SAVE THE SHUTTLE: Life with the Space Shuttle and the Last Ditch Attempt to Save and Privatize it

by lawrence Kuznetz

On April 5th. 1979 I walked through a tightly guarded set of yellow-rimmed double doors into the biggest jigsaw puzzle in human history. It had 31,763 pieces, no two alike, each of a different size, shape and thickness. What made this puzzle so mind blowing, was that a single mistake, like inadvertently swapping 2 pieces that looked alike, grabbing one piece too hard or not placing one precisely in its intended spot—and I mean PRECISELY—could have dire consequences. It would be a mental mistake that could turn into a fatal one . One that could obliterate 5 billion dollars and multiple human Iives in a heartbeat. Avoiding this catastrophe fell upon the shoulders of 1200 select people. People who worked around the clock wearing secret badges sequestered in a secret building for an interminable period of time fighting against an externally imposed critical deadline. They had left family, friends and normal lives to solve this puzzle and saw births, deaths, joy and sorrow as their ritual continued. They were known as The Puzzle People and success in their struggle wouldn’t be measured like in a conventional jig saw puzzle with pieces fitting neatly together in an eye catching graphic. It would be measured by the biggest fucking explosion since Hiroshima with no one getting killed. 33 years later, after all 31,763 tiles had been bonded to Space Shuttle Columbia, and the Shuttles had flown 135 times and retired, i found myself in the impossible position of trying unretire, save and privatize them as they waited to be shipped off to museums. Here’s the truly crazy This fools errand began with 3 questions on the bridge of the Queen Victoria cruise ship posed by the kingpin of the one armed bandit machines in pubs across the “You mean the Shuttles are for sale?" he asked. "Can you buy them? How much?" And the team we formed —the gambler, a script writer, a philosophy professor and I came within a whisker of succeeding and set the stage for today’s commercial space business and Elon musk. there’s a lot of the backstory. The last ditch attempt part starts on page 168

339 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 26, 2014