CNN's Miles O'Brien was oh-so-close to being the first U.S. newsman in space
Michael Cabbage Orlando Sentinel Space Editor
CAPE CANAVERAL - NASA was close to naming CNN correspondent Miles O'Brien as the first American journalist in space when the Columbia accident occurred in 2003.
O'Brien broke two years of public silence this week to discuss the potential mission, which was confirmed by former NASA officials. Talks also were under way to use his flight to launch a program where reporters, artists and writers would travel on the space shuttle to describe the experience of living and working in orbit for audiences back on Earth.
Like a similar program abandoned in the wake of the 1986 Challenger disaster, the effort ended before it began when Columbia broke up while returning to Earth, killing seven astronauts. For CNN's 45-year-old space correspondent and weekday news anchor, the Columbia accident finished a lifelong dream that was tantalizingly close to becoming a reality.
"It was a devastating thing, because it was something I had been focusing on for so long," said O'Brien, who already was making plans to move to Houston for astronaut training. "But I really couldn't tell anybody about it because it would have been so inappropriate in the middle of that tragedy to say, 'And I don't get to go either.' "
CNN began seriously discussing the possibility of flying O'Brien in space with NASA and the Russians in early 2001. The Russians had launched Japanese television reporter Toyohiro Akiyama to the Mir space station in 1990 -- the only journalist to have flown in orbit. However, negotiations between CNN and Moscow bogged down because of the $12 million price tag for the flight.
The network proposed a plan to NASA under which O'Brien would go through regular training with other astronauts at the Johnson Space Center, then fly on the shuttle. CNN would compensate NASA for the cost of the flight by making a charitable donation, most likely to the Challenger Learning Centers, for an amount described by O'Brien as "in the seven-figure range."
Former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe stressed that a number of hurdles had yet to be cleared, including legal questions and concerns about liability. However, the biggest issue -- CNN's willingness to make O'Brien available for up to two years of preparation and training -- was resolved at a Sept. 20, 2002, luncheon at the agency's headquarters in Washington.
"It was a big shift when CNN agreed to do things in exactly the same way we do them with every astronaut candidate," said O'Keefe, who left NASA in February to become the chancellor at Louisiana State University.
O'Keefe characterized O'Brien as "head and shoulders" above any other potential journalist candidate.
"He was a pilot, he clearly had an understanding of what was going on and he already had been through a lot of the basic requirements it would take for selection as a candidate," O'Keefe said. "In my mind, I thought he was far and away the most likely guy to be the first [journalist in space]."
In the mid-1980s, an earlier effort to fly a journalist in space took applications from 1,705 reporters and narrowed the field to 40 by the time of the Challenger accident. NASA officials said there was no need for a competition this time because O'Brien had approached the agency with an unsolicited proposal. NASA was in the process of defining a possible follow-on program that would have allowed other journalists to fly when the Columbia disaster happened.
O'Brien and NASA managers agree the chance of a journalist launching now is slim. The shuttle is expected to fly only 15 to 28 more missions. Sixty-four of NASA's 99 active astronauts have never been in space. Seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft are as costly as ever and in greater demand because of the lack of shuttle flights.
"I worked for the right organization and was the right person at what seemed to be the right time," O'Brien said. "All of it seemed to line up until that terrible day, and then it all unraveled."
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