Interview with Jay O'Callahan

Usually stories have elements of risk, trouble, challenge, adventure. These elements are universal because they're part of life. A story gets exciting when someone takes a risk. With risk there's tension and with tension there's energy, and the energy draws us into who the story. NASA's work involves great risk. Sometimes, as with Challenger and Columbia, the result is tragedy. I had a sense the astronauts were invulnerable. They were so well trained, and the engineers behind them were superb. Nothing was going to go wrong. That's one of the reasons the Challenger crew's death moved people so deeply. Christa McAuliffe was not an engineer; she was a teacher and she died, and the whole space enterprise became very human. The Challenger lifted off and in seventy-three seconds the Space Shuttle disintegrated. Seventy-three seconds. That's a day I'll remember, like the day of Kennedy's death. The danger was there, but we were lulled into thinking the space flight was routine. My firm: job would be to talk with MAS people-scientists, engineers, astronauts. I'm sure that underneath the whole NASA enterprise there is a sense of wonder. Perhaps science and myth are coming together in NASA. The myths of old were often stories about the sun, the stars, and the moon. Now with NASA, we're going out there. NASA is turning our eyes heavenward just as the ancients did.