Voted the Best Space Book of 2018 by the Space Hipsters
The dramatic inside story of the epic search and recovery operation
after the Columbia space shuttle disaster.
On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated on reentry before the
nation's eyes, and all seven astronauts aboard were lost. Author Mike
Leinbach, Launch Director of the space shuttle program at NASA's John F.
Kennedy Space Center was a key leader in the search and recovery effort
as NASA, FEMA, the FBI, the US Forest Service, and dozens more federal,
state, and local agencies combed an area of rural east Texas the size of
Rhode Island for every piece of the shuttle and her crew they could
find. Assisted by hundreds of volunteers, it would become the largest
ground search operation in US history. This comprehensive account is
told in four parts:
- Parallel Confusion
- Courage, Compassion, and Commitment
- Picking Up the Pieces
- A Bittersweet Victory
For the first time, here is the definitive inside story of the
Columbia disaster and recovery and the inspiring message it ultimately
holds. In the aftermath of tragedy, people and communities came together
to help bring home the remains of the crew and nearly 40 percent of
shuttle, an effort that was instrumental in piecing together what
happened so the shuttle program could return to flight and complete the
International Space Station. Bringing Columbia Home shares the
deeply personal stories that emerged as NASA employees looked for lost
colleagues and searchers overcame immense physical, logistical, and
emotional challenges and worked together to accomplish the impossible.
Featuring a foreword and epilogue by astronauts Robert Crippen and
Eileen Collins, and dedicated to the astronauts and recovery search
persons who lost their lives, this is an incredible, compelling
narrative about the best of humanity in the darkest of times and about
how a failure at the pinnacle of human achievement became a story of
cooperation and hope.
