Space disasters pave way to bold adventure

 On Jan. 28, 1986, I had just come out of a class at Adams State College when a friend came up to me with a horrified look on his face and told me that the space shuttle had just blown up.

My initial reaction was disbelief. We quickly found a television in the student center and there it was, repeating footage of the space shuttle Challenger launching toward space and exploding 73 seconds later. I’ve always been a huge fan of the space program and the loss of Challenger and her crew of seven was gut wrenching.

It took nearly two years before NASA returned to space with the launch of Discovery. I kept following the shuttle flights over the years as best I could in the pre-internet days. One of the highlights of my career came in 1995 when I got to photograph the launch of space shuttle Columbia on the STS-73 mission. It was a two-week science mission with the microgravity laboratory onboard. The launch had been delayed so many times that Atlantis was already sitting on the next launchpad waiting to go up.

I took some decent photos and later did a phone interview with the pilot, Kent Rominger, who is a fellow Coloradan. He was the first astronaut I interviewed, but he was far from the last. I’ve long lost count of the number of astronauts I’ve met and interviewed over the years, but among the ones I cherish the most are the ones I did with moonwalkers Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt. I interviewed Schmitt on July 20, 2017, at Space Center Houston in front of the Apollo 17 command module he flew to the moon. Trust me, it doesn’t get any cooler than that!

Perhaps the most special memory I have of interviewing astronauts is the one I did with Vance Brand on the 25th anniversary of his Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flight, the first time Americans and Russians linked up in space. Brand is a hometown hero from Longmont, Colorado. I got to know him very well while I worked for the newspaper there. We sat on the base of the sign to the municipal airport that bears his name and talked for hours as the sun set and the stars came out.

Brand commanded three shuttle missions, twice on Columbia and once on Challenger. Both of those shuttles are gone, something we spoke about when I interviewed him on Feb. 1, 2003, when Columbia STS-107 disintegrated over Texas while coming in for a landing.

It just so happened that I was on weekend duty at the paper when Columbia was lost. I raced to the office early and spent a frantic day interviewing Brand and digging up all of the Colorado connections to Columbia that I could find — and there were a lot of them. I think I banged out about three stories and a few lists and timelines. My coverage blew away that of the Denver metro area papers. It was a career day and one I’m very proud of.

Brand described for me in detail the differences in his experiences on Apollo and shuttle flights and the surreal experience of coming through the atmosphere in a giant fireball. He told me in colorful detail what it was like going through the bumpy, fiery reentry.

Moving to the Houston area in 2008 gave me many opportunities to cover NASA and the space program. I was working in Hempstead in 2009 when I took photographs of Atlantis being ferried back to Florida on the back of a 747. On Sept. 20, 2012, I stood at the end of the runway at Ellington Field and photographed Endeavour as the same 747 took off with it after an overnight stop in Houston. That 747 is the same one on display in front of Space Center Houston.

It still amazes me that as technologically advanced as those shuttles were, they were brought down by a faulty O-ring and a chunk of foam insulation. It’s a simple reminder that details matter.

Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Jan. 27 is the 58th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts during a routine practice on the launchpad. This time of year is tough for the NASA family and those of us who follow the space program.

Yet out of tragedy comes triumph and mankind is in a renewed fervor to return to the moon and go on to Mars, even while the International Space Station nears the end of its time in orbit. Between NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other private space companies there is more than enough out-of-this-world stuff going on to keep us focused on the future while we respectfully remember the past.