

Because I don't like to be overruled.

I'd been, you know, trying to act within my authority,

And I'd been countermanded by my boss.

- Linda ham knew that nasa's history

With the department of defense

And using spy satellites was a little bit checkered.

- There had been a previous mission

Where the landing parachute door came off on launch,

So the orbiter was flying with the parachute without its door.

Nasa made a request to get some imagery.

However, the photos didn't help much.

- So, even if you can get photographs,

It doesn't mean they'll necessarily show anything.

- I think they were a little bit embarrassed

In the end about asking.

And nasa never wants to look stupid.

Nasa wants to be the agency with the answers.

-If you'd have said, "linda,

Two different people need this information.

Their departments are both asking.

Are you aware?"

That may have changed the course of events.

- Could I have argued with her? Maybe.

But did I get the impression that her mind was made up

And, you know, that was the end of that?

That's kind of where I was.

And you can say, "well, you should have argued more."

Well, that would that's nice of you to say that, but I didn't.

I was going to be a good soldier.

So I called air force base and said,

"I know I made this request. Um, turns out we don't need it.

Forget I asked about it."

♪

- I was told that we would not be getting images.

When I read it, I got angry and confused.

What does this mean?

So, I e-mailed paul shack.

I e-mailed, "why? Did you do anything about it?"

No reply, no reply, no reply. Quiet.

So I called him, and I got him.

- He was shouting at me. [ chuckles ]

Can't call it an argument

Because an argument takes two people shouting,

And just one was shouting in this case.

- I asked him, "why are you ignoring?

You didn't reply to my e-mail. Why?"

I was asking why you didn't respond.

Now I have you.

-Well, I got sarcastic.

I said, "don't be a chicken little."

- Paul shack treated me as if I were the well-intentioned

But silly chicken.

And the lesson is chicken little is not to be trusted.

Chicken little always gets excited.

I was very upset and angry and disappointed

With my engineering organizations, top to bottom.

There's a ticking clock. We were losing time.

This is an e-mail I drafted.

"in my humble technical opinion,

This is the wrong and bordering on irresponsible answer,

Not to request additional imaging help

From any outside source.

Remember this, nasa safety posters

Everywhere around stating 'if it's not safe, say so.'

Yes, it's that serious."

I felt the need to draft that e-mail

With that strong language.

And the strongest word in there is accusatory, "irresponsible."

But I struggled on sending it or not sending it.

I was afraid about my future career.

I was married, and we had a child,

Had a home, had a mortgage.

And I did not send it in the end.

- I remember that Wednesday night

When I came home from work,

He showed me the e-mail that he had not sent.

He was very agitated, very frustrated

Because he wasn't sure what to do.

The thrust was finish the analysis,

Even though you have no information

On which to base your analysis.

And if it's bad, then we'll try to do something.

He said, "it's like being asked to analyze a car accident

That has just happened outside,

But you're not allowed to look out the window."

- But the total denial forced us

Into the rock and a hard place.

We have to produce an analysis anyway, without a photo.

♪

- Alright. Now we play volleyball.

[ laughs ]

Football.

Bicycle kick.

[ laughter ]

- Okay, so this is the e-mail that was sent to the crew.

"you guys are doing a fantastic job staying on timeline

And accomplishing great science.

There is one item that I would like to make you aware of.

This item is not even worth mentioning,

Other than wanting to make sure

That you are not surprised by it

In a question from a reporter.

During ascent, at approximately 80 seconds,

Some debris came loose

And subsequently impacted the orbiter left wing.

Experts have reviewed the high-speed photography,

And there is no concern for rcc or tile damage.

We have seen this same phenomenon

On several other flights

And there's absolutely no concern for entry.

That is all for now

It is a pleasure working with you every day."

So, they saw something. They're taking care of it.

This e-mail was too short, too sweet, too easy.

- Okay. Good morning and welcome to the mmt.

- Day nine. Rodney's team presented their analysis.

- I wasn't presenting the results of our analysis.

The protocol was that a senior engineer

Would present on our behalf.

- We all knew that if the engineers find out

That this is bad, there is nothing we can do.

If your heat shield was lost, that was just the end game.

- The presentation showed five scenarios

That we were analyzing over the past few days.

- Rodney's concern was uncertainty

In where the damage was.

The way they compensated for that

Was to analyze multiple possible locations.

Instead of analyzing this area,

We're going to analyze this area.

"it would cause localized heating,

But no burn through,"

I believe were the words that they used.

- When we completed the analysis,

None of the scenario showed a fatal outcome.

-I felt some relief.

I thought we were in good shape, I believed him.

-That's what you want to hear.

You don't want to hear,

"we're going to lose the vehicle."

- What's missing in that is we should have had

In boldface at the very beginning,

"these are engineering assumption cases.

We do not know without extra data

Whether these are actual representations of reality.

A turnaround issue, what they meant was some level of repair.

-So when columbia comes back?

- When it comes back, but nothing really bad.

That bad. Just local repair.

Patch it up and let's go again.

- And that's what was being communicated to linda...

- Yes. Yes, yes. - Okay.

Even though you all sat there...

- Yes. - And thought it wasn't okay.

What? You didn't... you didn't...

She was in the room with you.

- She was in the room with us. - So what...

What prevented you from going to talk to her?

-The chain of command protocol.

You don't approach managers directly.

- You're, you know, you're a grown man

And you're in the room of only 12...

- I'm a grown man with grown men telling me not to do that.

There are other grown men with power and authority saying,

"don't do that."

- What would have been the repercussions of talking

To her in that room?

-I don't know if, uh...

I don't know.

♪

♪

- I really love seeing a team come together,

And the bigger team who makes this entire mission possible

Is the team on the ground,

And all the folks who work in mission control,

And all the folks who work at the different nasa centers.

It's just such a great feeling for me to...

To see everybody working together as a team

Like that, and even getting up here

And hearing their familiar voices on the on the radio,

It's just a great feeling.

- We are supposed to do everything we can for the crew.

They trust us, they have their training and expertise,

But they want to believe and pull full faith

That we're doing the very best for them.

-In the nasa world,

People don't talk in terms of "it's life or death."

You use the terms "threat to the vehicle and crew,"

Or "risk to the vehicle and crew."

It might have more power or more punch

If we talk life and death, but we don't.

♪

♪

- Okay, well, then, we've got, uh,

An announcement that we'd like to make

On behalf of the sts-107 crew.

It is today that we remember and honor

The crews of apollo 1 and challenger.

They made the ultimate sacrifice,

Giving their lives and service to their country

And for all mankind.

Their dedication and devotion

To the exploration of space was an inspiration

To each of us, and still motivates people

Around the world to achieve great things

In service to others.

As we orbit the earth,

We will join the entire nasa family

For a moment of silence in their memory.

Our thoughts and prayers go to their families as well.

-Here we go.

- We went to nasa and did what they called a teleconference.

Yeah, I remember being excited.

-He did all these

What he would call stupid astronaut tricks.

I think he did different flips and, like, would poke

His head out from different angles to make us laugh.

And also just to play around with weightlessness.

When else are you going to be able to float on camera?

So... [ chuckles ]

It was really cool to see.

-It was our dating anniversary.

It was also the anniversary of challenger.

We had about 20 or 25 minutes

And he shared how the mission was going.

- It was so nice to be able to see him, talk to him.

And he was having a blast.

- I just kept telling him how much I loved him

And he said, "I love you guys so much."

He goes, "evelyn, I love you so much."

And just kept saying that.

Those are our last words ever.

That was it.

- I got a really nice note from evelyn husband

And she just said, "I just want you to know

How much we at nasa appreciate how you cover space."

I was worried about her and her kids.

Anytime a shuttle is going to come to earth, I'd be worried.

In this case, I had a little more worry.

♪

- Columbia, houston, good morning,

And we're looking forward to

Our last day on orbit with you.

♪