Of course, my proposal is for one way tickets.
Posted on 07/11/2005 6:38:57 AM PDT by Loyalist
Had things gone differently, CNN's Miles O'Brien could have been on the Space Shuttle right about now. Instead, this week, the anchor and longtime space correspondent will watch the Space Shuttle Discovery go up Wednesday, taking with it a little bit of his dream to someday be in space.
"It marks the kind of an end of a personal era for me," O'Brien said.
Turns out, CNN and NASA were only weeks away from announcing O'Brien was going to be the first journalist in space, when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated before landing two years ago.
O'Brien was on the air for 16 hours the day Columbia crashed, and then flew to Houston for coverage the next day.
"I got into the hotel room," O'Brien said, "and I just cried like a baby. It all hit me. It hit me like a ton of bricks; tears for them, and tears for something I had lost for me personally. I had worked on it for two years."
At the time, O'Brien, CNN and NASA agreed that he would enter the mission specialists program - which could take upward of two years - to prepare for the flight.
"In my mind, I thought he was far and away the most likely guy to be the first [journalist in space]," former NASA head Sean O'Keefe told the Orlando Sentinel, which first reported O'Brien's deal.
He had been reluctant to talk about the planned mission before a friend at the Sentinel called that word had leaked out.
When Columbia failed, O'Brien was well on his way in planning to move to Houston to start the program.
O'Brien said in covering past Space Shuttle missions, he always had an feeling in his gut at launch of the potential for a problem to occur, but never in the landing stage. That changed after Columbia, he said.
"Ever since I began covering it, I wondered, 'What would I say if..." I sort of learned that one on Feb. 1, and know I can get through that."
O'Brien said he has never looked at the footage of the day he reported on Columbia.
He expects a larger-than-normal crowd to tune in for the launch Wednesday - now scheduled for 3:51 p.m. - just as they did when flights resumed after the Challenger exploded or when Sen. John Glenn was aboard the Shuttle.
Despite the end of his trip to space, O'Brien still marvels at the process of flying in space.
"I enjoy the notion of the adventure of it, and the notion of exploring new worlds," he said. "That to me is fascinating."
The launch of Discovery will be carried live by all the major broadcast networks and cable-news channels.
Story Translation: ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME CNN ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
If they have that kind of extra capacity, they should sell the seat!
Of course, my proposal is for one way tickets.
*SIGH* If they can send ONE CNN reporter into space, why can't they just send ALL of them? ;)
Yeah, me. Too expensive and a waste of good resources.
The space equipment, I mean.
It would be cheaper to get one of Ted Turner's old yachts, load up the CNN crew, and sail them off in to the Bermuda
Triangle.
I agree with that. O'Brien really picked up the ball after Holliman - who was a great space reporter - was killed in an auto accident.
I think this is a great idea for CNN... if only they could send Klein on a one-way ticket; they might actually come out of the cellar. Well... maybe that's an overstatement.
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