The Day Dave Brown Visited the Robowrangler Pits
I grew up in the 60s when NASA was in it’s hey days, and
Project Mercury was in full force. I
was in elementary school during this time.
My teachers would talk about astronauts like Alan Sheppard, John Glenn,
Gus Grissom and so forth. I watched many
of the Mercury launches on television. The
elementary principle had brought in a T.V. so we could watch the historic
events in the cafeteria. This was big news
covered by all media. President Kennedy
made the commitment to go to the moon by the end of the decade. I wonder if today’s younger generation even
know who Mercury 7 astronauts are. I was
fortunate exciting to live during this period of time. So when the book and movie The Right Stuff
came out, it was special to me. After
all, I remember all this stuff first hand.
For the past 13 years, I have been involved with educational
Robots with the purpose of inspiring youth to pursue careers in science and
technology. Being involved in this
program has been personally rewarding. Not
only do I get to help youth, and but I also get to work with great people, and
learn along the way. It takes a large
commitment of time, and the build season can be painfully tough. But in the end it is worth it all when you
reflect back at season’s end.
One of my roles during competitions and has been pit
mentor. This involves overseeing the
students keeping the robot in proper operating order, and making modifications
for improvements, and helping other teams.
Typically we get lots of visitors that stop by to look over our robot,
or teams that need to borrow parts or tools.
Other teams like to stop by and compare notes and discuss different
approaches, solutions, and so forth. So
the big idea here is I get to hang around the pits allot.
In recent years, we had the good fortune of VIPs stopping by
and visit our pits. For example, NASA executive
Dave Lavery http://robotics.nasa.gov/management.php
brought Charles Bolden http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/bolden_bio.html
to our pits one day in Atlanta to show him our robot. Being a science/technology/NASA geek, I am
thinking wow! These guys think our robot is cool! This is unbelievable, and very flattering.
Back in March of 2002, we were at the Lone Star Regional in
Houston Texas. The Lone Star Regional event
was held at the Astro Arena, next door to the Astrodome. This particular day, I noticed a guy
standing there by himself looking over the robot. I spoke to him and he stuck out his hand and said,
“Hi I’m astronaut Dave Brown”. We shook
hands and he continued to look over and admire the robot. We discussed the particulars of the robot and
small talk for about 10 minutes or so. He
was not there with an entourage from NASA, just kind of hanging out by himself.
I am thinking who the heck is astronaut Dave Brown? After all, I knew all the Mercury 7,
Gemini, and Apollo astronauts names. I
had never heard of Dave Brown. Dave
mentioned to me he was there to speak to the students, and he was slated for a shuttle
mission sometime next year. So Dave
Brown turned out to be one of the new generations of astronauts that were training
for a Space Shuttle mission. He was a
member of NASA Astronaut Group 16 nicknamed “The Sardines” for being such a
large class, implying that their training sessions would be tightly packed. It turned out that Dave was the key note
speaker during awards ceremony. So, I
am thinking Dave Brown is really cool guy for coming out and spending time at
the competition and speaking to the students about NASA, the space shuttle
program and the need for scientist and engineers.
Later that year at the championship event in Orlando,
Florida, Dave stopped by our pits again for a brief chat, and shook my hand
again. He asked me if remembered him
stopping by our pits in Houston.
“Sure”. It turned out that Dave
was there to speak at the Championship event as well. We did not have a great Robot year, but I do
remember meeting Dave Brown and him remembering our robot.
So move forward to next year. It is January 2003, and we are
into brainstorming for the 2003 game, Stack Attack, enduring another grueling
build season, and our big idea is the “Arm” http://www.robowranglers148.com/2003.html
. And as typical, we are running behind
schedule. It is approximately a couple of weeks to ship
date, and we are feeling the pressure to finish. The
mentors discussed and planned on coming in early Saturday morning to work on
the Robot, February 1, 2003.
I was awakened that Saturday morning February 1st by the
master bedroom bathroom door “rattling”.
The rattling door always occurred (with the house being air tight); whenever
anyone would come in or out through the hallway
door leading out to the garage. I went
out of the bedroom to see who just came in, and discovered that no one had come
in. The garage door was down and door to
the garage was shut. I could not figure
out what made the door rattle. I took
and quick shower, and headed off to get some coffee before going out to L-3 to
work on the “Arm” Robot. I turned on the radio in my truck, and that
is when I heard the disturbing news, that Space Shuttle Columbia STS-107, had
disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana during re-entry into the Earth's
atmosphere, resulting in the death of all seven crew members (Rick Husband,
William McCool, Dave Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Lauren Clark, and
IIan Ramon). Debris from Columbia fell
to Earth in Texas along a path stretching from Trophy Club to Tyler, as well as
into parts of Louisiana. Then it dawned on me that the shock of the space
shuttle breaking up overhead is what rattled the door. Then the radio mentioned the crew, one of
which was Dave Brown. My mind jumped
back to the pits in Houston. This was
personally very disturbing news, as just nine months ago; Dave was standing in
our pits visiting, and now he just lost his life overhead. I kept thinking of the irony of losing Dave just
overhead of our robot.
Later we learned that NASA was aware that a piece of foam broke
off during launch and damaged the thermal protection system components
(reinforced carbon-carbon panels and thermal protection tiles) and chose not to
inspect. The foam striking the leading
edge at high speed resulted in a hole the size of a bowling ball in leading
edge of the left wing of the Shuttle orbiter, causing an extensive heat
build-up. During re-entry the damaged
wing slowly overheated and came apart, eventually leading to loss of control
and total disintegration of the vehicle.
I hope much good came from the accident.
I know that the accident lead to an investigation, and to ultimately new
safety procedures. In spite of this
accident, I do think we need to continue to press forward and pioneer new
technologies. This is what we do in
America, and some pay a very high price for many of us to live in a very high
standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS_107
Would I have known about Dave Brown if not by happenstance
meeting? Does America know who Dave
Brown is? What about the rest of the
crew? I hope the answer is yes. So who
the heck is astronaut Dave Brown? He
was STS-107 Columbia Astronaut hero that everyone should know about, for sure. He gave his time to help inspire youth. So, every February 1st, during
build season, I think of Dave Brown.
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