Desert. As the shuttle program’s flow director, Harrington was responsible for assuring that all four of the so-called orbiters in the shuttle fleet—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis—had the hardware they needed to fly efficiently and safely. But with so many missions so close together, the government contractors that manufactured orbiter components fell behind schedule. NASA answered the need by transplanting pieces of one shuttle to another. The agency’s own term for this process was “cannibalization.” After Commander Hoot Gibson glided Columbia to a landing at Edwards, workers
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