16 Days in Space and ??? To Get Home

Ten days after a detoured landing in California, the space shuttle Endeavour has begun a cross-country piggyback ride on top of a modified jumbo jet enroute to Florida.It’s not an easy journey. The 100-ton spaceship makes for one burly passenger, vulnerable to high winds, rain and other rather typical atmospheric phenomena, particularly during winter. It took two days just for the weather to be good enough to begin the journey.

The shuttle and its entourage made it as far as Fort Worth, Texas, last night. NASA says the chance the ferry flight would arrive at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida today are pretty slim, given an advancing cold front.

NASA is not as eager to talk about why the shuttle landed in California in the first place. Typically, flight directors will keep the orbiter in space an extra day if conditions in Florida preclude a touchdown on the scheduled landing day. Florida weather is notoriously fickle, sometimes difficult to predict an hour in advance, let alone a day.

So NASA’s call to divert Endeavour to California raised a few eyebrows, at least in Florida. It’s not really the money, though the $1.8 million it costs for the relocation would cover more than a few scholarships and salaries. It’s more about the time it takes to make the flight and the risks to the ship during the journey.

“It kind of struck us as a little unusual,” said George Diller, whose days as a NASA public affairs officer date back longer than my 21 years as a reporter covering the program. “Usually they wait at least one day before they make a call to come down there.”

“They” is the good folks at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, who runs the show from the time the shuttle clears the top of the launch tower to wheels stop on the runway.

I got curious about how the weather actually turned out on Dec. 1, the day the shuttle likely would have landed if a 24-hour delay had been ordered.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one, because Bill Johnson, the news chief at KSC, had the report on the ready: North to northwest winds up to 10 knots. Visibility: Unlimited. In other words, a good day for landing.

The response from JSC was not so warm. “Wow, you’re the weather forecaster now,” sneered one public affairs officer whom I’ll not name on the condition that he promise to refrain from using sarcasm in the future when responding to uncomfortable questions like, “Why didn’t NASA wait a day to see if the weather in Florida got better?”

He also told me predictions from the Spaceflight Meteorology Group were that crosswinds at the Florida runway were “on the edge” (the limit is 15 knots.)

KSC folks weren’t buying that. “All you had to do was watch any local TV station and they were all predicting it was going to be a nice day,” said another press officer whom I’ll not name because I like him and I don’t want him to get in trouble for speaking his mind to a reporter.

Bottom line appears to be that NASA could have landed in Florida on Dec. 1. Now, that’s not to say that there wasn’t some OTHER more compelling reason to bring Endeavour back to Earth on the first best opportunity, such as maybe those fine folks flying in space were ready to get home.

That’s OK by me and I’ll happily fork over my share of the $1.8 million ferry flight tab. Heck, this is the agency that sent astronauts to the moon, for god’s sake. Surely, they know best about when -- and how best -- to bring our spacebirds home. I’m just one of those people who like to know what I’m paying for.