Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

by Mike Massimino

Right after we launched, I realized that all the training we’d had on what to do if something went wrong during launch—how to bail out, how to operate the parachutes, how to make an emergency landing—I realized that all those years of training were completely pointless. It was just filler to make us feel okay about climbing into this thing. Because if it’s going down, it’s going down. It’s either going to be a good day or it’s going to be a bad day, and there is no in-between. There are emergency placards and safety signs all over the interior of the shuttle, telling you what to do and where to go. That stuff is there to give you something to read before you die.

Before Columbia, we calculated the odds of a total loss of shuttle and crew at about 1 in 150. After Columbia, that was revised to about 1 in 75. By contrast, the risk of losing a fighter jet in Vietnam was around 1 in 1,500.