CHAPTER 14

We absolutely cannot get anything done anymore. We've stopped thinking and stopped innovating. All NASA energy now goes to endlessly rejustifying the budgets for bad ideas from the past....

The way you get ahead inside NASA is by denying there are problems and being the loudest one to attach the blame for anything that goes wrong to critics.

-- Former NASA official

29 January, 1986

Astronaut trainee Reis reported for work the next morning to witness a space program as fragmented as the remains of Challenger on the ocean floor. Though the level of activity was high -- workers and managers rushed to and fro carrying enormous stacks of documents, reels of data- and videotape, and trays of printout -- everyone moved as if in a horrible nightmare.

Upon reaching the classroom, she learned that a lecture concerning the shuttle's robotic arm had been canceled. Instead, the dozen astronauts in her group gathered to mourn, in their muted way, their fallen compatriots. A television set broadcast the latest news, which consisted mostly of speculation, since NASA management had uncharacteristically clamped down a total news blackout to the point of seizing all film and video from cameras at the Cape and official viewing sites up and down the coast. The mourning turned quickly to angry speculation.

The first to broach the subject was Jon Franck, a former naval aviator and test pilot now astronaut specializing in solar research. He was tall for an astronaut, with a blond and lanky mountain-boy look to him. A three-time shuttle commander with a midwest twang part Hoosier and part Jayhawker -- Jayhoosier, Tammy labeled it -- Franck turned to glower darkly at the rest of the astronauts.

"I heard all sorts of things last night," he said, running the back of his hand along the tip of his chin. "The self-destruct charges going off on the ET, premature SRB separation, O-ring burnthrough, Libyan terrorists, Soviet particle beam weapons and Tesla scalar devices. Even rumors that the CIA did it to blame on Libya or that NASA did it to create a new generation of space martyrs now that nearly no one remembers Grissom, Chaffee, and White."

"You mean," a weary man's voice said, "you didn't hear the one about Voyager passing by Uranus last week and setting off a Sentinel to fire a warning shot at us? Or Comet Halley bringing its curse back to Earth?"

The attempt at gallows humor fell flat. "I vote for something going wrong with the SRB. We've had O-ring charring on half the flights."

"And the ET didn't explode," Scott Boyd offered. Boyd was a compact man, short, muscular, intelligent and driven; astronaut material of the old school. He'd make shuttle commander someday, Reis was sure of that. "At nine miles up, there's practically no atmosphere. An explosion would have created a rapidly expanding fireball spreading over the sky. What we saw was the ET rupturing and voiding its contents, which subsequently caught fire and burned. That was a cloud of water vapor. I'd estimate that we saw less than a sixth of the energy that would have been released by an actual explosion."

"So Challenger broke apart under ærodynamic stress?" Tammy asked. It was odd to participate in such a discussion, as if it were just another in the long string of classes that she had to attend as part of ground school.

Boyd nodded slowly. Most of the others knew what that meant. Franck voiced it. "That means they weren't incinerated."

Boyd nodded again. "I think they're going to find the crew compartment."

Tammy shuddered.

"Gentlemen," a voice behind them said. "Ladies."

The twelve turned around to see J. E. B. Manners -- "Bad" Manners, as other NASA personnel called him -- standing in the doorway. Manners was once an astronaut and now served as an instructor. His curly hair had long since turned grey and receded. His usual wry smile was missing, replaced by a set jaw and bloodless lips.

"I've been directed," he said in a level tone, "to speak to you about the importance of maintaining an even strain while the investigation into Fifty-One El progresses. You all have families. You all must know what the families of the seven are going through right now. The astronaut corps does not want to do or say anything that would increase their grief. Do I make myself clear?"

Silent assent. The astronauts all served on the same team; all knew the pain their own families would feel. Franck asked, "Any news?"

Manners nodded. "Over a score of aircraft and vessels searching six thousand square miles. Some floating debris. Maybe the top of the ET off of Savannah. Not much."

"What about the crew cabin?" Tammy asked hesitantly.

Manners pinioned her with his gaze. "Won't be found," he said. "Disintegrated in the explosion. End of story." He continued to stare at her for a few seconds longer, as if sizing her up or silently reproving her. Then he looked grimly at the whole group.

"During the investigation, NASA wants no one talking to the press. Any speculation or leaks about our progress could bring unwarranted grief to the families of the crew. Now let's all get back to work."

"For what?" Franck asked coolly. "The program's not going anywhere now. There's not going to be another flight for months, maybe years. I was scheduled for one sixteen months from now. I may not see it until the 'nineties."

Manners glared at the man. "I think it's high time we stopped thinking about our own selfish concerns and pull together on this. The crew would have wanted us to go on."

8 March, 1986

NASA moved on -- in the fashion of an automobile lurching as it ran out of gas -- for more than a month as revelation after revelation stunned the tight-knit astronaut corps.

The investigation teams concluded from video footage and telemetry that the cause of the disaster was most likely an O-ring burnthrough on the right-hand SRB. The president used his powers of rhetoric to comfort the nation, which only polarized the astronauts even more. Some resigned. Others transferred to non-flight positions. Some, such as Tammy Reis, stuck to the corps despite everything, and wondered why they did.

"Target Sixty-Seven," Jon Franck whispered to Tammy Reis, "is the crew cabin."

Reis stared at her fellow astronaut. They sat in the rear annex of a night club called The Heat Shield, a bar catering to the spacefarers. The owner of The Heat Shield, Ed Laird, an ex-astronaut, understood the need for a place of refuge from reporters, gawkers, and astro-groupies. The black-tiled Ablation Room in the rear served the astronauts privately, exclusively, and discreetly. A pair of surly, burly bouncers kept reporters and other groundhogs out. Ed protected his special customers well.

Jon Franck was never one given to whispers, especially in the privacy of the Ablation Room. Now, though, he spoke like a spy in a den of spies.

"Divers from Preserver found the Five-Seven-Six bulkhead. Intact."

Reis shook her head. "I figured they might." Her whisper was just as low. "They weren't blown up, then. Just blown out."

Franck nodded his head with its shorter-than-regulation hair, recently trimmed now that he was part of the presidential commission investigating the Challenger disaster. Reis noticed that it had changed him.

"They found the crew," was all he added. He took a sip of his bourbon and branch water, leaned back in the soft vinyl chair, and gazed around the room.

Other tables supported the glasses, ashtrays, and elbows of nearly half the astronaut corps. Back in the heyday of Ed Laird, a bar on Highway A1A always hosted at least a trio of astronauts at some point every night. And they all looked nearly the same. White men in their thirties and forties, crewcut, short, friendly but quiet (until a few drinks lit their engines).

Now, the Ablation Room hosted nearly two dozen men and women. White, black, yellow, brown, red, and startling pink. From astronaut trainees fresh out of college -- of which Tammy was the youngest -- to a mission specialist in her sixties. Not all of them had been into Space yet. Little more than a month after the fall of Challenger, many wondered whether they would get there at all.

Reis took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Her hand shook lifting the Kahlua and cream to her lips. "Dead from impact, then," she said softly.

"I doubt that they drowned." Franck finished off his drink and upended the glass, which was swiftly replaced by Laird, who personally tended his flock and frankly overlooked the fact that Tammy was underage. Old enough to fly spacecraft, he figured, old enough to drink.

"You heard, right?" Ed Laird looked nothing like a former astronaut. His leonine grey hair hung down to the collar of a black turtleneck sweater beneath the navy blue seaman's coat. His beard -- still jet black -- formed a sharp spade on his chin. He looked for all the world like a ship's captain from an old pulp adventure story. Only the small silver astronaut wings on his lapel revealed that he had once left Earth's surface to sail upon the New Sea.

Reis and Franck nodded.

Laird shook his head and wiped his hands on a bar towel. He was not the sort to waste his breath on "if only," and "might-have-been." He strode back to the bar with just a mutter to himself about "suit-and-tie scum."

Reis's mind dwelt on the might-have-beens, though. If only they hadn't launched on that cold January morning. If only NASA management hadn't been so eager to have the shuttle up in time for the president's State of the Union speech. Sure, there'd been no actual presidential order to do so, but everyone knew that's what was wanted. No one asked about the coincidence of the two events being planned for the same day. Everyone knew why -- it was in the blood to know instantly what higher-ups wanted. Anyone without that knack did not rise in the organization. It was natural selection for bureaucracies. And Tammy Reis was as prone to act unquestioningly as any other government employee.

"Impact," Reis whispered. "From nine miles up." Unbidden, her mind calculated the time it took to fall that far. Two, maybe three minutes. Terminal velocity of something shaped like the crew cabin would be in the 180 to 250 mile-per-hour range, depending on how much junk trailed behind it.

Her mind would not leave the image alone. She had to know more.

"They found the crew?" She could not utter the word bodies.

Franck nodded. He gazed at her levelly, unblinking. "Six weeks under ninety-five feet of warm water. Not much left."

Reis sipped slowly at her drink. The shock of Challenger had long since passed. Even though the point had very rarely been driven home, they knew the risks inherent in space travel as much as everyone else knew the risks of highway travel, or every pilot understood the dangers of flying. Once in a while, reality taught the lesson in painful, personal ways. That did not scare many people out of cars or planes, and would never stop an astronaut, at least not one with the right stuff.

Once, she had witnessed the recovery of a body from the Florida waters while on a team in search of a missing T-38A trainer jet. The pilot had been down for a week when civilian skin divers located the wreck. The remains gingerly hauled up looked like whitish-grey gelatin out of which sea life had snapped greedy chunks. Much of the skeleton lay exposed to the sea, serving as anchor points for small crustaceans.

She dully took another sip. The astronaut corps comprised an unusual group -- tight-knit in that everyone knew and worked with everyone else at some point in their professional lives, yet tight-lipped, reticent, and aloof among one another in so many ways. She, being a newcomer, knew even less about her fellow astronauts. It was not until she read the memorials that she discovered Ellison Onizuka was a Buddhist, or that Judy Resnik -- they called her "J.R." -- could play the piano.

The thought of them on the floor of the Atlantic seemed ignoble. Somehow, back when everyone thought they had burned up in what looked like a fireball, their deaths seemed purer, more appropriate for astronauts. To be cremated in the flames of your own spacecraft, to be scattered into Space or up into the atmosphere of your home world seemed hauntingly poetic.

The poetry turned into abomination as the truth revealed itself. Challenger had not risen from Earth and exploded into space.

Challenger fell.

And so fell Tamara Reis's heart.


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