Michael LeinbachCritiques

Earlier this spring my teenage son and I had the privilege of attending the once-monthly Launch Director Tour of the Spaced Shuttle Atlantis while at Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral, Florida. The tour was led by Michael Leinbach, who had retired a decade before as the Launch Director responsible for about the last 1/3 of Shuttle launches before the program ended. Leinbach was also launch Director for the Columbia for its final mission, which saw heat dissipating tiles fall and damage the leading edge of Columbia's left wing, rendering it vulnerable on re-entry. Columbia and its crew of seven did not survive re-entry.

Leinbach was named one of the leaders of the recovery effort of both human remains and of the Shuttle itself in the weeks and months following that disaster.

This is the story of the combined work of Nasa, FEMA, local citizens and community members in Texas and Louisiana where most of the human and spacecraft remains were found, the delicate work of leading a community of volunteers and mourning staff in the recovery effort as well as the complex project of discovering the actual cause of the shuttle's failure.

It's a difficult book to describe... it's deeply powerful emotionally, deeply detailed in its description, and deeply human. It could have been a story of system failure and finger pointing; or a heroic story of people coming together under great stress; or a dry post-incident analysis report readout. It balances the seriousness and complexity of its subject with human interest, cultural sensitivity, mourning and pride, and grace. It's not a fun read, but it's an important one. It's never insensitive, but it tells a behind-the-scenes story with depth of honesty and truth.

If you're interested in space travel, or grew up in the Shuttle era like I did, or just love a well told nonfiction history, read this book.

And if you are near Cape Canaveral when Leinbach does his guided tours of the Atlantis, during which he describes the Shuttle program as well as the Challenger and Columbia disasters with profound humanity, join him. It's well worth your time.

An astounding book, written by a former NASA launch commander and an Ambassador connected with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Both authors combine their skills to create a history of the shuttle Columbia as the backdrop to the awful events of that day. They also include a well-described layout of Kennedy Space Center (and the photos help tie all that in) with brief bios of the crew and their mission. Interspersed were detailed "what-ifs" that show, from the moment of the launch, what went wrong and how. Such as pictures from the launch that were never downloaded; had they been, the ground crew would have seen a large chunk of foam missing from the left-hand side of the rocket.

I also found invaluable the minute-by-minute events of that morning, with both shuttle mission information (what happens normally) and what people saw when. As Columbia began her entry, she was last seen zooming past California towards Nevada and Utah. Then, suddenly, the sensor readings begin to look different and temperatures go up. And then eye-witness accounts from Dallas and eastern Texas, along the path that Columbia broke up and the sonic booms that everyone in east Texas heard. What their reactions were. What caused them. Where debris landed. All of that, answering the "What happened?" questions not just from a mission normal narrative, but also the people who saw it disintegrate. And the reader who remembers the glowing streak across the sky and where I was that day.

The other thing I appreciated was that while there were scientific explanations, the story does not bog down into great scientific formulas. I did have to look up a few flying terms but that was all. And also that authors described the great outpouring of help and support from the people in east Texas who helped with setting up command centers, finding hotels, and feeding everyone who came out. There were as many as 22,000 people who helped with the recovery effort.

Also interesting was the help from all facets of the US Government. The Texas Forest Service brought in wildfire crews: they bring their own camp, tents, cooking, all that gear, and they are used to working on all kinds of tough terrain. And many of them are Native American tribes members. Or the National Transportation and Safety Board, who dispensed the advice, "Let the evidence show the cause of the accident; don't try to make the theory fit the evidence." Much praise is given to these agencies, and conversely sufficient blame is laid where it is deserved.

As with the Challenger disaster, improvements were made to launches, and with one visit to the Hubble Space telescope, all future missions included docking with the International Space Station in order to ensure that the shuttle was safe for the return flight, and to provide future shuttle astronauts safe haven in case the shuttle was not capable of returning back to Earth.

“The last few seconds of telemetry received in Mission Control on February 1 indicated Columbia’s crew likely knew their ship was in trouble in the final half minute before it broke apart. The data showed that Columbia’s steering thrusters were firing to compensate for drag on the left wing, the ship was rolling, and the triply-redundant hydraulic system was losing pressure. All of those conditions would have set off alarms inside the cockpit.” – Michael D. Leinbach and Jonathan H. Ward, Bringing Columbia Home

While living in Central Florida, I used to watch the shuttles ascend to space and hear the twin sonic booms upon return. In 2003, I belonged to a professional organization and had arranged a speaker from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for our monthly meeting. His topic was to be “Risk Management in the Space Shuttle Program.” Just days before the meeting, the Columbia disaster occurred. Needless to say, the speaker canceled the engagement and I have always wondered what he would have said.

This book is written by the Launch Director of KSC for Columbia STS-107, the flight that ended disaster when it disintegrated upon reentry on February 1, 2003. He provides an inside view to the sequence of events during the loss of signal, notification of the crew's families, retrieval of remains, collection of debris across a 250-mile swath of East Texas, reconstruction of the debris, and proof of what went wrong. He does not try to avoid responsibility. It is told in a logical, step-by-step manner with lots of details on the people, processes, and technology involved. It may be too detailed for some readers, but it is exactly what I would expect from a technical professional with an engineering background.

”’Prove to me that it’s not safe to come home’ demonstrates a very different management culture than ‘prove to me that it is safe to come home.’ The former attitude quashes arguments and debates when there is no hard evidence to support a concern. It allows people to talk themselves into a false sense of security. The latter encourages exploration of an issue and development of contingencies.”

The book is well-organized. Footnotes and informative diagrams are provided, along with a glossary of technical terms and photos. It is difficult to keep track of the numerous participants’ names and the tech-talk gets a little cumbersome at times, but the paragraphs summarizing each chapter are particularly well-crafted and enlightening. The authors balance human-interest stories with methodical root-cause analysis.

The authors highlight many little-known facts, such as the key contributions of the Texas Forest Service and wildland firefighting crews to the search and recovery efforts. I was not previously aware that two searchers had died. It is a historic record of events done at a time when people still remember (and are still around). It is a fitting tribute to the over 25,000 people and 450 federal, state, local, and volunteer organizations that came together to help in the aftermath of the disaster.

Everyone agrees on two remarkable facts: The Columbia recovery was the largest ground search effort in American history; and it was also one with no internal strife, bickering, or inter-agency squabbles. Everyone involved had a single goal and worked collectively to achieve it - to bring Columbia and her crew home.

The cockpit window frames of Columbia and a fuselage section of Challenger are on display at the Space Shuttle Atlantis building of the KSC Visitors Complex. I have seen this memorial and found it very moving. This book is recommended to anyone interested in the past, present, or future of space exploration.

This is an excellent account of the recovery of the space shuttle Columbia and the investigation into what went wrong, with plenty of emotion and impressive facts. Leinbach throws a lot of numbers at us, and it’s justified: this was the largest recovery operation in U.S. history and required the coordinated efforts of dozens of local, state, and federal agencies. Leinbach, given his firsthand experience, explains things well, with footnotes to explain some things in more detail, and includes some good diagrams as well. There’s a photo insert too. Above all, this is a sensitively written, compelling book that is essential reading for anyone interested in the space program and in accident investigation.½

Interesting read about the recovery efforts of the Columbia after it broke up over Texas. author was one of the flight directors and had large insights, knowledge and access to provide a lot of details about the recovery effort. A lot of time was spent describing people walking around and finding parts of the shuttle. Important stuff, but would have like to see more engineering analysis of the disaster. That stuff was limited ot a few pages.

This book goes into the nitty-gritty of search and recovery efforts after the Columbia accident, which was largely something I knew very little about. So very interesting about how individuals and representatives of government agencies and NASA pulled together to search a vast area to recover enough of Columbia so the debris could help in the accident investigation and to recover the crew and bring them back to their families.½

I was volunteering at a homeless shelter with my fraternity on a cold February morning in 2003, and as we were cooking their meal, we noticed that all of the occupants had their eyes glued to the TV. I'm just too young to have remembered Challenger (I was only about a year and a half when it happened), but was just the right age to have the breakup of Columbia seared into my memory. I also remember going to a talk a few years later when I was a grad student from one of the CAIB members or advisors who presented about the incident, how they were able to gather evidence about the foam strike, and determine the cause of the breakup of the shuttle.

None of that is a review of the book. But if you weren't old enough to appreciate Columbia, you probably wouldn't understand why this book is so needed and appreciated by all of the people who gave it such high star ratings. I've struggled to understand why nobody did anything while Columbia was still orbiting and DO SOMETHING, and while this book didn't spend much time explaining why it wouldn't have been possible, it does, and it helps.

I think this book suffered from repeating itself too much at times, but it was really healing to read about how so many people came together to recover as much of Columbia and her crew as they could. I appreciated the openness, the candidness, and the emotion.

**Bringing Columbia Home** is the story of the aftermath of the break-up of the Columbia shuttle, told by *Michael D. Leinbach* who was a launch manager at NASA and bore responsibility during the collection of Columbia and the ensuing review. I didn't really like the book – the author gave me the feeling that the book was more written for the people involved in the clean-up missions, both volunteers and professionals, than for an interested outsider like me. Some chapters feel more like a long list of names and their roles, to include everybody who did important work at the time, which was certainly important to those people, but at the same time a bit tedious. A bit of stylistic editing would have helped a lot here. I also felt that quite some things I'd be interested in (e.g. the concrete organizational consequences to change NASA feedback culture) were glossed over way too much.

But since Mr Leinbach dropped a lot of tiny interesting pieces of information and stories, and the subject matter is obviously fascinating, and I'm a nerd for both space and logistics, I still got some good moments out of it. If you're similarly inclined, then I'd recommend the book, but otherwise you'll probably come to the conclusion that knowledge of and dedication to the subject does not replace professional editing advice.

I remember when the space shuttle Columbia returned from its mission in 2003. Like most Americans, I was shocked and dismayed when the shuttle broke up during reentry and its remnants were scattered in areas of the southeastern United States. Leinbach provided information as to what caused the disaster, efforts to ensure that it could not happen again and a scenario as to what the astronauts experienced in the last moments of their flight.

The demise of the space shuttle Columbia is a depressing story. However the intense recovery efforts by NASA, various government agencies and private citizens to recover not only the remnants of the spacecraft but more importantly to find the remains of the dead astronauts is an uplifting one. Americans have a great history of banding together during tragedies and doing what is necessary to overcome them. This story is also covered here with amazing research and detail.

Two rescue workers lost their lives in trying to find and recover Colombia's remnants. Recovery was not an easy task and the courage and fortitude by thousands of volunteers is described in this book. I had not heard this story before – – we often hear of the bad things that Americans have done – – this is a story of one of the very courageous and humanitarian things that Americans have accomplished.