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Letter to the editor

Veteran reporter traces space shuttle's arc

NPR's Pat Duggins, who has covered the spacecraft for more than 20 years, reviews its history in his new book.

By Curtis Krueger, Times Staff Writer
Published October 25, 2007

Meet the author

- - -

Pat Duggins, a veteran National Public Radio space reporter based at WMFE-FM in Orlando, began covering space shuttles at a terrible time: On Jan. 28, 1986, the day Challenger exploded.

He arrived at Kennedy Space Center as debris was still falling into the Atlantic and stumbled across a group of visiting schoolchildren from Citrus County who had just witnessed the tragedy.

Now Duggins has covered more than 85 launches - so many that he has lost count. And he has written a book, Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program, that traces the history of this unusual spacecraft, a technological marvel that for many years lacked a real mission.

He recently spoke about space shuttles, his book and NASA's current plans to build a new spacecraft, called Orion, to travel to the moon and Mars.

What was it like emotionally for you to interview those kids after the Challenger explosion?

Basically you're almost tunnel vision on the story. . . . I dug the tape out like 10, 15 years later . . . listening to not only their reactions but (NASA officials' as well).

It was just amazing, because at that time they held out vestiges of hope that the Challenger crew somehow had survived. . . . There was an engineer up at NASA who immediately just ran screaming back into the press center saying "RTLS! RTLS!" (return to launch site). In other words, he was hoping that the shuttle would have survived the blast and could come back to the Kennedy Space Center runway in an emergency landing.

For your book, you interviewed several space shuttle astronauts. Do you have a have a favorite?

John Young has the reputation of not suffering fools lightly . . . but I found him to be a complete gentleman. Every time there's a meeting and an astronaut walks in, the engineers think, "Well, the astronauts think they know more than the engineers do." Well, when John Young walks in the room, he does know more than the engineers. He's kind of the astronaut's astronaut.

Do you think American astronauts in NASA's next spaceship will get back to the moon?

My concern is that they're only going to get back to the moon. (Without proper funding) they go to the moon and stop, at which time I can almost guarantee you that NASA is going to be criticized in the press for accomplishing little more than our grandparents did with slide rules.

Do you think we can get to Mars with people?

I sat down with Steve Squyres (a top scientist on the Mars rover missions). Some of his observations are really just bottom line, how challenging it's going to be.

He mentioned the dust problem?

In your food, in your suits, in the joints of your space suits. If you're not careful, you might get fried by a solar storm because of the thin Martian atmosphere. It's a nasty place, and NASA's going to have to be ready, assuming they get there.

As you point out in your book, 2 1/2 years out of your life is a long time for a mission.

That's going to make the first Mars mission very interesting, because the first trip to Mars probably will include orbiting the planet but not landing. So if you're asking someone to give up that much of their life to go to Mars and not let them land, it's going to be interesting to see if they get volunteers.

You write about the space shuttle for so long not really having a mission. Overall, having looked at and written about the entire program, was the space shuttle era worth it?

That's a very good question. I think that the fact that it lacked a mission was a really big problem, because we spent billions of dollars and we killed 14 astronauts and the question can be reasonably asked, for what?

Now, 17 years after the first shuttle launch, we started building the space station. So as the shuttle program does wrap up, it does have a mission to achieve. But to wait 17 years to come into your own - that is a long time.

Curtis Krueger covers the space program for the Times. He can be reached at ckrueger@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8232.

[Last modified October 24, 2007, 19:45:40]