Bringing Columbia Home by Michael Leinbach; Jonathan Ward; Robert Crippen; Eileen Collins

Author:Michael Leinbach; Jonathan Ward; Robert Crippen; Eileen Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2017-11-28T05:00:00+00:00

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On February 18, a Sabine County resident who was four-wheeling near the bank of an inlet near Six Mile Bay on Toledo Bend spotted Columbia’s nose landing gear partially buried in the mud. That afternoon, a pickup truck brought the nose gear to the collection center at the Sabine County rodeo arena.

As Pat Adkins cleaned off the piece with a hose and scrub brush, he reflected on how bizarre the situation was. Here he was, standing in the bed of a pickup truck, washing mud off of a once-pristine piece of the shuttle. Unlike some other items of debris that were almost unrecognizable, there was no mistaking what this was. Both tires were still attached to the strut. The bead of the tires was burned off, and they were deflated, but the tires were otherwise remarkably intact. The stroke arm for the steering actuator was missing, and Adkins could see that one portion of the surface of the strut had been exposed to the heat of reentry. After cleaning it off, Adkins and several other men transferred the landing gear to the back of a semitrailer, where it could be kept secure until the next shipment of debris from Hemphill to Barksdale.

The immediately recognizable piece of the shuttle evoked strong reactions in the NASA personnel. John Grunsfeld saw it on a visit to the Hemphill area. “He was obviously sobered by being in the presence of the item,” Greg Cohrs said. “Then he told me that he had been on the last flight of Columbia.”29

On February 21, NASA’s Debbie Awtonomow came from KSC to manage Hemphill’s collection center. Pat Adkins and Gerry Schumann familiarized her with the area and then offered to show her the latest recovered items. Adkins raised the door at the back of the trailer. Awtonomow looked in and immediately saw the landing gear. The sight of the piece of the once-proud shuttle, now horribly wrecked and embedded with grass and mud, proved too much for her. She walked over to the ramp beside the truck and vomited. She broke into tears and cried for nearly an hour.

“In the back of your mind,” she later recalled, “you tell yourself that it’s just a dream, that this is not really happening. But to see this the first thing—reality hit real quick. It was like someone took a two-by-four and smacked me upside the head.”

Schumann and Adkins sat with her and comforted her. Adkins told her, “It’s not going to get any better. It’s good just to get it out of the way now. I understand.”

When she had finished crying, Schumann consoled her, “We all went through it. We all had our time that we had to break down and get it out of us, and then go on and do the job. Are you ready to go to work now?”

The long hours, tough physical conditions, and the emotional challenges of the work took their toll on our NASA workforce and the local officials. People burned out quickly. Personnel usually stayed on site for several weeks and then went home to rest and recharge.

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