Columbia and the Year of Flight
‘Roger, uh–’radioed flight commander Rick D. Husband, 45, as he acknowledged news from Mission Control that there were wonky tire-pressure readings from sensors on the left wing of the space shuttle Columbia.
There were no further voice communications from Columbia.
It happened in the centennial year of the first manned flight. Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, the Wright brothers managed to urge their motorized kite some 120 feet into a gust off the sea that might have elevated a barn door. A hundred years later Columbia, with its crew of seven, flew 200,000 feet above Texas, meeting the atmosphere at 12,500 miles per hour and on schedule for a touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, 16 minutes later. Colonel Husband’s wife and two children waited there to welcome him back to Earth.
That was at 9 a.m. EST, on Saturday, ...
