-my wife, laurel, was on the shuttle. she was a scientist primarily involved with life sciences. one day during the mission, i was reviewing the notes, and then here s this foam issue. during launch, a large piece of foam had come off the external tank and impacted the left wing. me and my colleague had this discussion of, hey, you can use a family conference to talk to laurel and find out what she knew. -oh! -you got to remember the hat you re wearing is your flight-surgeon hat, not your family hat. it would have broken protocol for me to bring up an issue to a crew member, even though it s my wife. -i remember a certain sense of relief like, it s almost over. she s almost back. -i didn t talk to laurel about the foam issue. that conference was for iain and laurel, and i was a bystander. -i knew she was going to come back. you know, i never had a question in my mind. -given the fact that you may have lost a little bit of tile during lift-off, i m wondering
-there s this big countdown clock. i just remember staring at that clock, like, watching every second go down, like, is it now? is it now? -i don t know what i expected when i saw that clock like, for them to just magically arrive when it reached zero. -iain was very excited. -mom s coming home, and, you know, he s gonna get mom hugs, great meals. you know, life will be back to normal. -somebody from nasa said, you ll see the big kind of parachute that pops out of the back. and i think that s probably what i was most excited about [laughs] was watching the parachute come out. -there was something not right. i remember our capcom, charlie hobaugh, trying to re-establish communications. and he said, over and over again, columbia, houston, comm check.
And i think thats probably what i was most excited about [laughs] was watching the parachute come out. There was something not right. I remember our capcom, charlie hobaugh, trying to reestablish communications. And he said, over and over again, columbia, houston, comm check. Columbia, houston, comm check. And i had not lost hope that we would reestablish communications to the crew. No C Band yet. Copy. C bands a radar that sits on the ground. And literally, it sends out a signal, and it bounces it off of the spacecraft to tell us where it is
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