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American Morning
Special Edition, Part VIII
Aired February 02, 2003 - 11:00 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. I'm Paula Zahn.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Bill Hemmer. Special coverage on CNN continues, the space shuttle "Columbia" disaster. As the nation continues to mourn the seven men and women on board the STS-107, that exhaustive search for answers well under way already.
ZAHN: And we're going to have some of the latest on other stories making news today, just ahead in our news alert.
But first, an update on shuttle Columbia. Daryn Kagan is at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From the Johnson Space Center in Houston, we have a twofer today. Miles O'Brien and Wolf Blitzer.
Let's get started with Miles O'Brien, who covered the story yesterday as the tragedy unfolded before our eyes. In fact, Miles, I was listening to you and went outside, not knowing that it probably wasn't in my flight path, wanted to see what I could see anyway. It was moments later when it became clear to you that something had gone horribly wrong.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: It sure left a pit in our stomach at CNN as we saw that happen. As the time for the landing came and there was no space shuttle Columbia. You can set your watch to a shuttle landing. Once they do that de-orbit burn, the landing will occur at the prescribed time.
Let me bring you up to date on the investigation right now. There is a series of meetings that are under way right now at the Johnson Space Center. Currently a mission management team meeting, and they're poring over some of the preliminary data which was gathered overnight. Engineers, that team, that internal investigation team, working all night looking at that data which was captured immediately after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia yesterday. All within the first half hour. The instructions to the flight controllers are very terse and very clear at that time, capture your data. That's what they did. And they have begun the process of sorting through it. Somewhere in that data is probably some very significant clues as to what happened.
One of the things they will be looking at is not what happened yesterday, but 16 days ago, or 17 days ago now, the launch of the space shuttle "Columbia," when, on its way to orbit, Columbia had a situation where a piece of the orange external fuel tank, which is this here, this contains liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and feeds the shuttle's main engines here, a piece of foam from that fell off and struck the left wing of the space shuttle Columbia as it rose to orbit. Now, obviously traveling at very high velocity and striking the left wing could have caused some significant damage potentially to some of the insulating tiles. There are 20,000 of them on the space shuttle which protect it from the heat of reentry.
Now, engineers knew about this a day or so after launch when they looked over the high-speed close-up photography that is trained on every shuttle launch. They did their best -- to the best of their ability they tried to analyze what sort of damage it might have created. And it was their determination at the time that they didn't have a serious problem. But it's worth pointing out that even if they did find there was some sort of serious problem, there were absolutely zero options. There was nothing the team could do, nothing the astronauts could do in space to repair those tiles.
So that's where we -- we're looking at. We're looking at the insulating tiles, the possibility that that debris had something to do with it. In any case we do know that at the point when it was at its hottest on reentry is when Columbia failed. All those things are telling clues which the team is looking into right now -- Wolf.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: You know, Miles, if you take a look at that incident, when you say there was nothing they could have done if the engineers would have determined it was a huge problem, what about going to the international space station and docking there and letting a Soyuz Russian rocket bring them back?
O'BRIEN: Couldn't get there from here. They were in a completely different orbital inclination. They were at 39 degrees tilted against the equator. The space station is at 57 degrees. There wasn't enough juice in the shuttle to get to the space station. They weren't anywhere in the same neighborhood. So that is unfortunately an impossibility of Newtonian physics and orbital mechanics.
BLITZER: You know, a lot are comparing this to a plane crash. Of course, as you know, as I know, all of our viewers know, when there is a plane crash we're always looking for those so-called black boxes, the flight data recorders, the voice recorders. Are there any of those black boxes that they're searching for right now?
O'BRIEN: There are some recorders on the space shuttle but that -- what you have to keep in mind is that there is a constant real-time live running black box in a building a few feet from where we stand, Mission Control. Constant telemetry, thousands and thousands of streams of information feeding down live to those mission controllers throughout the course of a mission. Actually, in many ways much more accurate and much more available than any black box information. This is as much instrumentation as you can possibly imagine for any vehicle which flies in the air so the black box is really mission control.
BLITZER: Space Correspondent Miles O'Brien, who knows more about this than almost anyone. Miles, thanks very much. Daryn Kagan is over at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. She's following developments over there -- Daryn. DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, this is a place, of course, Miles has been many times. The question here today is, what is next for NASA? I can show you some things that were intended to be next.
About two football fields away from where I stand, the VAB, the vehicle assembly building, back behind those walls. The shuttle Atlantis has already been taken there to get ready for the next shuttle launch. That was scheduled for March 1. In fact, Atlantis was to be moved out of that building this week coming up, and moved over to the launch pad. That clearly is not going to happen at this point in time.
Another thing on the docket was, of course, to send Barbara Morgan, the teacher in space. She was actually going to fly on the next Columbia mission and that was going to be in November. Of course, that will have to be rescheduled, if it ever even happens again. We will have to wait and see on that. For now back to Bill -- Bill.
HEMMER: All right, Daryn, thank you -- Paula.
ZAHN: And now, back to some of the challenges that astronauts face on returning to earth. It is often said that launch time is the most dangerous. This is the first time a space mission disaster has occurred during reentry. For some insight and perspective let's turn to veteran astronaut Scott Carpenter, who joins us from Phoenix this morning. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, sir.
SCOTT CARPENTER, FORMER ASTRONAUT: You're welcome, Paula.
ZAHN: So, if you would put this into perspective for us, because you have a very personal perspective on this, indeed. In May of 1962 you had some serious reentry problems with your own Mercury capsule malfunctioning. I guess navigational system caused to you splash down some 250 miles off target. Help us understand the situation the shuttle crew might have found themselves in yesterday, when some of those sensors started failing.
CARPENTER: OK, entry is a time when the status of the flight rapidly changes. It's the same on launch. That -- the rest of the flight on orbit is benign, but launch and entry are critical times. Things can go wrong and that's what happened recently. It's a terrible thing, but people have to realize that space flight is not without risk. And those who engage in it willingly take the risk because of the benefits to be derived. We are admittedly and willingly expendable.
ZAHN: And is that something you thought much about, even in training, about the prospect of facing that?
CARPENTER: Well, of course, training does everything that the mind of man can put together that will prepare the crews for flight. But the recent event had a failure that was not anticipated. There was no way to correct whatever failure there was, it is believed now, in flight. It was just a very unfortunate circumstance. We will, however, find the cause and correct it and press on with continued space exploration. The people of this country will have it no other way.
ZAHN: You just talked a little bit about how critical that reentry process is. If you wouldn't mind spending a little time describing to us what is at stake during that reentry time. What you are thinking about, what you are doing on board the shuttle at time of reentry.
CARPENTER: They were aware of the critical nature of that time and the risks that they faced. I believe, however, that the failure was of a type that gave the crew very little time to consider what was happen -- what happened. It was a catastrophic explosive failure.
ZAHN: In spite of the fact that so many Americans are grieving at this hour, as you no doubt know, some very pointed questions were asked of NASA officials yesterday about the future of the space shuttle program, some -- actually "TIME" magazine article out today suggesting it is outdated and costs too much. It's time to move on to different technology. What are your thoughts about that?
CARPENTER: We, of course, need new technology, but we can't abandon the technology we have at the present time. We just have to modify it, gradually improve it, which is what we are doing, and will continue to do, but the people of this nation will not allow us to abandon our leadership in space. It just won't happen.
ZAHN: What is the next frontier, though?
CARPENTER: I'm not certain I heard that question, but it might have been where are we going, and we're going to Mars.
ZAHN: Going to Mars. You heard it from Scott Carpenter. Thank you very much for joining us on this early Sunday morning from Phoenix. Very much appreciate you dropping by.
CARPENTER: You're welcome.
HEMMER: We have heard an amazing amount of fortitude going back 25, 26 hours after this.
We're going to get you to Marietta, Georgia quickly here. WSB reporter Dale Cardwell is on the scene there of a church where more reaction continues to come in. Dale, good morning to you. All right. Do we have Dale? I want to get to Dale Cardwell, Marietta, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. And if you can hear us, courtesy of WSB. What are you hearing from the Americans there gathered today in Georgia?
DALE CARDWELL, WSB CORRESPONDENT: Well, about 16 years ago people thought, what would they do if they had another tragedy like this? And some folks here in Atlanta, the Cremation Society of the South, said, what we'd like to do is have some condolence books. We'd like for people to be able to come to their local synagogue, their churches and sign condolence books, and tell these families of these crew members from all across the country that we care, and we love your family members, and we feel for your loss. And that's exactly what's going on right here at the United Methodist Church here in Marietta. Folks are coming in, and they're signing these condolence books and they're pouring out their hearts, and they're telling these family members that we are so sorry for your loss. What's going to happen to these condolence books -- they're going to fill them, of course. They're at about a half-dozen metro Atlanta churches today. And they're going to send them down to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and they're going to present them to the families at the appropriate time.
We've been talking to at least 20, 30 people this morning, and they are so happy to be able to express their concern and their love and the feeling and the appreciation for these astronauts. It's a moving time.
A lot of these folks were coming for their services normally. But we've been telling people this morning they would have this opportunity, so the church here is having an outpouring from people all over Marietta coming in and signing these condolence books. Small children learning about this for the first time, and learning how that they can express their concern and love for these astronauts.
We're going to be continuing to cover this story, and we'll bring it to you as it comes to us. For now we're live in Marietta, Georgia.
HEMMER: Dale, thank you. Dale Cardwell, WSB, down there in Marietta, Georgia. Amazing to think that thousands of Americans pulled into this story as a result of the tragedy and the debris field that's been left in its wake.
ZAHN: Hard to imagine how painstaking this process will be. Finding, in some cases, pieces of the shuttle two to five inches wide.
HEMMER: From 40 miles above, cascading down.
ZAHN: Well, as you probably know, the debris field from the shuttle stretches for about 500 square miles in parts of Texas and some adjoining states. In one Texas county there are more than 800 debris sites. We have report from Barbara Stewart of our affiliate KTVS. She joins us from Hemphill, Texas, where there is a pretty big effort under way. Good morning, Barbara.
BARBARA STEWART, KTVS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. There are about 500 people that are searching an area about 12 miles southeast of here. Those people that are part of that team include U.S. Marshals, FBI officials, we are told, people from the Department of Defense. We're also told that some NASA officials may also be out here searching as well.
Now, crew members also include state -- that is, state troopers here in the state of Texas, as well as Jasper County and some Sabine County emergency crews. They're searching that area not far from here on foot, because yesterday a torso and a hand were found down in that area, which is just off of Highway 96 and Highway 83. They're searching about a 10 to 20 mile radius of that area because they believe that it is possible some more body parts may be found down in that area. Not long ago, some people that live in this area arrived here to help out with search efforts in any way that they could. They brought four-wheelers with them.
We've also been told that Sabine County is under a state of emergency and that the area here throughout much of Sabine National Forest is also under a no-fly zone. Now, not far from here, we have also learned that a piece of debris from shuttle Columbia has been found in the waters of the reservoir, and that water area is where a lot of the small towns here, they get their drinking water from.
We have also been told that federal officials have told emergency crews here that the drinking water has been safe for a lot of the people in the town, and they have not been put on any type of restrictions. However, the people in the town of Manny, Louisiana, which is not that far from here, yesterday their water had been cut off for a very short time. They were placed on an emergency reserve unit. As of yet we have not, in fact, learned whether or not that restriction has been lifted.
ZAHN: Well, Barbara Stewart, a very big job, indeed, for those volunteers and all those officials that have come into town. Thanks for that live update from Hemphill, Texas -- Bill.
HEMMER: We heard from NASA yesterday. They are avowing, right now, to leave no stone unturned as it searches for answers to Columbia. We'll go live to the homecoming flight path, along that path, where the hard work of collecting evidence right now is being conducted.
Also, what does the future now hold for space travel? A Pulitzer Prize winning science reporter for the "New York Times" with his insight about the direction we may be headed now. Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAHN: Welcome back at 18 minutes after the hour. It is time to go back to our headquarters in Atlanta with an update on the other news of this day. Good morning, Heidi.
(NEWSBREAK)
HEMMER: NASA suspended all space flights after the Columbia tragedy yesterday. There were five more missions on tap for this year, including one starting on the 1st of March. Meanwhile, the Russian space agency, as Heidi just announced, plowed ahead with a launch earlier today. It sent an unmanned cargo shuttle to the international space station. The cargo shuttle bringing supplies to the two astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut living aboard the space station. The crew has supplies, we are told, lasting until June.
The big question this morning, though, for this next segment, is the direction of the space program. John Noble Wilford, science reporter at the "The New York Times," stops by here on our Time-Life studios. Good to see you, John, good morning to you.
JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, SCIENCE REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Thank you, Bill. HEMMER: What debate -- what's the direction for the debate right now? Is it entirely too early to dictate that? Or what path do you see?
WILFORD: Well, the direction first, of course, is the investigation to find out what went wrong, and to correct that. But behind all of that is the investigation of the whole fundamental thrust of the space program. In 1986, after the Challenger accident, there was the investigation to find out what caused the accident and what was needed to fix it. But as they dug into things, they realized that there was a lot about the way NASA was being run, the way the space shuttle program was being run, that needed to be fixed, as well.
HEMMER: And the shuttle did not fly for 32 months after that, which brings us to today. How long, and what's the impact when the space shuttle is essentially grounded, and space flight and exploration is halted at least for a time?
WILFORD: We don't know how long it will take, because a lot depends on how long it takes to determine what really caused the problem, and what does that unearth about the problem -- maybe other problems within NASA?
But the two things that are really fundamental here are the immediate problem, of course, is the international space station. There are three astronauts on board, two Americans and one Russian are on board that right now, and they had been depending on a shuttle flight to get them home again in June. So something has to be done.
The progress launching by the Russians today will help supply them with enough provisions into the summer. There is an escape vehicle on board that they could use. The Russians could send up a Soyuz to get them. But I think, the way things usually play out, the shuttles will not be available this summer.
HEMMER: We've got to quickly here -- 15 seconds. You write space officials and other observers say the repercussions from this disaster may not turn out to be as tectonic as in 1986 and the Challenger. Why is that?
WILFORD: Because in '86, we were putting all of our eggs in that one basket, the shuttles. We had begun to phase out expendable conventional rockets, and everyone was required to use the shuttle. So when the shuttles could fly no longer, we were left, to a large extent, without alternatives. Now we have alternatives.
HEMMER: And going forward, it is a wide open issue as the direction. John Wilford, New York Times. Thanks for sharing with us this morning. Thanks for being patient, too.
WILFORD: Thank you, Bill.
HEMMER: I appreciate it. Here's Paula again -- Paula.
ZAHN: Thanks, gentlemen. Coming up, the solution to Columbia's puzzle will have to be found in thousands of pieces. Hundreds of searchers are out today, combing a 200-square-mile long path of debris. We'll get the latest news on what has been recovered so far.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAHN: A loss to all of humankind, indeed. A piece here, a piece there, thousands and thousands of fragments from space shuttle Columbia litter the southeast. Much of the debris rained down over a 200-mile area in Texas and Louisiana. Our own Whitney Casey is in Leesville, Louisiana, where some fragments were found. She joins us now to bring us up to date on that. Good morning, Whitney.
WHITNEY CASEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. Leesville is about three hours south of Shreveport, Louisiana, and that's a good deal away from those large debris sites that you've been talking about. You can see behind me, this is a very rural, bucolic area. Wooded, lots of woods here and that is the problem. Because the forestry, the division of forestry has been sifting through the woods but they say, really the best people to do that, the people who know these woods the best, are hunters. But today was the last day of the hunting season.
Now, they did find right in front of somebody's yard, a cylinder, a piece about this big and NASA has, indeed, said that it is part of the shuttle, and they have that area cordoned off. We went there last night. The sheriff took us on a tour of the town. He brought us over there, he showed us the cylinder, and he said that it was about four to five feet underground because of the impact. He also brought us over to the lake and showed us the lake; he said there are some debris on the lake but they haven't confirmed yet what that is.
In a small town like this, I just want to paint a picture for you. Because what NASA is saying, that small towns like this with just a piece of debris can be just as important as those massive debris sites, because it is one piece of the puzzle they need to find and put together, and small towns like this could have them.
Now, this town only has about 18,000 people. So if you can picture that, this is a very small town that something very big happened, making something very unusual that happened here to these people. So what do they do in the South? Well, with 44 churches just in this square mile, they go to church. And we're at a Baptist church. We came to a service this morning at about 8:30. This is First Baptist Church, and some of the congregants are now coming into the 10:45 service here that the pastor -- go ahead. Go on in there. The pastor is about to deliver. He's been practicing his sermon. I talked to him last night when we got into town and I said, are you amending your sermon somehow, because of what happened? He said, oh, indeed. We've had plenty of my congregants call and ask us, you know, to have a special prayer service.
So I'm going to take you on inside the church to just sort of show you the Sanctuary, as the sermon is being practiced right now. But many people across the country are going to church this morning in tragedy, to pray for these astronauts and to pray for their families, and also to pray for many Americans, especially the ones that live here, because they are all a part of this, and especially in this small town. Paula. ZAHN: So sad to watch all of this unfold. Casey, thanks.
You know, I guess as you see that, you're reminded of how people are, in some cases, gathered in places of worship, listening to very similar sermons trying to gather together strength and collective fortitude.
HEMMER: I was just thinking. That's the scene at thousands of churches across the country right now, in fact, on this Sunday morning.
In a moment here we will take another look. Seeking a solution right, now by way of sifting through the wreckage. There are thousands and thousands of pieces. Only one may hold the answer. Our special Sunday edition coverage continues in a moment, here.
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Aired February 2, 2003 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. I'm Paula Zahn.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Bill Hemmer. Special coverage on CNN continues, the space shuttle "Columbia" disaster. As the nation continues to mourn the seven men and women on board the STS-107, that exhaustive search for answers well under way already.
ZAHN: And we're going to have some of the latest on other stories making news today, just ahead in our news alert.
But first, an update on shuttle Columbia. Daryn Kagan is at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From the Johnson Space Center in Houston, we have a twofer today. Miles O'Brien and Wolf Blitzer.
Let's get started with Miles O'Brien, who covered the story yesterday as the tragedy unfolded before our eyes. In fact, Miles, I was listening to you and went outside, not knowing that it probably wasn't in my flight path, wanted to see what I could see anyway. It was moments later when it became clear to you that something had gone horribly wrong.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: It sure left a pit in our stomach at CNN as we saw that happen. As the time for the landing came and there was no space shuttle Columbia. You can set your watch to a shuttle landing. Once they do that de-orbit burn, the landing will occur at the prescribed time.
Let me bring you up to date on the investigation right now. There is a series of meetings that are under way right now at the Johnson Space Center. Currently a mission management team meeting, and they're poring over some of the preliminary data which was gathered overnight. Engineers, that team, that internal investigation team, working all night looking at that data which was captured immediately after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia yesterday. All within the first half hour. The instructions to the flight controllers are very terse and very clear at that time, capture your data. That's what they did. And they have begun the process of sorting through it. Somewhere in that data is probably some very significant clues as to what happened.
One of the things they will be looking at is not what happened yesterday, but 16 days ago, or 17 days ago now, the launch of the space shuttle "Columbia," when, on its way to orbit, Columbia had a situation where a piece of the orange external fuel tank, which is this here, this contains liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and feeds the shuttle's main engines here, a piece of foam from that fell off and struck the left wing of the space shuttle Columbia as it rose to orbit. Now, obviously traveling at very high velocity and striking the left wing could have caused some significant damage potentially to some of the insulating tiles. There are 20,000 of them on the space shuttle which protect it from the heat of reentry.
Now, engineers knew about this a day or so after launch when they looked over the high-speed close-up photography that is trained on every shuttle launch. They did their best -- to the best of their ability they tried to analyze what sort of damage it might have created. And it was their determination at the time that they didn't have a serious problem. But it's worth pointing out that even if they did find there was some sort of serious problem, there were absolutely zero options. There was nothing the team could do, nothing the astronauts could do in space to repair those tiles.
So that's where we -- we're looking at. We're looking at the insulating tiles, the possibility that that debris had something to do with it. In any case we do know that at the point when it was at its hottest on reentry is when Columbia failed. All those things are telling clues which the team is looking into right now -- Wolf.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: You know, Miles, if you take a look at that incident, when you say there was nothing they could have done if the engineers would have determined it was a huge problem, what about going to the international space station and docking there and letting a Soyuz Russian rocket bring them back?
O'BRIEN: Couldn't get there from here. They were in a completely different orbital inclination. They were at 39 degrees tilted against the equator. The space station is at 57 degrees. There wasn't enough juice in the shuttle to get to the space station. They weren't anywhere in the same neighborhood. So that is unfortunately an impossibility of Newtonian physics and orbital mechanics.
BLITZER: You know, a lot are comparing this to a plane crash. Of course, as you know, as I know, all of our viewers know, when there is a plane crash we're always looking for those so-called black boxes, the flight data recorders, the voice recorders. Are there any of those black boxes that they're searching for right now?
O'BRIEN: There are some recorders on the space shuttle but that -- what you have to keep in mind is that there is a constant real-time live running black box in a building a few feet from where we stand, Mission Control. Constant telemetry, thousands and thousands of streams of information feeding down live to those mission controllers throughout the course of a mission. Actually, in many ways much more accurate and much more available than any black box information. This is as much instrumentation as you can possibly imagine for any vehicle which flies in the air so the black box is really mission control.
BLITZER: Space Correspondent Miles O'Brien, who knows more about this than almost anyone. Miles, thanks very much. Daryn Kagan is over at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. She's following developments over there -- Daryn. DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, this is a place, of course, Miles has been many times. The question here today is, what is next for NASA? I can show you some things that were intended to be next.
About two football fields away from where I stand, the VAB, the vehicle assembly building, back behind those walls. The shuttle Atlantis has already been taken there to get ready for the next shuttle launch. That was scheduled for March 1. In fact, Atlantis was to be moved out of that building this week coming up, and moved over to the launch pad. That clearly is not going to happen at this point in time.
Another thing on the docket was, of course, to send Barbara Morgan, the teacher in space. She was actually going to fly on the next Columbia mission and that was going to be in November. Of course, that will have to be rescheduled, if it ever even happens again. We will have to wait and see on that. For now back to Bill -- Bill.
HEMMER: All right, Daryn, thank you -- Paula.
ZAHN: And now, back to some of the challenges that astronauts face on returning to earth. It is often said that launch time is the most dangerous. This is the first time a space mission disaster has occurred during reentry. For some insight and perspective let's turn to veteran astronaut Scott Carpenter, who joins us from Phoenix this morning. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, sir.
SCOTT CARPENTER, FORMER ASTRONAUT: You're welcome, Paula.
ZAHN: So, if you would put this into perspective for us, because you have a very personal perspective on this, indeed. In May of 1962 you had some serious reentry problems with your own Mercury capsule malfunctioning. I guess navigational system caused to you splash down some 250 miles off target. Help us understand the situation the shuttle crew might have found themselves in yesterday, when some of those sensors started failing.
CARPENTER: OK, entry is a time when the status of the flight rapidly changes. It's the same on launch. That -- the rest of the flight on orbit is benign, but launch and entry are critical times. Things can go wrong and that's what happened recently. It's a terrible thing, but people have to realize that space flight is not without risk. And those who engage in it willingly take the risk because of the benefits to be derived. We are admittedly and willingly expendable.
ZAHN: And is that something you thought much about, even in training, about the prospect of facing that?
CARPENTER: Well, of course, training does everything that the mind of man can put together that will prepare the crews for flight. But the recent event had a failure that was not anticipated. There was no way to correct whatever failure there was, it is believed now, in flight. It was just a very unfortunate circumstance. We will, however, find the cause and correct it and press on with continued space exploration. The people of this country will have it no other way.
ZAHN: You just talked a little bit about how critical that reentry process is. If you wouldn't mind spending a little time describing to us what is at stake during that reentry time. What you are thinking about, what you are doing on board the shuttle at time of reentry.
CARPENTER: They were aware of the critical nature of that time and the risks that they faced. I believe, however, that the failure was of a type that gave the crew very little time to consider what was happen -- what happened. It was a catastrophic explosive failure.
ZAHN: In spite of the fact that so many Americans are grieving at this hour, as you no doubt know, some very pointed questions were asked of NASA officials yesterday about the future of the space shuttle program, some -- actually "TIME" magazine article out today suggesting it is outdated and costs too much. It's time to move on to different technology. What are your thoughts about that?
CARPENTER: We, of course, need new technology, but we can't abandon the technology we have at the present time. We just have to modify it, gradually improve it, which is what we are doing, and will continue to do, but the people of this nation will not allow us to abandon our leadership in space. It just won't happen.
ZAHN: What is the next frontier, though?
CARPENTER: I'm not certain I heard that question, but it might have been where are we going, and we're going to Mars.
ZAHN: Going to Mars. You heard it from Scott Carpenter. Thank you very much for joining us on this early Sunday morning from Phoenix. Very much appreciate you dropping by.
CARPENTER: You're welcome.
HEMMER: We have heard an amazing amount of fortitude going back 25, 26 hours after this.
We're going to get you to Marietta, Georgia quickly here. WSB reporter Dale Cardwell is on the scene there of a church where more reaction continues to come in. Dale, good morning to you. All right. Do we have Dale? I want to get to Dale Cardwell, Marietta, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. And if you can hear us, courtesy of WSB. What are you hearing from the Americans there gathered today in Georgia?
DALE CARDWELL, WSB CORRESPONDENT: Well, about 16 years ago people thought, what would they do if they had another tragedy like this? And some folks here in Atlanta, the Cremation Society of the South, said, what we'd like to do is have some condolence books. We'd like for people to be able to come to their local synagogue, their churches and sign condolence books, and tell these families of these crew members from all across the country that we care, and we love your family members, and we feel for your loss. And that's exactly what's going on right here at the United Methodist Church here in Marietta. Folks are coming in, and they're signing these condolence books and they're pouring out their hearts, and they're telling these family members that we are so sorry for your loss. What's going to happen to these condolence books -- they're going to fill them, of course. They're at about a half-dozen metro Atlanta churches today. And they're going to send them down to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and they're going to present them to the families at the appropriate time.
We've been talking to at least 20, 30 people this morning, and they are so happy to be able to express their concern and their love and the feeling and the appreciation for these astronauts. It's a moving time.
A lot of these folks were coming for their services normally. But we've been telling people this morning they would have this opportunity, so the church here is having an outpouring from people all over Marietta coming in and signing these condolence books. Small children learning about this for the first time, and learning how that they can express their concern and love for these astronauts.
We're going to be continuing to cover this story, and we'll bring it to you as it comes to us. For now we're live in Marietta, Georgia.
HEMMER: Dale, thank you. Dale Cardwell, WSB, down there in Marietta, Georgia. Amazing to think that thousands of Americans pulled into this story as a result of the tragedy and the debris field that's been left in its wake.
ZAHN: Hard to imagine how painstaking this process will be. Finding, in some cases, pieces of the shuttle two to five inches wide.
HEMMER: From 40 miles above, cascading down.
ZAHN: Well, as you probably know, the debris field from the shuttle stretches for about 500 square miles in parts of Texas and some adjoining states. In one Texas county there are more than 800 debris sites. We have report from Barbara Stewart of our affiliate KTVS. She joins us from Hemphill, Texas, where there is a pretty big effort under way. Good morning, Barbara.
BARBARA STEWART, KTVS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. There are about 500 people that are searching an area about 12 miles southeast of here. Those people that are part of that team include U.S. Marshals, FBI officials, we are told, people from the Department of Defense. We're also told that some NASA officials may also be out here searching as well.
Now, crew members also include state -- that is, state troopers here in the state of Texas, as well as Jasper County and some Sabine County emergency crews. They're searching that area not far from here on foot, because yesterday a torso and a hand were found down in that area, which is just off of Highway 96 and Highway 83. They're searching about a 10 to 20 mile radius of that area because they believe that it is possible some more body parts may be found down in that area. Not long ago, some people that live in this area arrived here to help out with search efforts in any way that they could. They brought four-wheelers with them.
We've also been told that Sabine County is under a state of emergency and that the area here throughout much of Sabine National Forest is also under a no-fly zone. Now, not far from here, we have also learned that a piece of debris from shuttle Columbia has been found in the waters of the reservoir, and that water area is where a lot of the small towns here, they get their drinking water from.
We have also been told that federal officials have told emergency crews here that the drinking water has been safe for a lot of the people in the town, and they have not been put on any type of restrictions. However, the people in the town of Manny, Louisiana, which is not that far from here, yesterday their water had been cut off for a very short time. They were placed on an emergency reserve unit. As of yet we have not, in fact, learned whether or not that restriction has been lifted.
ZAHN: Well, Barbara Stewart, a very big job, indeed, for those volunteers and all those officials that have come into town. Thanks for that live update from Hemphill, Texas -- Bill.
HEMMER: We heard from NASA yesterday. They are avowing, right now, to leave no stone unturned as it searches for answers to Columbia. We'll go live to the homecoming flight path, along that path, where the hard work of collecting evidence right now is being conducted.
Also, what does the future now hold for space travel? A Pulitzer Prize winning science reporter for the "New York Times" with his insight about the direction we may be headed now. Back in a moment.
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ZAHN: Welcome back at 18 minutes after the hour. It is time to go back to our headquarters in Atlanta with an update on the other news of this day. Good morning, Heidi.
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HEMMER: NASA suspended all space flights after the Columbia tragedy yesterday. There were five more missions on tap for this year, including one starting on the 1st of March. Meanwhile, the Russian space agency, as Heidi just announced, plowed ahead with a launch earlier today. It sent an unmanned cargo shuttle to the international space station. The cargo shuttle bringing supplies to the two astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut living aboard the space station. The crew has supplies, we are told, lasting until June.
The big question this morning, though, for this next segment, is the direction of the space program. John Noble Wilford, science reporter at the "The New York Times," stops by here on our Time-Life studios. Good to see you, John, good morning to you.
JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, SCIENCE REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Thank you, Bill. HEMMER: What debate -- what's the direction for the debate right now? Is it entirely too early to dictate that? Or what path do you see?
WILFORD: Well, the direction first, of course, is the investigation to find out what went wrong, and to correct that. But behind all of that is the investigation of the whole fundamental thrust of the space program. In 1986, after the Challenger accident, there was the investigation to find out what caused the accident and what was needed to fix it. But as they dug into things, they realized that there was a lot about the way NASA was being run, the way the space shuttle program was being run, that needed to be fixed, as well.
HEMMER: And the shuttle did not fly for 32 months after that, which brings us to today. How long, and what's the impact when the space shuttle is essentially grounded, and space flight and exploration is halted at least for a time?
WILFORD: We don't know how long it will take, because a lot depends on how long it takes to determine what really caused the problem, and what does that unearth about the problem -- maybe other problems within NASA?
But the two things that are really fundamental here are the immediate problem, of course, is the international space station. There are three astronauts on board, two Americans and one Russian are on board that right now, and they had been depending on a shuttle flight to get them home again in June. So something has to be done.
The progress launching by the Russians today will help supply them with enough provisions into the summer. There is an escape vehicle on board that they could use. The Russians could send up a Soyuz to get them. But I think, the way things usually play out, the shuttles will not be available this summer.
HEMMER: We've got to quickly here -- 15 seconds. You write space officials and other observers say the repercussions from this disaster may not turn out to be as tectonic as in 1986 and the Challenger. Why is that?
WILFORD: Because in '86, we were putting all of our eggs in that one basket, the shuttles. We had begun to phase out expendable conventional rockets, and everyone was required to use the shuttle. So when the shuttles could fly no longer, we were left, to a large extent, without alternatives. Now we have alternatives.
HEMMER: And going forward, it is a wide open issue as the direction. John Wilford, New York Times. Thanks for sharing with us this morning. Thanks for being patient, too.
WILFORD: Thank you, Bill.
HEMMER: I appreciate it. Here's Paula again -- Paula.
ZAHN: Thanks, gentlemen. Coming up, the solution to Columbia's puzzle will have to be found in thousands of pieces. Hundreds of searchers are out today, combing a 200-square-mile long path of debris. We'll get the latest news on what has been recovered so far.
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ZAHN: A loss to all of humankind, indeed. A piece here, a piece there, thousands and thousands of fragments from space shuttle Columbia litter the southeast. Much of the debris rained down over a 200-mile area in Texas and Louisiana. Our own Whitney Casey is in Leesville, Louisiana, where some fragments were found. She joins us now to bring us up to date on that. Good morning, Whitney.
WHITNEY CASEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. Leesville is about three hours south of Shreveport, Louisiana, and that's a good deal away from those large debris sites that you've been talking about. You can see behind me, this is a very rural, bucolic area. Wooded, lots of woods here and that is the problem. Because the forestry, the division of forestry has been sifting through the woods but they say, really the best people to do that, the people who know these woods the best, are hunters. But today was the last day of the hunting season.
Now, they did find right in front of somebody's yard, a cylinder, a piece about this big and NASA has, indeed, said that it is part of the shuttle, and they have that area cordoned off. We went there last night. The sheriff took us on a tour of the town. He brought us over there, he showed us the cylinder, and he said that it was about four to five feet underground because of the impact. He also brought us over to the lake and showed us the lake; he said there are some debris on the lake but they haven't confirmed yet what that is.
In a small town like this, I just want to paint a picture for you. Because what NASA is saying, that small towns like this with just a piece of debris can be just as important as those massive debris sites, because it is one piece of the puzzle they need to find and put together, and small towns like this could have them.
Now, this town only has about 18,000 people. So if you can picture that, this is a very small town that something very big happened, making something very unusual that happened here to these people. So what do they do in the South? Well, with 44 churches just in this square mile, they go to church. And we're at a Baptist church. We came to a service this morning at about 8:30. This is First Baptist Church, and some of the congregants are now coming into the 10:45 service here that the pastor -- go ahead. Go on in there. The pastor is about to deliver. He's been practicing his sermon. I talked to him last night when we got into town and I said, are you amending your sermon somehow, because of what happened? He said, oh, indeed. We've had plenty of my congregants call and ask us, you know, to have a special prayer service.
So I'm going to take you on inside the church to just sort of show you the Sanctuary, as the sermon is being practiced right now. But many people across the country are going to church this morning in tragedy, to pray for these astronauts and to pray for their families, and also to pray for many Americans, especially the ones that live here, because they are all a part of this, and especially in this small town. Paula. ZAHN: So sad to watch all of this unfold. Casey, thanks.
You know, I guess as you see that, you're reminded of how people are, in some cases, gathered in places of worship, listening to very similar sermons trying to gather together strength and collective fortitude.
HEMMER: I was just thinking. That's the scene at thousands of churches across the country right now, in fact, on this Sunday morning.
In a moment here we will take another look. Seeking a solution right, now by way of sifting through the wreckage. There are thousands and thousands of pieces. Only one may hold the answer. Our special Sunday edition coverage continues in a moment, here.
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