Saturday, February 8, 2003
KSC workers honor Columbia crew
By SANDRA FREDERICK
NEWS-JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — With storm clouds overhead, 8,000 NASA employees quietly lined the runway Friday morning at the exact spot where Columbia was to have touched down six days earlier.
The landing lights alongside the runway shone as reminders the crew of mission STS-107 was not coming home.
The ceremony began at 8:30 a.m. Speakers remembered seven men and women who were their friends and the oldest shuttle that became almost the same.
“Columbia was a fine ship,” said Capt. Robert Crippen, Columbia´s first pilot in 1981.
The service was an hourlong memorial for Space Center workers to honor the seven astronauts who died.
“She was hardly a thing of beauty, except to us. I remember the day she land ed at Kennedy Space Center. We thought it would be years before she could fly to space, but it wasn´t.”
The former astronaut said, like the crew members, Columbia died before her time. The ship had a design life of 100 flights but was destroyed on the 28th mission.
“She had her life snuffed out in her prime,” Crippen said.
Col. James Halsell Jr., also an astronaut, shared some tender memories of time spent with his fallen colleagues.
Mission commander Rick Husband was an “ah shucks” kind of man who was full of humility and compassion, Halsell said, while Michael Anderson was known for his quiet, get-it-done attitude.
William McCool was described by fellow astronaut Laurel Clark as an 8-year-old in a 10-year-old body because he looked so young, Halsell said. Clark was detail-oriented and made sure everyone was thanked at meetings, regardless of how small a role they had in the space program.
 Two Kennedy Space Center workers comfort one another after the Memorial for Columbia Crew STS-107 was concluded on the shuttle runway at Kennedy Space Center. (Photo: News-Journal/Roger Simms) |
The colonel said Ilan Ramon was a quick learner who “didn´t crumble with the weight of a whole country on his shoulders.”
David Brown was called the “Renaissance Astronaut” because he was a fighter pilot, medical doctor, gymnast and circus performer. Before he left Earth, he recorded miles of video of the crew training, editing it with music for the families.
And Kalpana Chawla was dogged in her preparation for space and found a way to make people laugh when explaining space experiments, Halsell said.
For Ramon, keeping his faith in space was a matter of contemplation. Rabbi Zvi Konikov said Ramon came to him for advice before Columbia´s Jan. 16 launch.
“He wanted to know how one keeps Sabbath in space when every 90 minutes there is a sunrise and a sunset,” the rabbi said. “I told him, ‘Jerusalem, we have a problem.’”
Gov. Jeb Bush, the final speaker, said the crew had dreamed of being one with the stars and each will remain a “constant star in the annals of space.”
When the speakers were finished, four NASA T-38 jets piloted by astronauts flew over the crowd in a missing-man formation. Some workers hugged. Mostly, it brought tears.
NASA officials asked the media not to talk to employees to allow them time to grieve privately.
“We have all been working hard,” KSC spokesman Bill Johnson said. “Today, we stopped and for a few hours it was not business as usual.
“Now we have to go back to work.”
Special Report: THE COLUMBIA CHRONICLES |  |