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American Morning
Special Edition, Part V
Aired February 02, 2003 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL TED SMITH, EMERGENCY MGT. OPERATIONS: We continue to stress that if anyone notices any debris or anything unusual, to please contact the local law enforcement officials in their area, and to further stress that do not touch any of this material or pick any of it up, because we consider it hazardous or toxic, and we have had reports of some people gathering it up and we want to stress again that this is hazardous as well as a felony offense, a federal offense, and we have to just ask everyone to continue to monitor the areas around them and let us know anything.
Sheriff, you want to talk about the water supply now?
SHERIFF TOMMY MADDOX, SABINE CO., TEXAS: One of the concerns there that we have -- one of the concerns there that we have had and expressed there by the citizens of our county, our water supply there does come from Toledo -- from Toledo Bend (ph) reservoir. There has been some concern there with all the debris falling in the water there that it would contaminant our water supply. From all the federal authorities and all of the people there that we have talked throughout the night, we do want to stress there that they say that our water supply is in good shape, that there will be no problem there with the water that we obtain there from the lake.
SMITH: OK. And also, at this time, we will field some questions from you and try to answer what we can.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) gathering up the pieces of shuttle to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) investigate by those people?
SMITH: We'll have the people going out and gathering up the pieces, but that will be done by the Environmental Protection Agency.
QUESTION: No, no, no, you were saying you had some reports of just citizens...
SMITH: Citizens doing it, right. Right.
MADDOX: We had a lot of people throughout the day -- we had a lot of people throughout the day yesterday and through the night that had recovered some of this out of their own yards, they picked this up and handled it themselves and brought it into us, but the one thing that we do want to stress is that this still is hazardous material and it needs to be treated as such until we can prove otherwise.
QUESTION: The eight people that went to the hospital, are they citizens or are they law enforcement? SMITH: They're citizens.
MADDOX: They're citizens.
QUESTION: How are they doing, do you know how they're doing today?
SMITH: We haven't got a report back from the hospital today.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
SMITH: I can't answer that right now.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: So there you hear it, the first official confirmation that eight civilians yesterday have been treated in emergency rooms for either having touched some of this debris that fell to the ground or actually just breathing vapors from the debris. The sheriff of Sabine County telling us about some other concerns in the local community. Because so much of the debris landed in a reservoir called the Toledo Bend (ph) reservoir, there was great concern that the reservoir, the drinking supply for Hemphill might have been contaminated, but federal officials are telling local officials there that they need not be concerned about that.
Now, in an interesting touch of irony, we haven't been able to say this yet this morning, Bill, investigators are confirming that a small piece of tile was found about 75 miles from President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Unbelievable. You think about the tens of thousands of pieces that have fallen into lakes or ponds, highways, sidewalks, parking lots, some crashing into garages as well, no one injured on the ground. Truly remarkable this came out of yesterday. The process is slow, as you just heard the officials in one county -- this is just one county in eastern Texas, not to account for how many counties there are in that part of the country, stretching into western Louisiana, the process described as slow today.
You have to think that this is something that will go days, if not weeks, going forward. A lot of people yet again today probably scouring their backyards, their fields and their farms, trying to locate even more of that material that rained from the sky yesterday morning.
ZAHN: And Governor Perry of Texas I think gave us a pretty good idea of just how challenging that will be. Some of the pieces are only two to five inches wide.
In this local community just mentioned, having just identified 40 of the 250 square miles that they're going to need to pore over.
HEMMER: And I think it's been said repeatedly, going back to yesterday morning, do not touch any of these items. But I don't think it can be said enough, especially with the reports we're getting about these eight people in one county being treated for the burns and respiratory stress. ZAHN: Do not touch, don't get anywhere near it.
HEMMER: That's exactly right.
Let's get to Texas right now. Wolf Blitzer helping us with our coverage throughout the morning here, back to the Johnson Space Center. Wolf, good morning again.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Bill and Paula. I suspect it's one of those moments for many of us will always be seared in our minds. Almost exactly right now 24 hours ago when we first heard about this horrible disaster.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. LAUREL CLARK, NASA ASTRONAUT: Good morning, Houston. We're getting ready for a big day up here. Had a great time on orbit and really excited to come back home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Obviously some troubling news here about the space shuttle Columbia, as we haven't heard from it yet. The time of landing was supposed to be right about at this moment
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going into the building, we heard the explosions.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The closer it gets, the louder it gets.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We came out here and we stood here for a minute or so, it seemed like.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the house was just shaking, the windows were shaking. The stuff on the dressers was shaking.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Piece of the fuselage laying over there, apparently the fuselage, impacted the ground, sounded like a shotgun going off.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. At 9:00 this morning, mission control in Houston lost contact with our space shuttle Columbia. The Columbia's lost. There are no survivors. SEAN O'KEEFE, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: This is indeed a tragic day for the NASA family, for the families of the astronauts who flew on STS-107. And likewise, tragic for the nation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just pure shock, disbelief. This is unreal. I mean, you come out here expecting to see a shuttle land, and it's just not there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm crying because seven people, their lives got lost in this.
RON DITTEMORE, NASA: We're devastated because of the events that unfolded this morning. There's a certain amount of shock in our system, because we have suffered the loss of seven family members.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's been work towards our goal of getting up there, and I'm thankful she at least got to do that, and I just wish I could have had a chance to actually hear back from her what it was like, and I'm going to miss her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are a nation of explorers. That's why this great nation has come to what it is in the space program. We'll go on too for that reason.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The seven astronauts who were killed yesterday in the space shuttle Columbia are part of the heavy price paid by the human race in its quest for knowledge (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to explore other worlds.
BUSH: These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life. Because of their courage and daring and idealism, we will miss them all the more.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Now all future shuttle missions have been put on hold, at least for the time being. The next one had been scheduled for March 1. There are still three astronauts aboard the International Space Station. We're told they have enough food and supplies to last until around June. Presumably they'll have to be brought back around that time, if not sooner.
One additional note: The questions are only just beginning. We'll have a chance to ask some of those questions. NASA will have a briefing here around 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Of course, CNN will have live coverage -- Paula.
ZAHN: Wolf, I know you and I both couldn't take our ears or eyes off those news conferences yesterday. In spite of the fact that the nation is grieving, there will be some very pointed questions asked of these officials today, like yesterday, right?
BLITZER: And I think it's only just beginning. All of us remember the initial shock, all of us go through the shock. All of us go through the grieving. The pain is obviously there, but now there are going to be officials. There already are former NASA officials, current NASA officials who say, you know, there were signs that there were some serious problems out there, and they're going to be coming forward.
In the end, the pressure is going to mount for some sort of perhaps broader investigation. Remember, last time around, in 1986, President Reagan then ordered a presidential commission to investigate under the then former Secretary of State William Rogers. I suspect a similar kind of investigation will be ordered by President Bush this time around.
ZAHN: I guess what was so striking to me in watching yesterday was the fact that the investigators were so forthright, and I think you even made a comparison that that was very different than what the nation witnessed in 1986.
BLITZER: Right.
ZAHN: All right, Wolf, we've got to leave it there. Thanks so much. See you a little bit later on this morning.
Yesterday children in Karnal, India, 75 miles north of New Delhi, tried to wave as their hero went overhead. That hero was Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-born woman in space, and a member of the Columbia shuttle crew. The planned celebrations in her hometown turned to prayer vigils when word of Columbia's loss was heard.
Joining us now by videophone is Kalpana Chawla's brother. Thank you very much for joining us, Sanjay.
SANJAY CHAWLA, KALPANA CHAWLA'S BROTHER: Yes.
ZAHN: So, Sanjay, we mentioned, obviously, that your sister was the first Indian woman in space. Help us understand how your family and your country is marking her tremendous heroism.
CHAWLA: Well, see, as far as my family's concerned or this country is concerned, or space flights space (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are not everyday thoughts here. But once Kalpana became the first Indian-born American astronaut, then people started to learn a little bit about the space. Before that, we were just available to be flying in airplanes and stuff, but not about the space shuttle and the flights outside of the earth's atmosphere.
So a lot of people, a lot of -- most of the people don't understand, didn't understand even at that time as to what did it actually mean. One of the very odd questions that I used to face was, where did she go? What did they do there? So it was very difficult to tell people that they were almost nowhere. They were in space. So people used to ask me, did they land there, or did they go out somewhere, or things like that.
So with the people here, it's different, but then there were some people who were quite aware about these things, and we have immediate family who learned a lot about the space. So it was appreciated nevertheless a great deal by lots and lots and lots of people. ZAHN: Well, we certainly understand your pride in your sister's accomplishments and very much appreciate your joining us by videophone. Before I go any further, I wanted to share with you all out there what Chawla had to say about her passion for exploration and her love of her profession. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KALPANA CHAWLA, ASTRONAUT: That is something I have loved since I was 14, 15, you know, the engineering track and really wanting to know the nuts and bolts, how a system works. If this happens, what's going on. And then, on some of these more intense periods of our orbit, the ascent, when we do the on-orbit maneuvering system burn to basically get to the orbit that we need to, and then the de-orbit burn we do to come back home and the entry routine, and play a role in those, it's just tremendous. I mean, I have lived my life for that instant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: Wow. I wanted to tell you a little bit more about Chawla. She was not only the first Indian-born woman up in space, she was the first woman ever to be admitted to the Aerospace Department at Punjab Engineering College. She then earned a masters and doctorate in aerospace engineering in the United States and joined NASA back in 1988. I guess the one thing I heard over and over again from listening to some of these interviews we did prior to their mission is just their sense of devotion to the mission, their sense of discipline and their love of exploration.
HEMMER: We are going to have to search far and wide to find enough adjectives to describe the lives of these people and what they have done and what they have accomplished. The woman you just talked about emigrated here to the States back in the 1980s, and their resumes are just astounding. If you go through them and read about their accomplishments, these are really extraordinary individuals who knew, out of fairness, the risks that they were taking and the risks that they were undertaking, and they felt it was so critical to the pioneering and exploration of space they were willing to risk their own lives.
ZAHN: And their focus so sincere and intense.
Want to welcome you all back to this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING as the nation mourns the loss of those seven shuttle astronauts.
You're watching some live pictures now of the flag flying at half-staff in Washington, as it is over most of the country in memory of the Columbia astronauts.
HEMMER: One of the many questions we'll certainly be looking at in the days and weeks ahead is the re-entry process for any shuttle. It had been said throughout the history, 22 years of this program, that liftoff, that first eight-minute window was most critical with the amount of force and thrust with the shuttle leaving the atmosphere. Now upon re-entry, NASA had said for a long time, Paula, the odds of some sort of catastrophic event were 350 to one, pretty good odds for such an amazing and daring mission, but now we know the inevitable, as of yesterday, watching the videotape, something awful went wrong, and what happens, though, is an answer that we don't have right now.
ZAHN: And it could be many, many months.
HEMMER: And it could be.
ZAHN: In fact, I was reading something from NASA engineers this morning, saying they may never know, although I guess there's some interesting clues that they're focusing in on at this early stage of the investigation.
We're going to take a short break and head back to Atlanta right now. Heidi Collins has our "News Alert" for us this morning. Good morning.
(NEWSBREAK)
HEMMER: For children, the tragedy can be especially difficult, especially when we see these images on television. Oftentimes, the children may ask, why take the risk for space flight or why they should even follow their dream of possibly becoming an astronaut in the future?
Dr. Mae Jameson is a former astronaut who talks to kids across the country about space flight, and Dr. Jameson is our guest this morning in Houston. Good to see you this morning, and our condolences to you and the families throughout NASA today. Your message to children watching these images, going forward now, what do you say?
DR. MAE JAMESON, FORMER ASTRONAUT: Well, I had an experience yesterday in a news station, where a little girl came up to me, and she was very excited to see me. She said, I want to be an astronaut. She didn't say, I wanted to be an astronaut; she said I want to be an astronaut and I want to go into space. With all the things that were happening right then.
And so when I look at all of this, I think the big issue is not that children are going to immediately think that they should stop exploring, they should stop wondering about the world. It has more to do with how we as adults handle it, because they want to be there, they want to explore.
HEMMER: Going back to 1986 and the Challenger, what did you learn from that experience going forward as you not preach, but probably teach your message to children?
JAMESON: Well, I was actually in the first class of astronauts that came in after the Challenger accident, and what that said to me and what I would always tell to everyone, not just children but adults, because I think adults really are the key here, is that you have a good, healthy respect for the system, for the machinery, for the fact that you're sitting on tons and tons of high explosives, and that there are all kinds of things that can happen throughout the flight, but you also spend time learning what to do, putting your best foot forward, and then that's the way you deal with these challenges.
The issue isn't about being afraid, but the issue is about being able to understand what's going on. When I was in the space program, I never -- I had never experienced anything like having so many people care about what was happening to you. You have incredible people on the ground who are very smart, know what's going on, they're getting incredible amounts of data. That made a difference. If I contrast that to situations where I've been where I was the only one responsible 24 hours a day seven days a week for other people's health, it's a quite different thing.
HEMMER: You mentioned the distinction, the difference between adults and children. Give us a better distinction of that message that you believe should be held most important.
JAMESON: What I consider most important as we move forward right now is that we understand what actually occurred, whether it was a heat problem, aerodynamics problem, we understand what occurred, do the best we can to resolve that problem so that it doesn't occur again, but also understand there are going to be problems that we can't solve, but that's part and parcel of space exploration, that's part and parcel of stretching a frontier, stretching what we're capable of doing as humans.
HEMMER: Doctor, quickly, just a quick answer here, what's the number one question you think you get from children after an event like this?
JAMESON: The number one question I get is, what should we do and how do I deal with my anxiety more than fear?
HEMMER: Good luck to you, Dr. Mae Jameson, again live in Houston, you've been on our air yesterday. We thank you for your time yet again today.
JAMESON: You're welcome.
HEMMER: Here's Paula now -- Paula.
ZAHN: Still ahead on this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING, we go back to Houston for a live report from a church where shuttle Commander Rick Husband and payload commander Mike Anderson were members. Also, visitors continue to stream into the Kennedy Space Center where the mission began just 17 days ago. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAHN: And welcome back. Welcome again to this special Sunday edition of AMERICAN MORNING. In Houston, a makeshift memorial of flowers and balloons is taking shape outside of the space center. Wolf Blitzer is standing by at the space center, where the families of the Columbia astronauts are now gathering. Good morning again, Wolf.
BLITZER: Good morning, Paula. It's such a close-knit family, all the NASA executives, the NASA officials, the former astronauts. Gene Cernan is one of those former astronauts. He knows the glory and the tragedy of space exploration. He was the last astronaut to walk on the moon. He also served next to those three astronauts in 1967, the Apollo I fire at the launch pad, including the death of those three astronauts. He knew all of them well, including Virgil "Gus" Grissom, who said earlier, before he died, he had said this: "If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it won't delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
Gene Cernan is joining me here live at the Johnson Space Center. Mr. Cernan, thank you very much.
GENE CERNAN, FORMER ASTRONAUT: Thank you.
BLITZER: Our condolences to you. I know you were close to all of these people. Do you agree with Gus Grissom's notion that the threat of death is worth it?
CERNAN: I don't think there's any question. I think we all subscribe to that creed. We did then, and I think those seven young astronauts who we lost yesterday certainly felt the same way.
BLITZER: So your recommendation is to full speed ahead or slow down?
CERNAN: No, we've got to slow down long enough to find out what the problem was, we've got to solve the problem, but, you know, when we -- you know, going back three or four decades when we buried Gus and Roger and Ed, I remember that day at Arlington I wasn't sure personally whether we were burying three colleagues and three friends, or the entire Apollo space program, but their deaths, I think, in that incident, that accident, that tragedy gave impetus for us to press on, and I happen to believe that this incident, this accident will, as well.
BLITZER: But this is going to slow down the entire U.S. space program.
CERNAN: Of course, it will. You know, maybe for a year, maybe longer. Who knows. I hope not much longer, but curiosity is the essence of human existence. You know, we need to know who we are, where we are. Exploration has been part of humankind for a long, long time.
You know, we go out there, we think we're prepared for every emergency, every conceivable kind of emergency we can think of. We prepare for it. We're even almost arrogant, dare you to fail, I can handle the problem. Yet deep down, beneath that thinking, we know that we're subject to a whole host of problems of which we have little or no control. Yesterday, obviously, was one of them.
BLITZER: You know that former officials, current officials are whispering already, you know that there were problems here. Nobody was paying attention. The political pressure to go forward. We heard the same thing after the Challenger. CERNAN: There's going to be people who'll say, I told you so, you should have listened to me, there was a problem. You know, I think we've got to put all that behind us, say it happened. We can't change the past. We can't change what happened yesterday. Let's find out why it happened, what happened, get the problem solved, figure out the best way to minimize and manage our risk into the future, and there's always going to be risk.
You know, Gus was right. The exploration of space like the exploration of life, if you will, is a risk. We've got to be willing to take it. Nothing is ever going to be fail-safe, but we are where we are today. We can't change history. Now we figure out where we go from here.
BLITZER; All right, and there will be a lot of investigations, only just beginning.
CERNAN: Well, there will be, and they will be worthwhile and they will be done by good people, and we will get to the root of this problem and we will prevent it from ever happening again. That doesn't say we're not going to be confronted with something else in the future.
BLITZER: All right, Gene Cernan.
CERNAN: Thank you, Wolf.
BLITZER: A hero.
CERNAN: Pleasure.
BLITZER: Thank you very much.
CERNAN: No, thank you.
BLITZER: Appreciate it very much.
CERNAN: Thank you.
BLITZER: And the investigations, as they say, only just beginning, and we'll get more, a lot more here at the Johnson Space Center later this afternoon around 1:00 p.m. We expect a full-scale briefing for the news media. Back to you, Paula.
ZAHN: Wolf, as you made pretty clear, we're just beginning to understand what could be the political ramifications of yesterday's great tragedy. See you in a little bit, Wolf. Thanks.
We're going to head back to Houston in a moment with more on the future of the space program. Also ahead, more on the life of a native Texan, shuttle Commander Rick Husband. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired February 2, 2003 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL TED SMITH, EMERGENCY MGT. OPERATIONS: We continue to stress that if anyone notices any debris or anything unusual, to please contact the local law enforcement officials in their area, and to further stress that do not touch any of this material or pick any of it up, because we consider it hazardous or toxic, and we have had reports of some people gathering it up and we want to stress again that this is hazardous as well as a felony offense, a federal offense, and we have to just ask everyone to continue to monitor the areas around them and let us know anything.
Sheriff, you want to talk about the water supply now?
SHERIFF TOMMY MADDOX, SABINE CO., TEXAS: One of the concerns there that we have -- one of the concerns there that we have had and expressed there by the citizens of our county, our water supply there does come from Toledo -- from Toledo Bend (ph) reservoir. There has been some concern there with all the debris falling in the water there that it would contaminant our water supply. From all the federal authorities and all of the people there that we have talked throughout the night, we do want to stress there that they say that our water supply is in good shape, that there will be no problem there with the water that we obtain there from the lake.
SMITH: OK. And also, at this time, we will field some questions from you and try to answer what we can.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) gathering up the pieces of shuttle to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) investigate by those people?
SMITH: We'll have the people going out and gathering up the pieces, but that will be done by the Environmental Protection Agency.
QUESTION: No, no, no, you were saying you had some reports of just citizens...
SMITH: Citizens doing it, right. Right.
MADDOX: We had a lot of people throughout the day -- we had a lot of people throughout the day yesterday and through the night that had recovered some of this out of their own yards, they picked this up and handled it themselves and brought it into us, but the one thing that we do want to stress is that this still is hazardous material and it needs to be treated as such until we can prove otherwise.
QUESTION: The eight people that went to the hospital, are they citizens or are they law enforcement? SMITH: They're citizens.
MADDOX: They're citizens.
QUESTION: How are they doing, do you know how they're doing today?
SMITH: We haven't got a report back from the hospital today.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
SMITH: I can't answer that right now.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: So there you hear it, the first official confirmation that eight civilians yesterday have been treated in emergency rooms for either having touched some of this debris that fell to the ground or actually just breathing vapors from the debris. The sheriff of Sabine County telling us about some other concerns in the local community. Because so much of the debris landed in a reservoir called the Toledo Bend (ph) reservoir, there was great concern that the reservoir, the drinking supply for Hemphill might have been contaminated, but federal officials are telling local officials there that they need not be concerned about that.
Now, in an interesting touch of irony, we haven't been able to say this yet this morning, Bill, investigators are confirming that a small piece of tile was found about 75 miles from President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Unbelievable. You think about the tens of thousands of pieces that have fallen into lakes or ponds, highways, sidewalks, parking lots, some crashing into garages as well, no one injured on the ground. Truly remarkable this came out of yesterday. The process is slow, as you just heard the officials in one county -- this is just one county in eastern Texas, not to account for how many counties there are in that part of the country, stretching into western Louisiana, the process described as slow today.
You have to think that this is something that will go days, if not weeks, going forward. A lot of people yet again today probably scouring their backyards, their fields and their farms, trying to locate even more of that material that rained from the sky yesterday morning.
ZAHN: And Governor Perry of Texas I think gave us a pretty good idea of just how challenging that will be. Some of the pieces are only two to five inches wide.
In this local community just mentioned, having just identified 40 of the 250 square miles that they're going to need to pore over.
HEMMER: And I think it's been said repeatedly, going back to yesterday morning, do not touch any of these items. But I don't think it can be said enough, especially with the reports we're getting about these eight people in one county being treated for the burns and respiratory stress. ZAHN: Do not touch, don't get anywhere near it.
HEMMER: That's exactly right.
Let's get to Texas right now. Wolf Blitzer helping us with our coverage throughout the morning here, back to the Johnson Space Center. Wolf, good morning again.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Bill and Paula. I suspect it's one of those moments for many of us will always be seared in our minds. Almost exactly right now 24 hours ago when we first heard about this horrible disaster.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. LAUREL CLARK, NASA ASTRONAUT: Good morning, Houston. We're getting ready for a big day up here. Had a great time on orbit and really excited to come back home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Obviously some troubling news here about the space shuttle Columbia, as we haven't heard from it yet. The time of landing was supposed to be right about at this moment
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going into the building, we heard the explosions.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The closer it gets, the louder it gets.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We came out here and we stood here for a minute or so, it seemed like.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the house was just shaking, the windows were shaking. The stuff on the dressers was shaking.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Piece of the fuselage laying over there, apparently the fuselage, impacted the ground, sounded like a shotgun going off.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. At 9:00 this morning, mission control in Houston lost contact with our space shuttle Columbia. The Columbia's lost. There are no survivors. SEAN O'KEEFE, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: This is indeed a tragic day for the NASA family, for the families of the astronauts who flew on STS-107. And likewise, tragic for the nation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just pure shock, disbelief. This is unreal. I mean, you come out here expecting to see a shuttle land, and it's just not there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm crying because seven people, their lives got lost in this.
RON DITTEMORE, NASA: We're devastated because of the events that unfolded this morning. There's a certain amount of shock in our system, because we have suffered the loss of seven family members.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's been work towards our goal of getting up there, and I'm thankful she at least got to do that, and I just wish I could have had a chance to actually hear back from her what it was like, and I'm going to miss her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are a nation of explorers. That's why this great nation has come to what it is in the space program. We'll go on too for that reason.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The seven astronauts who were killed yesterday in the space shuttle Columbia are part of the heavy price paid by the human race in its quest for knowledge (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to explore other worlds.
BUSH: These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life. Because of their courage and daring and idealism, we will miss them all the more.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Now all future shuttle missions have been put on hold, at least for the time being. The next one had been scheduled for March 1. There are still three astronauts aboard the International Space Station. We're told they have enough food and supplies to last until around June. Presumably they'll have to be brought back around that time, if not sooner.
One additional note: The questions are only just beginning. We'll have a chance to ask some of those questions. NASA will have a briefing here around 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Of course, CNN will have live coverage -- Paula.
ZAHN: Wolf, I know you and I both couldn't take our ears or eyes off those news conferences yesterday. In spite of the fact that the nation is grieving, there will be some very pointed questions asked of these officials today, like yesterday, right?
BLITZER: And I think it's only just beginning. All of us remember the initial shock, all of us go through the shock. All of us go through the grieving. The pain is obviously there, but now there are going to be officials. There already are former NASA officials, current NASA officials who say, you know, there were signs that there were some serious problems out there, and they're going to be coming forward.
In the end, the pressure is going to mount for some sort of perhaps broader investigation. Remember, last time around, in 1986, President Reagan then ordered a presidential commission to investigate under the then former Secretary of State William Rogers. I suspect a similar kind of investigation will be ordered by President Bush this time around.
ZAHN: I guess what was so striking to me in watching yesterday was the fact that the investigators were so forthright, and I think you even made a comparison that that was very different than what the nation witnessed in 1986.
BLITZER: Right.
ZAHN: All right, Wolf, we've got to leave it there. Thanks so much. See you a little bit later on this morning.
Yesterday children in Karnal, India, 75 miles north of New Delhi, tried to wave as their hero went overhead. That hero was Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-born woman in space, and a member of the Columbia shuttle crew. The planned celebrations in her hometown turned to prayer vigils when word of Columbia's loss was heard.
Joining us now by videophone is Kalpana Chawla's brother. Thank you very much for joining us, Sanjay.
SANJAY CHAWLA, KALPANA CHAWLA'S BROTHER: Yes.
ZAHN: So, Sanjay, we mentioned, obviously, that your sister was the first Indian woman in space. Help us understand how your family and your country is marking her tremendous heroism.
CHAWLA: Well, see, as far as my family's concerned or this country is concerned, or space flights space (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are not everyday thoughts here. But once Kalpana became the first Indian-born American astronaut, then people started to learn a little bit about the space. Before that, we were just available to be flying in airplanes and stuff, but not about the space shuttle and the flights outside of the earth's atmosphere.
So a lot of people, a lot of -- most of the people don't understand, didn't understand even at that time as to what did it actually mean. One of the very odd questions that I used to face was, where did she go? What did they do there? So it was very difficult to tell people that they were almost nowhere. They were in space. So people used to ask me, did they land there, or did they go out somewhere, or things like that.
So with the people here, it's different, but then there were some people who were quite aware about these things, and we have immediate family who learned a lot about the space. So it was appreciated nevertheless a great deal by lots and lots and lots of people. ZAHN: Well, we certainly understand your pride in your sister's accomplishments and very much appreciate your joining us by videophone. Before I go any further, I wanted to share with you all out there what Chawla had to say about her passion for exploration and her love of her profession. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KALPANA CHAWLA, ASTRONAUT: That is something I have loved since I was 14, 15, you know, the engineering track and really wanting to know the nuts and bolts, how a system works. If this happens, what's going on. And then, on some of these more intense periods of our orbit, the ascent, when we do the on-orbit maneuvering system burn to basically get to the orbit that we need to, and then the de-orbit burn we do to come back home and the entry routine, and play a role in those, it's just tremendous. I mean, I have lived my life for that instant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: Wow. I wanted to tell you a little bit more about Chawla. She was not only the first Indian-born woman up in space, she was the first woman ever to be admitted to the Aerospace Department at Punjab Engineering College. She then earned a masters and doctorate in aerospace engineering in the United States and joined NASA back in 1988. I guess the one thing I heard over and over again from listening to some of these interviews we did prior to their mission is just their sense of devotion to the mission, their sense of discipline and their love of exploration.
HEMMER: We are going to have to search far and wide to find enough adjectives to describe the lives of these people and what they have done and what they have accomplished. The woman you just talked about emigrated here to the States back in the 1980s, and their resumes are just astounding. If you go through them and read about their accomplishments, these are really extraordinary individuals who knew, out of fairness, the risks that they were taking and the risks that they were undertaking, and they felt it was so critical to the pioneering and exploration of space they were willing to risk their own lives.
ZAHN: And their focus so sincere and intense.
Want to welcome you all back to this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING as the nation mourns the loss of those seven shuttle astronauts.
You're watching some live pictures now of the flag flying at half-staff in Washington, as it is over most of the country in memory of the Columbia astronauts.
HEMMER: One of the many questions we'll certainly be looking at in the days and weeks ahead is the re-entry process for any shuttle. It had been said throughout the history, 22 years of this program, that liftoff, that first eight-minute window was most critical with the amount of force and thrust with the shuttle leaving the atmosphere. Now upon re-entry, NASA had said for a long time, Paula, the odds of some sort of catastrophic event were 350 to one, pretty good odds for such an amazing and daring mission, but now we know the inevitable, as of yesterday, watching the videotape, something awful went wrong, and what happens, though, is an answer that we don't have right now.
ZAHN: And it could be many, many months.
HEMMER: And it could be.
ZAHN: In fact, I was reading something from NASA engineers this morning, saying they may never know, although I guess there's some interesting clues that they're focusing in on at this early stage of the investigation.
We're going to take a short break and head back to Atlanta right now. Heidi Collins has our "News Alert" for us this morning. Good morning.
(NEWSBREAK)
HEMMER: For children, the tragedy can be especially difficult, especially when we see these images on television. Oftentimes, the children may ask, why take the risk for space flight or why they should even follow their dream of possibly becoming an astronaut in the future?
Dr. Mae Jameson is a former astronaut who talks to kids across the country about space flight, and Dr. Jameson is our guest this morning in Houston. Good to see you this morning, and our condolences to you and the families throughout NASA today. Your message to children watching these images, going forward now, what do you say?
DR. MAE JAMESON, FORMER ASTRONAUT: Well, I had an experience yesterday in a news station, where a little girl came up to me, and she was very excited to see me. She said, I want to be an astronaut. She didn't say, I wanted to be an astronaut; she said I want to be an astronaut and I want to go into space. With all the things that were happening right then.
And so when I look at all of this, I think the big issue is not that children are going to immediately think that they should stop exploring, they should stop wondering about the world. It has more to do with how we as adults handle it, because they want to be there, they want to explore.
HEMMER: Going back to 1986 and the Challenger, what did you learn from that experience going forward as you not preach, but probably teach your message to children?
JAMESON: Well, I was actually in the first class of astronauts that came in after the Challenger accident, and what that said to me and what I would always tell to everyone, not just children but adults, because I think adults really are the key here, is that you have a good, healthy respect for the system, for the machinery, for the fact that you're sitting on tons and tons of high explosives, and that there are all kinds of things that can happen throughout the flight, but you also spend time learning what to do, putting your best foot forward, and then that's the way you deal with these challenges.
The issue isn't about being afraid, but the issue is about being able to understand what's going on. When I was in the space program, I never -- I had never experienced anything like having so many people care about what was happening to you. You have incredible people on the ground who are very smart, know what's going on, they're getting incredible amounts of data. That made a difference. If I contrast that to situations where I've been where I was the only one responsible 24 hours a day seven days a week for other people's health, it's a quite different thing.
HEMMER: You mentioned the distinction, the difference between adults and children. Give us a better distinction of that message that you believe should be held most important.
JAMESON: What I consider most important as we move forward right now is that we understand what actually occurred, whether it was a heat problem, aerodynamics problem, we understand what occurred, do the best we can to resolve that problem so that it doesn't occur again, but also understand there are going to be problems that we can't solve, but that's part and parcel of space exploration, that's part and parcel of stretching a frontier, stretching what we're capable of doing as humans.
HEMMER: Doctor, quickly, just a quick answer here, what's the number one question you think you get from children after an event like this?
JAMESON: The number one question I get is, what should we do and how do I deal with my anxiety more than fear?
HEMMER: Good luck to you, Dr. Mae Jameson, again live in Houston, you've been on our air yesterday. We thank you for your time yet again today.
JAMESON: You're welcome.
HEMMER: Here's Paula now -- Paula.
ZAHN: Still ahead on this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING, we go back to Houston for a live report from a church where shuttle Commander Rick Husband and payload commander Mike Anderson were members. Also, visitors continue to stream into the Kennedy Space Center where the mission began just 17 days ago. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAHN: And welcome back. Welcome again to this special Sunday edition of AMERICAN MORNING. In Houston, a makeshift memorial of flowers and balloons is taking shape outside of the space center. Wolf Blitzer is standing by at the space center, where the families of the Columbia astronauts are now gathering. Good morning again, Wolf.
BLITZER: Good morning, Paula. It's such a close-knit family, all the NASA executives, the NASA officials, the former astronauts. Gene Cernan is one of those former astronauts. He knows the glory and the tragedy of space exploration. He was the last astronaut to walk on the moon. He also served next to those three astronauts in 1967, the Apollo I fire at the launch pad, including the death of those three astronauts. He knew all of them well, including Virgil "Gus" Grissom, who said earlier, before he died, he had said this: "If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it won't delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
Gene Cernan is joining me here live at the Johnson Space Center. Mr. Cernan, thank you very much.
GENE CERNAN, FORMER ASTRONAUT: Thank you.
BLITZER: Our condolences to you. I know you were close to all of these people. Do you agree with Gus Grissom's notion that the threat of death is worth it?
CERNAN: I don't think there's any question. I think we all subscribe to that creed. We did then, and I think those seven young astronauts who we lost yesterday certainly felt the same way.
BLITZER: So your recommendation is to full speed ahead or slow down?
CERNAN: No, we've got to slow down long enough to find out what the problem was, we've got to solve the problem, but, you know, when we -- you know, going back three or four decades when we buried Gus and Roger and Ed, I remember that day at Arlington I wasn't sure personally whether we were burying three colleagues and three friends, or the entire Apollo space program, but their deaths, I think, in that incident, that accident, that tragedy gave impetus for us to press on, and I happen to believe that this incident, this accident will, as well.
BLITZER: But this is going to slow down the entire U.S. space program.
CERNAN: Of course, it will. You know, maybe for a year, maybe longer. Who knows. I hope not much longer, but curiosity is the essence of human existence. You know, we need to know who we are, where we are. Exploration has been part of humankind for a long, long time.
You know, we go out there, we think we're prepared for every emergency, every conceivable kind of emergency we can think of. We prepare for it. We're even almost arrogant, dare you to fail, I can handle the problem. Yet deep down, beneath that thinking, we know that we're subject to a whole host of problems of which we have little or no control. Yesterday, obviously, was one of them.
BLITZER: You know that former officials, current officials are whispering already, you know that there were problems here. Nobody was paying attention. The political pressure to go forward. We heard the same thing after the Challenger. CERNAN: There's going to be people who'll say, I told you so, you should have listened to me, there was a problem. You know, I think we've got to put all that behind us, say it happened. We can't change the past. We can't change what happened yesterday. Let's find out why it happened, what happened, get the problem solved, figure out the best way to minimize and manage our risk into the future, and there's always going to be risk.
You know, Gus was right. The exploration of space like the exploration of life, if you will, is a risk. We've got to be willing to take it. Nothing is ever going to be fail-safe, but we are where we are today. We can't change history. Now we figure out where we go from here.
BLITZER; All right, and there will be a lot of investigations, only just beginning.
CERNAN: Well, there will be, and they will be worthwhile and they will be done by good people, and we will get to the root of this problem and we will prevent it from ever happening again. That doesn't say we're not going to be confronted with something else in the future.
BLITZER: All right, Gene Cernan.
CERNAN: Thank you, Wolf.
BLITZER: A hero.
CERNAN: Pleasure.
BLITZER: Thank you very much.
CERNAN: No, thank you.
BLITZER: Appreciate it very much.
CERNAN: Thank you.
BLITZER: And the investigations, as they say, only just beginning, and we'll get more, a lot more here at the Johnson Space Center later this afternoon around 1:00 p.m. We expect a full-scale briefing for the news media. Back to you, Paula.
ZAHN: Wolf, as you made pretty clear, we're just beginning to understand what could be the political ramifications of yesterday's great tragedy. See you in a little bit, Wolf. Thanks.
We're going to head back to Houston in a moment with more on the future of the space program. Also ahead, more on the life of a native Texan, shuttle Commander Rick Husband. Stay with us.
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