We proceeded to the bar and spent the next couple of hours by the keg, sharing airplane stories. Valery told us about what it was like being a Russian fighter pilot and cosmonaut and charmed my former Navy colleagues. Eventually, the customs officer barreled into the O Club, telling everyone who would listen that he wanted to take Valery and me to jail for violating his orders. The base commanding officer knew me from my previous tour as a test pilot and had enjoyed Valery’s company, so he told the customs official to do his paperwork and then get off his base. Valery went on to become the deputy director of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City, and he’s had my back ever since.
Peggy’s launch went off without a hitch in June 2002, and soon after I was assigned to be the commander of my second space shuttle mission, STS-118, tasked with delivering new hardware to the International Space Station. The mission would be twelve days, and we were scheduled to fly on the space shuttle Columbia in October 2003. True to his word, Charlie Precourt had made sure I was assigned as commander, even though he was no longer the chief astronaut.
Since this was only my second shuttle flight, and I hadn’t yet been to the ISS, the new chief astronaut wanted my pilot to be someone who had spaceflight experience. That sounded simple enough, but all the pilots who had already flown at least once were my classmates, and generally classmates aren’t asked to command one another, especially when they have the same amount of experience. Kent Rominger, the new chief, and I discussed the options. The only pilots not currently assigned to a mission were Charlie Hobaugh, Mark Polansky, and my brother. Of these, I thought my brother was the best fit: we got along (at least since we stopped beating the crap out of each other at age fifteen), we understood each other, and we knew that being classmates wouldn’t cause any issues between us. NASA was all for it.
As we got closer to making the assignment official, I thought better of it. The story of identical twin brothers serving as commander and pilot of the same mission would bring an enormous amount of attention. In some ways this would be a good thing, of course—NASA was always looking for ways to engage the public’s imagination and get people interested in spaceflight. But I didn’t want this flight to be seen as a publicity stunt, and I didn’t want the story of twins in space to distract attention from our mission or my other crew members.
Another concern was more personal. Both Mark and I were always aware of the risks we took each time we went to space. For me, the possibility that my daughter might be left fatherless was always offset slightly by the fact that, even if the worst happened, she would still have her uncle Mark in her life as a standin father—one who would remind her of me. Each time Mark went to space, I was aware that I might have to play the same role for my nieces. If Mark and I were to fly in space together, we would have to accept the possibility that our children could lose both their dad and their uncle all at once. The more I thought about it, the less I thought it was a good idea.
That left just two candidates: Charlie Hobaugh and Mark Polansky. Polansky wasn’t interested in flying as my pilot, since he technically had more experience than I did, having flown to ISS before, which was understandable. That left “Scorch”—Charlie Hobaugh. Scorch had a reputation for being very direct—if he thinks you’re wrong, he won’t hesitate to let you know. He told me he didn’t mind flying with a classmate as his commander. He said he appreciated any opportunity to fly in space, and I knew he meant it.
So my crew was set: Scorch would be my pilot, and the rest of the crew would be rounded out by five mission specialists: Tracy Caldwell, Barbara Morgan, Lisa Nowak, Scott Parazynski, and Dave Williams.
I was most concerned about Lisa, whom I had known longer than most of my colleagues, about fifteen years, since we were in test pilot school together at Pax River. She was a technically brilliant flight engineer. But lately she had become obsessive about small details that didn’t seem to matter much, like what she was going to have for lunch that day. She could become hyperfocused and had trouble letting things go, even if they were irrelevant. On Earth this wasn’t a problem, but on a spaceflight, every member of the crew was crucial to its success, and these peculiarities of Lisa’s personality began to concern me.
—
ON THE MORNING of February 1, 2003, I was standing on my front lawn looking north. It was a Saturday, just before nine a.m., and a shuttle mission with seven of my colleagues, including three of my classmates, was returning to Earth. I thought I might be able to see the streak of fire as Columbia entered the atmosphere north of Houston on its way to land at the Kennedy Space Center. It was foggy, but as I watched the sky I saw a bright flash in a break in the fog. Columbia! I went back inside and ate a bowl of cereal. As it got closer to the planned landing time, I started paying more attention to the TV. The orbiter hadn’t landed yet, so NASA TV was switching between live shots inside mission control and the runway at Kennedy Space Center. I noticed Charlie Hobaugh in the control center—he was acting as capcom that day—and I saw he was slouching low in his chair. That was a strange sight, especially for him; he was generally a squared-away Marine, so slouching on the job was uncharacteristic. I emailed him, half joking, saying that he should sit up straight because he was on TV. Then I heard Charlie say, “Columbia, Houston, comm check.” A long pause went by. There wasn’t an answer. This wasn’t normal.