WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:01.000 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Commander: OTC, CDR, heater reconfig complete. 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Orbiter test conductor: Copy. 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Pilot: OTC, PLT, APU start is complete. 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:10.000 Controller: GLS is go for auto sequence start. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:15.000 NARRATOR: It's launch day at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The space shuttle is on the 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:21.000 launch pad, the astronauts are aboard and the countdown is clicking steadily backwards. 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.000 More than 200 miles above Earth, the International Space Station is moving quickly through its 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:32.000 91-minute-long orbit, leaving the shuttle a scant five minute window to lift off or risk 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:35.000 missing the orbiting laboratory. 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:40.000 Inside the Launch Control Center, a cadre of some 200 launch controllers, 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:45.000 all of them specialists in the shuttle and its myriad systems, methodically move their 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:49.000 own checklists to make sure that everything is ready. They've worked for days to bring the 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:54.000 countdown this far, to a point nine minutes before launch when it is 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:58.000 time to decide whether the shuttle is indeed ready to launch. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:01.000 The person making that decision is the launch director. 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:08.000 LEINBACH: 22,000 parameters, roughly, have to be exactly right in order to launch the shuttle. 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:12.000 NARRATOR: If conditions aren't right, the launch director can scrub the launch attempt. 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:17.000 Launch director, Endeavour. Go ahead, sir. Okay, Zambo. Well, you heard all that. 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:20.000 You know we tried really, really hard to work the weather. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:26.000 It's just too dynamic. We got feeling good there at one point, and then it filled back in. 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:29.000 And we're just not comfortable with launching the space shuttle tonight. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:33.000 So we're going to go into a 24-hour scrub. But thank you all for the efforts you all put in tonight. 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:39.000 We'll see you back again tomorrow night, and we'll hope the weather's a little bit better. 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:43.000 NARRATOR: Sometimes a problem isn't seen until the last seconds of a countdown and the computerized 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:46.000 ground launch sequencer aborts the launch. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:52.000 Commentator: Running, three, two, one, and... we have main engine cutoff. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:54.000 Controller: GLS safing is in progress. 00:01:54.000 --> 00:02:00.000 Commentator: GLS safing is in progress. (Controllers discussing shuttle safing) 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:11.000 NARRATOR: Ten people have served as launch director during the space shuttle's 30 years of flying 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:18.000 into space. For each, launch day became the ultimate test of their skills and decision-making. 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:28.000 BOB SIECK: The essence of the job is actually to say no when everybody else wants to go. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:32.000 NARRATOR: On launch day, the launch director and his team can be found in one of the firing rooms 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:38.000 inside the Launch Control Center at Kennedy. He sits in the back row, facing a few monitors and with 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:45.000 the giant windows looking out to the pad at his back. Because his console is on a riser, he can look 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:50.000 out on the other controllers in the room, many of them at specialized consoles behind 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:52.000 horseshoe-shaped cabinets. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:57.000 LEINBACH: We have to be convinced as a team, I have to be convinced as a person that everything is 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:04.000 ready to go and so until that point, until I have the feeling in my gut that we're ready to launch, 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:10.000 we can meet every requirement we have on the books, but we also have to meet 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:13.000 that gut check that says we're ready to fly that day. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:19.000 NARRATOR: Nine minutes before liftoff, the flight control team in Houston, NASA and contractor 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:24.000 management and the other members of the launch team radio a simple "go" or "no-go." 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:31.000 Controllers: MILA. MILA is go. STM. STM is go. Safety console. Safety console is go. SPE. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:37.000 SPE is go. LRD. LRD is go. SRO. SRO is no-go. 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:42.000 NARRATOR: Then the launch director gets the last word in a tradition that goes back to the first 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:48.000 launch of a space shuttle in 1981, when Launch Director George Page radioed to Columbia commander 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:50.000 John Young and pilot Bob Crippen. 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:59.000 George Page: John, we can't, uh, do more from the launch team than say uh, we sure wish you an awful 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:03.000 lot of luck, we're with you a thousand percent and we're awful proud to have been a part of it. 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:05.000 Good luck, gentlemen. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:09.000 Voice of John Young: Crip and I are mighty proud to work with you fellows. 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:12.000 You're absolutely professional, the best there is. 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:19.000 LEINBACH: It becomes very personal and I look out to the pad and I think about the crew on 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:25.000 board and I have a little moment of reflection and then the countdown clock picks up at T-9 minutes. 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:30.000 NARRATOR: There were two space shuttle missions that took the launch directors into untested areas. 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:35.000 The first, STS-51L in 1986, was the Challenger accident. 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:41.000 James Thomas was the launch director and Seick was on-hand on that cold January morning. 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:50.000 SIECK: It was one of those days in hindsight when even though everything was within specification as 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:57.000 far as the launch commit criteria, the requirements, a lot of people had this gut feeling that this 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.000 just doesn't feel right. 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:04.000 NARRATOR: NASA rebounded from the Challenger accident with determination and the agency sought to 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:06.000 fix its errors. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:11.000 SIECK: Our resolve was, we're going to safely fly again, it's going to be a lot of work but we're 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:14.000 going to get there and we did. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:20.000 NARRATOR: Discovery returned astronauts to space in September 1988, a mission Sieck said gave a 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.000 huge boost to the launch team. 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:27.000 SIECK: Kind of like the start or in this case the rebirth of the shuttle program. 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:35.000 And because the mission, the flight, its performance proved that we had fixed all of those items 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:39.000 that we should have fixed in the Challenger. 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:45.000 NARRATOR: In 2003, Leinbach was called into recovery service after shuttle Columbia broke apart 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:49.000 during reentry over Texas and Louisiana. 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:54.000 LEINBACH: My job as the rapid response team chairman, it's another assignment of the launch director, 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:59.000 is to take that first team from KSC to wherever the contingency is. 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:05.000 Commentator: Three engines up and burning! Three, two, one, and liftoff of space shuttle Discovery, 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:14.000 beginning America's new journey to the moon, Mars and beyond. And the vehicle has cleared the tower. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:19.000 NARRATOR: The shuttle returned to space again in 2005, with Discovery launching to the International 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:22.000 Space Station. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:27.000 NARRATOR: Launch days throughout the shuttle's illustrious program have always been special for the 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.000 men and women in the Launch Control Center. 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:37.000 LEINBACH: It's what we do. We are launching America's space shuttle for the good of the country and 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:45.000 the good of the world. It's what we do, we have to do this.