The Space Shuttle: 9. What is it all for?

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: 13 Minutes Presents: Artemis II
Episode: The Space Shuttle: 9. What is it all for?
Host: Maggie Aderin Pocock (BBC World Service)
Airdate: September 8, 2025

In this deeply reflective episode, Maggie Aderin Pocock leads listeners through the emotional aftermath of the Challenger disaster, focusing on the collective questioning—and determination—across the NASA community: What is the space shuttle really for? The episode explores the pain and soul-searching following Challenger, the technical and organizational changes that followed, and the evolution of the shuttle program’s purpose. Featuring astronauts, engineers, NASA officials, and teachers, the story moves from personal grief to a renewal of purpose, ultimately redefining human spaceflight’s risks and rewards.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Emotional Weight of Spaceflight and the Challenger Disaster

• The Beach House: A Sacred Tradition

  • Astronauts and families gathered at the Cape Canaveral beach house before launches—a place to say potentially final goodbyes.
    • “And it was the most emotional, gut wrenching experience that I've ever lived through. Everybody knows at the time that this could be the last goodbye.”
      — Mike Mullane [03:38]
  • The ever-present awareness of risk, even from astronaut selection onward.

• Challenger’s Loss and National Grief

  • President Ronald Reagan’s televised address underscored the tragedy’s impact on the nation.
    • “We will never forget them nor the last time we saw them... as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.”
      — President Ronald Reagan [06:30]

• Personal Reflections from Astronauts and Crew

  • NASA staff and astronauts recall their final moments with Challenger’s crew, sharing fond memories and heartache.
    • “Dick was just sterling character. Mike Smith, similarly. And Ron, Ron McNair... you couldn't not love Ron McNair.”
      — Cathy Sullivan [07:54]
    • “Those are the last words I ever heard from her... it just, you know, ripped my heart out.”
      — Mike Mullane, on Judy Resnik [10:43]

• The Immediate Aftermath

  • Silence and mourning pervaded NASA’s return flights; engineers and astronauts felt personal responsibility, leading to deep reflection and doubts about whether to continue.
    • “Have you ever worked on something and put your heart and soul into something that ends up causing people to lose their life? For 30 days... I was at a loss.”
      — Rick Hauck [14:21]
    • “I considered leaving the program. But... I could do them a much greater service staying with it.”
      — Jerry Miller [15:28]

2. Facing the Future and Reaffirming the Shuttle’s Purpose

• Public Outcry for Continuation

  • Despite tragedy, there was a strong national sentiment to continue. Letters and calls flooded NASA.
    • “Everybody wanted the future to go on. Everybody wanted space exploration to continue.”
      — Barbara Morgan [17:28]
    • Children’s determination to “build a space station” symbolized public hope. [17:49]

• Should NASA Continue? Internal Doubts

  • Within NASA, the question was real: should crewed spaceflight continue after Challenger?
    • “There was little rumblings... of maybe NASA can't do this anymore... That just annoyed the daylights out of me. We are not doing this for fun television. There's a purpose here that's worth continuing and worth pursuing.”
      — Cathy Sullivan [16:25]

3. Technical and Organizational Overhauls

• Redesigning the Shuttle’s Hardware

  • Brian Russell and the Morton Thiokol team launched a comprehensive redesign of the solid rocket boosters:
    • Multiple O-rings, new insulation, deeper grooves, and the addition of heaters to the joints.
    • “We called it a wiper O ring that acted essentially as a sacrificial barrier... We did test after test towards a solution.”
      — Brian Russell [22:23]
  • Engineers wrestled with grief and guilt as they worked for months on a solution.
    • “Did it take the deaths of those seven astronauts to lead us to truly fix the problem? And it makes me sad to think that it seems... yes, even though that’s the wrong answer.”
      — Brian Russell [23:36]

• Beyond Hardware: Adding Crew Safety Features

  • Pressure suits replaced coveralls for launch/landing; an emergency slide-pole egress system was added.
    • “If you ever had a reason that the cabin depressurized, you're going to die... From now on, astronauts will wear pressure suits.”
      — Mike Mullane [25:14]
    • “Not an easy thing to do, but it was figured out how to make it possible for astronauts to bail out of a shuttle.”
      — Cathy Sullivan [26:18]

• Restructuring NASA

  • Following Rogers Commission, Bob Crippen proposed—and implemented—major organizational changes.
    • Shuttle program leadership centralized at NASA headquarters, with deputy directors for engineering (Houston) and operations (Kennedy).
    • “One of the recommendations I made to Truly was that we ought to have the Director of the Space Shuttle program be a headquarters employee...”
      — Bob Crippen [28:19]
    • Crippen accepted the role as Deputy Director of Operations, ending his astronaut career. [28:30]

4. The Fundamental Question: What Is the Space Shuttle For?

• A Program Redefined

  • Challenger prompted a crucial reassessment of risk and mission priorities.
    • Crewed shuttle would no longer carry military or purely commercial/satellite payloads; only missions justifying risk to human life—mainly science—would be accepted.
    • “If you had another way to launch them, you should utilize that. So that took away most of the commercial payloads... and just left us with payloads that were going to involve the crew.”
      — Bob Crippen [31:16]
    • This limited the shuttle’s flight rate and increased costs, undermining promises of affordable, routine access to space.

• A Turning Point for NASA

  • “If the space shuttle's evolution was an inflection point for NASA, then the Challenger accident was another inflection point. It changed everything.”
    — Dick Covey [33:15]

• New Sense of Purpose

  • Focus shifted to scientific research: microgravity, Earth observation, and understanding the universe.
    • “Mostly science from now on. This is the shuttle's goal.”
      — Maggie Aderin Pocock [33:39]

5. Rebuilding and Returning to Space

• Personal Stakes in Return to Flight

  • Astronaut Rick Hauck, privately assigned as the first post-Challenger commander, expressed a mixture of humility and pride.
    • “Well, I was absolutely thrilled that I was entrusted with that mission. I think every member of the astronaut office... wanted to be on that flight.”
      — Rick Hauck [35:26]
    • “People say, well, why would you want to fly that flight? I said, because everybody wanted to fly that flight. We all knew it was going to be important mission, but it was also going to be incredibly safe.”
      — Dick Covey [36:44]

• The STS-26 Mission

  • The returning crew knew the shuttle was as much a test as a mission—a chance to prove NASA could learn and continue.
    • “STS-26 will effectively be a test flight, just like the very first mission back in 1981... a vital opportunity to show that the US adventure in human spaceflight will continue.”
      — Maggie Aderin Pocock [37:10]
    • “After 32 months of being grounded... after certainly a great deal of soul searching, it looks like we're just about to get back in space again.”
      — Mike Mullane [37:47]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mike Mullane, on goodbyes at the beach house:
  “Everybody knows at the time that this could be the last goodbye.” [03:38]

• President Ronald Reagan, on Challenger’s loss:
  “We will never forget them nor the last time we saw them... and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.” [06:30]

• Cathy Sullivan, on the program’s purpose:
  “We are not doing this for fun television. There's a purpose here that’s worth continuing and worth pursuing.” [16:36]

• Barbara Morgan, on public hope:
  “We can't come in. We're building a space station and we're not finished yet.” [17:49]

• Brian Russell, on the cost of progress:
  “Did it take the deaths of those seven astronauts to lead us to truly fix the problem? And it makes me sad to think that it seems... yes, even though that's the wrong answer.” [23:36]

• Bob Crippen, on change:
  “We probably had more people telling us why we couldn't go fly than why we could go fly.” [29:09]

• Dick Covey, on Challenger as a turning point:
  “If the space shuttle's evolution was an inflection point for NASA, then the Challenger accident was another inflection point. It changed everything.” [33:15]

• Rick Hauck, on returning to flight:
  “Absolutely thrilled that I was entrusted with that mission... any concerns about that were dwarfed by the enthusiasm that I had.” [35:26]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:28] Emotional goodbyes at Cape Canaveral’s beach house
• [05:36] President Reagan’s address after Challenger
• [07:54] Personal stories about Challenger’s crew
• [14:21] Astronaut and engineer reflections on guilt, grief, and responsibility
• [16:25] Internal NASA debate on whether to continue the shuttle program
• [17:28] Public response and symbolic stories of hope
• [20:33] Engineers describe the process and emotion of booster redesign
• [24:58] New safety procedures and hardware for crews
• [27:50] NASA’s organizational restructuring
• [31:16] The redefinition of the shuttle’s purpose and allowable payloads
• [33:15] Challenger as a NASA turning point
• [35:26] Personal experiences of being selected for return to flight
• [37:10] The significance of STS-26’s test flight

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Conclusion

This episode explores the soul of the space shuttle program—not merely the technology or the heroics, but the deep personal and institutional reckoning that followed Challenger. Through candid voices and emotional storytelling, it grapples with fundamental questions about risk, progress, and why we go to space at all. By the end, the audience understands both the pain that reshaped a generation at NASA and the enduring, collective hope that propels humanity’s journey beyond Earth.

Transcript

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[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Some scenes in this series use recreated sound effects. A low flat roofed concrete and wood building is tucked into the sand dunes at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

We're at the beach house and little history here is needed to understand how this came to be.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

On the seaward side of the building, steps lead up to a broad open balcony. It looks out over the dunes towards a long stretch of sandy beach and beyond that, the pounding Atlantic Ocean surface.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

Back in the 50s, before the space race started, this area was a retirement community and they had hundreds of single family homes out here.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

But now this land is part of Kennedy Space Center. All the houses are gone except for one.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

They kept this house as a refuge for the early astronauts to come out and visit privately with their families. Given the stresses that everybody was under, particularly before our launch was coming up,

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

it stands in a place shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane calls as isolated as Mars.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

And it has remained here and been used for the same purpose through the space shuttle program.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

It's only a couple of miles from the launch pad where shuttle astronauts begin their journey into space.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

To be out here, particularly at night, and see the shafts of xenon lights that are lighting up the space shuttle. You couldn't see the space shuttle from here, but the salt air would capture the lights. It looked like a scene that Hollywood had created it was so dramatically beautiful and emotional.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

The beach house is a place for astronauts and their families to, to spend time together but also to say their goodbyes.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

And it was the most emotional, gut wrenching experience that I've ever lived through. Everybody knows at the time that this could be the last goodbye. And you walk this lonely beach out here, people would scatter alone with their spouses.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Spaceflight is dangerous. Long before astronauts fly, long before they're assigned to a mission. In fact, from the moment they're selected they have to be ready to face the risks, the possibility that they might not make it home.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

So that reality was there. And I never hid anything from my, from my family. I told them from the very beginning this is going to be the riskiest flying I ever did. And be aware of it. I told him if I die on it, I die doing what I had to do. It was in my DNA. I had to fly in space and I couldn't turn my back on it. It's something I had to do, wanted to do, dreamed of doing and just understand the risk is there. So in my opinion we're standing here on a sacred place. Certainly sacred for astronauts, sacred for their families. In the case of Challenger, it was the final goodbye.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

From the BBC World Service 13 minutes presents the Space Shuttle I'm space scientist Maggie adairin Pocock. Episode 9 of 10 what is it all for?

[President Ronald Reagan]

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union. The events of earlier today have led me to change those plans.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

It's the Evening of Tuesday 28th January 1986. Only six hours ago, space shuttle Challenger broke apart in a ball of flame. US President Ronald Reagan addresses the nation from the White House.

[President Ronald Reagan]

Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

He sits at his desk in the Oval Office. Behind him there's a shelf of family photos, curtains from a window looking out onto trees and the fading light of a winter dusk.

[President Ronald Reagan]

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us for the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them nor the last time we saw them. This morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God. Thank you.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

That image of the Challenger 7 leaving the Astronaut crew quarters waving to the crowd of well wishers is almost unbearably poignant. The crew had a whole NASA family, the trainers, flight controllers, ground crew, fellow astronauts.

[NASA Staff Member]

What happens as a crew is getting ready to leave to go to the Kennedy Space center to launch. They do a three hour ascent sim. And so after they got out of the motion base, that little hallway where you walk up to the motion base simulator, they were coming out and they walked past us as we were walking in and we were hugging and shaking hands and wishing them good luck and a successful mission. I'm so glad I had that chance to see them that one last time as we passed in that hallway.

[Astronaut Cathy Sullivan]

Dick and June Scobie were good friends of mine. I'd hosted co op students that June knew from her teaching that roomed at my house for a number of years off and on. They knew their kids. So, you know, I mean, Dick was just sterling character. Mike Smith, similarly. And Ron, Ron McNair, I mean, he was, you couldn't not love Ron McNair.

[Astronaut Rick Hauck]

Ron McNair, PhD in electrical engineering, super sharp, played the saxophone, you know, got to meet Krista McAuliffe on several occasions and you could tell she was just in awe of, you know, what she was about to be a part of. So, you know, talked to Scobie for a little bit. And Ellison Onizuka was, you know, he was just known as quite the character.

[Jerry Miller (Crew Suit Instructor)]

The 51L crew was my first lead position as their EMU, their extravehicular mobility unit, their suit instructor. And Ellen Azuka was very much a fun loving person. He liked to make a lot of jokes. And we had an ongoing joke about, you know, he better be nice to me because if he needs help on orbit, I might not be on console. And there was I ongoing joke about how I might be called out in real time if that were to happen. And so while I was in quarantine, the crew signed a picture for me because I happened to be there. And they, they wrote thanks for all your help. And then Elle had written help kind of in block letters like he was yelling for help. So it was a sitting on my coffee table when I left for work that morning. And when I came back that night, that was the first thing I saw when I opened the door.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Another person in that photo is Mission Specialist Judy Resnick.

[Judy Resnick]

The day before Challenger launched, I called her up at the Cape and we were going over some procedures. I don't even remember what they were now, but I remember her voice and saying, oh, just call whenever you need to, no problem, you know. And I worked so hard to earn her Trust, because J.R. was one of the toughest astronauts that you could find. But if she respected you, you felt really good about yourself because she had very high standards.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

I called, wished her good luck. I teased her because on my first mission we had a IMAX camera and when her hair was all bushed out by zero gravity and the IMAX camera had a belt driven magazine and her, her hair got caught in that and jammed the camera. And I teased her when I called her to say goodbye before her second mission. I said watch out for hair eating cameras. And her answer to me on a lot of things was always, screw you, Tarzan. That was my call sign. Tarzan. Remember, those are the last words I ever heard from her. And the, you know, when it occurred, you know, it just, you know, ripped my heart out.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

When the accident happens. Mike Mullane is in New Mexico. He's with Bob Crippen and the rest of the crew preparing for the first flight from a new shuttle launch facility on the West Coast. But as soon as, as they hear the news, they dash back to Albuquerque where their T38 jets are waiting to start the journey back to Houston.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

On the flight back, I was in Crippen's backseat.

The controllers cleared us direct to Houston

and at each handover they would offer their condolences when we just lost compatriots and then it was silence and didn't bother us the rest of the, until

we got to the next place to hand over and the controller would come on offer their condolences and clear direct Houston.

No chatter on the radios, no chatter amongst the, amongst the flight. There were four T38s. I remember looking out that cockpit, seeing the vapor trail streaming off behind. Just so crushed in despair and pain that we had just lost, lost these people.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

In the aftermath of Challenger, everybody working on the shuttle program feels that despair and pain and a collective sense of loss and responsibility.

[Astronaut Dick Covey]

The last time I saw the crew was the night before they flew to Florida. They were in quarantine.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Astronaut Dick Covey was Capcom on the morning of the accident. His was the last voice heard by Challenger's crew.

[Astronaut Dick Covey]

The team was shaken to its core. Anybody and everybody that had been a part of the process of putting 51L together and launching it felt this personally because they did that for every flight. I mean, every time the space shuttle flew, thousands of people that touched it did something. They're eating it up. I mean, they did that. It's their thing. And the crew got back safely. That's their thing. And so something like this happens. Everybody's second guessing their own feelings and their own thoughts and their own actions.

[Astronaut Rick Hauck]

Have you ever worked on something and put your heart and soul into something that ends up causing people to lose their life? For 30 days? I think I just was depressed. I just didn't know. All the excitement that I talked about earlier, all the anticipation, everything that made my career in this job so exciting now just became a. I was at a loss. I actually can still get emotional thinking about it.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

At the time of the accident, Bill Carr was pad leader for launch pad 39B where challenger lifted off. Like many of his co workers, he's asking himself if he is somehow responsible for what happened.

[Astronaut Rick Hauck]

What have we done? What did we do to contribute to that? I mean, I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue. I wasn't sure where my career would go. I wasn't sure if this was something I wanted to still be a part of.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Jerry Miller, the crew suit instructor, also began to question how he should respond.

[Jerry Miller (Crew Suit Instructor)]

It was extraordinarily difficult from a personal standpoint to the extent that I, I considered leaving the program. But I really felt after giving it some additional thought that that was not the right answer for honoring my friends that were in the picture on my coffee table, that I could do them a much greater service staying with it.

[Astronaut Rick Hauck]

After any tragedy or loss, you lose a family member, there's a point of grieving and you don't really think much about the future other than the loss and how it affects you. But beyond that, you know, we're all resilient and you have to get back up and figure out where you're going from here.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

But for NASA, it isn't as easy as simply getting back up.

[Astronaut Cathy Sullivan]

There was little rumblings in the early aftermath of Challenger of maybe NASA can't do this anymore.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

You know, maybe, maybe we just stop astronaut Cathy Sullivan.

[Astronaut Cathy Sullivan]

And I mean that just annoyed the daylights out of me. We are not doing this for fun television. There's a purpose here that's worth continuing and worth pursuing. And if we're going to bail out because we had one bad day and lost seven lives, then maybe I made the wrong calculus when I made my own equation of what is this for? What is it worth? Why are the risks involved with this worth taking? I thought there were really substantive reasons the country cared about that we were doing this and we all knew what the risks were. If you were going to cancel on one bad accident, then I was mistaken.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

That desire to push forward doesn't just come from inside the shuttle program, but from across the United States, including the generation that Christa McAuliffe was recruited to inspire.

[Barbara Morgan]

There was an outpouring of letters and an outpouring of phone calls and an outpouring of pictures from kids. Everybody wanted the future to go on. Everybody wanted. Everybody wanted space exploration to continue.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Barbara Morgan was McAuliffe's backup as teacher

[Barbara Morgan]

in space and an example of that. I'll never forget this one. We got a call from someone who had told us that after the accident, their kids were outside playing in the snow and it was getting dark and they called for their kids to come in and the kids wouldn't come in. And they called again and the kids wouldn't come in. And finally they said, what are you guys doing out there? And they said, we can't come in. We're building a space station and we're not finished yet. That was their way of saying there's a future. Keep it going, going.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

NASA, the US Government and some of the public believe there is a future for the shuttle program, that it's possible to move on from the tragedy of Challenger to start a new chapter. But it will involve a fundamental reassessment of every system on the spacecraft, of NASA as an organization and of the very purpose of the shuttle.

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[Engineer Brian Russell]

We described it as a white knuckle experience. Whenever we would launch, I would watch the launches, but I'd be clenching my hands to show my white knuckles and I would have knots in my stomach.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

In January 1986, Brian Russell was a young engineer at Morton Thyro, the company which builds the shuttles, solid rocket boosters.

[Engineer Brian Russell]

And I would have knots in my stomach of concern that, hey, are we going to be okay on this flight? And that was. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that way.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Russell was part of a group of engineers working on the O rings that help seal the booster joints. The day before Challenger, they had concerns about how the O rings would perform in the extremely cold temperatures forecast for launch day, concerns that were ultimately dismissed by others.

[Engineer Brian Russell]

In the months after that, my personality completely changed. I couldn't see anything. It just seemed like that explosion was in the front of my mind. For four straight months. I couldn't get rid of it. I couldn't talk about anything else of meaning. There were times that I felt very depressed about it. There were times I felt very guilty about it. There were times I felt extremely sorrowful about it, and there were times I felt angry about it. And these emotions just seemed to repeat themselves. After four months, it started to dissipate and we started to really dig in.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

In the aftermath of the Rogers Commission, the presidential body tasked with investigating Challenger, the Thiocol team began a comprehensive review and redesign of the solid rocket boosters. For now, there are no flights. The shuttle program is grounded.

[Engineer Brian Russell]

And so about the summer of 86, we went after things in earnest and we divided ourselves up into groups.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Russell's group is responsible for the joint and the O rings that are meant to seal it.

[Engineer Brian Russell]

And we looked at different O ring materials, we looked at different sizes, we looked at changing the groove sizes.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

The team scrutinize from every possible angle how they can prevent a future failure of the joint.

[Engineer Brian Russell]

And we did test after test after test, and gradually heat tests and assembly tests. They work toughness tests of the rubber, just all sorts of things towards a solution.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

First, they redesign the case of each segment of the solid rocket boosters. Secondly, they add an additional third O ring.

[Engineer Brian Russell]

We called it a wiper O ring that acted essentially as a sacrificial barrier.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

They also redesign the insulation.

[Engineer Brian Russell]

The rubber pieces actually compress together against each other.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

They put the grooves, the O rings sit in deeper into the joint, so

[Engineer Brian Russell]

that if the pressure was able to get that far into the joint, the O ring would respond.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

And the final modification, they wrap heaters around the joints. So whatever the external conditions, even if it's as cold as the morning of the Challenger launch, the O rings will stay at around room temperature and remain flexible. The redesign is a challenging and intensive process. But for Brian Russell, there's also a sense of redemption.

[Engineer Brian Russell]

Yeah, I felt I wanted to be part of the solution. Also, the redesign that we came up with, it was so marvelous. I don't think we'd have gone to that extent had we not lost that mission and crew. And did it take the deaths of those seven astronauts to lead us to truly fix the problem? And I think, is that our human story, that that's what it Takes to shake us into, we really do need to fix this and not just keep marching along. And it makes me sad to think that it seems to me that the answer to that is yes, even though

[Barbara Morgan]

that's the wrong answer.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

The reality is NASA, they did not get tunnel vision on just fixing the o ring problem. The question was asked agency wide, what else is out there ready to bite us? We're not returning to flight until we fix it.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Astronauts like Mike Mullane are involved in these fixes. The teams at NASA make hundreds of adjustments to the shuttle systems, equipment, procedures, including what shuttle astronauts wear during launch and re entry.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

You'd walk out in coveralls and fly on the shuttle, which is very comfortable.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Up until now, during the hazardous ride into orbit, an equally hazardous return to earth, shuttle crews have worn pretty much the same clothing as a train engineer.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

The reality there is then now is that you don't have any protection from a cabin depressurization.

So if you ever had a reason

that the cabin depressurized, you're going to die. There's no question about it.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

From now on, astronauts will wear pressure suits. NASA also introduces, for the first time since the shuttle became operational, an escape system.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

The shuttle was never designed to have an escape system, a permanent escape system, because it would be flying up to 10 people and you can't have 10 ejection seats on the vehicle. There'd be no way of ejecting people from that lower deck. No escape system whatsoever. No capsule, no ejection seat, no parachute of any form. So really, when you think about it, the crew that manned STS5, the first, first operational mission, was the first crew in the history of anybody's space program to fly. With no means of escape from the vehicle. None whatsoever.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

But after Challenger, NASA decides to take another look.

[Astronaut Cathy Sullivan]

Not an easy thing to do, but it was figured out how to make it possible for astronauts to bail out of a shuttle.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Astronaut Kathy Sullivan or if the shuttle

[Astronaut Cathy Sullivan]

could least get to like 20 some thousand feet in gliding flight, you could get out the side hatch. And the reason that was a little tricky with the shuttle is the big delta wing, you had to be sure that you would drop below the wing and not hit the wing.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

They came up with a slide pole,

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

banana shape, so it curved down and you had hooks on it.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

But astronauts could hook onto you, hook

[Astronaut Cathy Sullivan]

a lanyard onto that, dive out, head for a, and that arcing shape of the pole would make sure that you

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

ended up below the wing to open their parachutes.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

So that's how post Challenger you would bail out if you had to. Now there's a very slim chance that would ever save anybody because most of the time you want to bail out of an aircraft, it's because it's out of control. And if a vehicle's out of control, the G forces are going to pin you inside. You're not going to be able to do all this. Some astronauts believe that had that pole system been installed on Challenger, that some of the people downstairs might have been able to get out.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

But this time of rebuilding is about far more than just the shuttle's hardware. Challenger showed there's a need to look at NASA as an organization, the way it's structured and particularly its lines of communication.

[Bob Crippen]

We need more operational people in the management of the program and we need a stronger safety program.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Since flying the very first shuttle mission, Bob Crippen has commanded three more. Now, in the aftermath of Challenger, he gets a call from NASA's Associate Administrator for spaceflight, Dick Truly. He asks Crippen to join him at NASA headquarters in Washington D.C. to help him implement changes in the wake of the Rogers Commission.

[Bob Crippen]

And then one of the recommendations I made to Truly was that we ought to have the Director of the Space Shuttle program be a headquarters employee out of the NASA headquarters.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

And the Director of the shuttle program, now based in Washington D.C. should have two deputies.

[Bob Crippen]

One of them for Engineering at Houston at the Johnson Space center, another for Operations at the Kennedy Space Center. And Truly told me if I really believed that, I'd take over the Deputy Director of Operations at the Kennedy Space Center. Since I did believe it, he said, I gotta hang up your flying boots and come do that. And so that's what I did.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

It's the end of Bob Crippen's extraordinary and history making career as an astronaut. But his new role is no less challenging.

[Bob Crippen]

That's probably one of the most difficult tasks I've ever participated in. We probably had more people telling us why we couldn't go fly than why we could go fly. I put myself in a position where I could give the final management go for liftoff from subsequent return to flight.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

But beyond all the restructuring looms a bigger question.

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Then Dr. Fichet walked into the room,

[Astronaut Cathy Sullivan]

unzipped it and pulled out this funny

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looking balsa wood plane, flew it across the room and said, we're going to build America's spacecraft.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

One that goes much further than the technical or organizational changes.

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It's going to launch like a rocket and land like an airplane.

[Astronaut Cathy Sullivan]

It's going to be reusable.

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It's going to go about this high, do this.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

What is the fundamental purpose of the space shuttle? What is it for? It's a question that goes all the way back to Max Faget's original dream of a multi purpose spacecraft.

[President Ronald Reagan]

I have a model here of the Space Shuttle.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Here's the bow tie wearing visionary engineer himself speaking in 1972.

[President Ronald Reagan]

The need is to bring larger arrays

[Bob Crippen]

of instrumentation up in space.

[President Ronald Reagan]

The need to provide man with a real capability to work up in space.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

A spacecraft that will provide a platform for science in space and deliver satellites, both military and commercial, into orbit.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

In a statement announcing his decision to go ahead with the system, the President said it will revolutionize transportation into near space by routinizing it.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

For years the space, the space shuttle team has worked to deliver that dream. But now there's a reappraisal of the idea that the shuttle can or should do everything, that it's the all purpose spacecraft. Astronauts risk their lives when they fly. So which missions and which cargo really justify that risk?

[Bob Crippen]

Well, one of the things they fundamentally did, which I didn't necessarily totally agree with, was the decision that we shouldn't put payloads on board that didn't need a crew. That if you had another way to launch them, that you should utilize that. So that took away most of the commercial payloads that we were flying and took away eventually all of the military payloads that we were flying and just left us with payloads that were going to involve the crew. So it took away, I guess, this fundamental pressure to try to fly. As much as we'd been saying in

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

the future this commercial and military cargo will be put into space on expendable rockets. If these flights go wrong, no human lives are lost.

[Bob Crippen]

Changing the kind of payloads that we're going to fly on the orbiter change the basic concept of what the Space Shuttle was going to do. We were trying to drive down the cost of getting payloads on orbit and it depends on how many payloads you're flying. And obviously that took away the number of flights we could have. So it increased the cost of the shuttle operation, which is what caused a lot of negative reaction to the shuttle. It said, hey, this is not reducing the cost of going on orbit.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

So the more missions you fly, the lower the cost per mission. And the shuttle was originally sold to politicians and the public on the basis of dozens of flights a year. As one reporter put it, it was promised to take the astronomical costs out of astronautics.

[Bob Crippen]

So it fundamentally changed what the initial premise, although the initial premise was flying more payloads than I think was possible. I do think we could have flown at a rate of around a dozen a year.

[Astronaut Dick Covey]

If the space shuttle's evolution was an inflection point for NASA, then the Challenger accident was another inflection point. It changed everything.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Astronaut Dick Covey.

[Astronaut Dick Covey]

After that, more of the focus was on what is the best use of the space shuttle incorporating the humans on board.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

So what's left when you take out commercial and military flights? Researching the effects of microgravity, studying planet Earth, trying to understand the universe, Mostly science from now on. This is the shuttle's goal. In the months after Challenger, the question every shuttle astronaut is asking themselves is will I get a chance to fly again? It's their job. It's what they spent years training for. But right now, with their spacecraft grounded, the opportunity to get back into space feels remote. But there's one astronaut who knows that when the shuttle flies again, so will he.

[Rick Hauck]

I had been told in private, in confidence, by Dick Truly and George Abbey, that I would command the next flight after the Challenger accident. But you can't tell anybody.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Rick Haug is one of the astronaut class of 1978, the 35 new guys. He's confident, uncompromising, and a natural leader. At his very first Monday morning astronaut meeting, instead of going to the back with the other rookies, he dared to take a seat alongside the veterans, people who'd walked on the moon. He commanded the mission that captured those satellites lost in space. He's been chosen as commander of the return to Flight Mission, STS 26.

[Rick Hauck]

Well, I was absolutely thrilled that I was entrusted with that mission. I think every member of the astronaut office, probably without exception, wanted to be on that flight. The fact that I couldn't tell people about or speak about it publicly, any concerns about that were dwarfed by the enthusiasm that I had, knowing that this gift was in my pocket.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

Dick Truly and George Abbey, the director of flight crew operations, sit him down to tell him the good news in the summer of 1986, a few months after Challenger.

[Rick Hauck]

So I remember George saying, I want you to be the commander. Dave Hilmers will be on the flight Mike lounge. He says, I've called Pinky Nelson up at University of Washington to ask him if he'll come back. And he said, who would you like to be your co pilot? And I don't know if he was really giving me a choice or just humoring me or what. I said, Dick Covey. Dick was the last pilot to fly in my class. He's extraordinarily capable, but George Green

[Astronaut Dick Covey]

so I got a call one day and said, would you like to join them for STS 26? Well, yeah, of course I would. People say, well, why would you want to fly that flight? I said, because everybody wanted to fly that flight. We all knew it was going to be important mission, but it was also going to be incredibly safe. And, you know, whenever you can be next, that's a good thing.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

The shuttle that the five strong crew will fly is partly a new vehicle. It's been redesigned and rebuilt. It has new systems and new procedures. STS 26 will effectively be a test flight, just like the very first mission back in 1981. And more than that, it's a test of confidence, a vital opportunity to show that the US adventure in human spaceflight will continue and that the space shuttle is the vehicle to do it.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

After 32 months of being grounded after a number of delays, after, after certainly a great deal of soul searching, it looks like we're just about to get back in space again.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

That's next time on 13 minutes.

[Astronaut Mike Mullane]

Sa.

[Narrator (Maggie Adairin Pocock)]

This has been episode nine of ten. Thank you for listening to 13 Minutes presents the Space Shuttle from the BBC World Service. It's a BBC audio science production. I'm Maggie Adairin Pocock. 13 minutes wouldn't be 13 minutes without the people who made these space stories happen and then shared them with us. Thanks to every single one of them. We'd like to thank NASA for its archive sound and the NASA Johnson Space center oral history project for its archive interviews. In this episode, it's interviews with Ivy Hooks and Rick Hauke. Some scenes in this series use recreated sound effects. I hope you're enjoying listening to 13 minutes as much as I have enjoyed presenting it. You might like a couple of other BBC World Service podcasts like the Bomb, which tells the story of the atomic bomb, or Witness history told by the people who were there. The 13 minutes series producers are Florin Bohr and Jeremy Granger. The assistant producer is Robbie Wojcyhowski with additional research by Fabrice Molhart. Technical production is by Jackie Marjoram, theme music by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg and produced by Russell Emanuel for Bleeding Fingers Music. The sound design is by Richard Gould from Skywalker Sound. Our story editor is Jessica Lindsay. The senior podcast producer for the BBC World Service is Anne Dixie. The podcast commissioning editor is John Manell and the series editor is Martin Smith.

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