Tough And Competent: Remembering Those We Lost

Time is a funny thing.

Seventeen years passed between the loss of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the loss of Columbia in 2003. During those 17 years, I went from my first year of middle school to finishing high school to graduating from college to have a career as a newspaper editor to taking a job on a contract at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

They were seventeen long years.

Seventeen years have now passed since the loss of Columbia. During those 17 years, I’ve gone from one contract at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to a different contract.

They were seventeen short years.

Today is NASA’s Day of Remembrance.

The agency’s three greatest tragedies – the loss of the Apollo 1 crew in 1967, the loss of Challenger’s 51L crew in 1986, and the loss of Columbia’s STS-107 crew in 2013 – all mark their anniversary this week, on Monday, Tuesday and Saturday, respectively.

Those tragedies occurred almost a generation apart. Nineteen years between Apollo 1 and 51L. Seventeen years between 51L and STS-107.

On average, eighteen years.

Next year will be eighteen years since Columbia.

The seventeen to nineteen year span starts this year and lasts until 2022.

From this year to 2022, we will see the first crewed flights of three new spacecraft.

There’s an expression you see a lot in media and discussions about spaceflight.

“Space is hard.”

To be certain, spaceflight is hard.

Kennedy described it as “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.” I’d not argue.

Today, you hear “space is hard” as an explanation after something has gone wrong.

A rocket explodes, a capsule fails, a launch is aborted.

“Space is hard.”

After the Apollo 1 tragedy, Flight Director Gene Kranz told the Mission Control team that “Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.”

In other words, space is hard.

But he didn’t stop there.

“From this day forward,” he instructed, “Flight Control will be known by two words: Tough and Competent.”

Space is hard. We have to be harder.

To be certain, spaceflight is hard.

In this industry, you have two choices.

You can either say space is hard every day before launch, as a reminder to be harder.

Or it will be said after launch.

As we prepare for a game-changing two years and the historic exploration to follow, may all undertaking this great adventure be tough and competent.