Work of 7 Astronauts Lauded

The personnel at Edwards Air Force Base paid tribute Thursday to the seven astronauts who died aboard the space shuttle Columbia, vowing to carry on the dangerous but important work of testing the boundaries of space.

Many who gathered for the outdoor service were pilots and former astronauts from Edwards and the nearby NASA Dryden Flight Research Center who knew the Columbia crew personally. Columbia’s commander, Rick D. Husband, graduated from Edwards’ flight test school in 1988, then stayed on to test the F-15 and other experimental aircraft.

As the wind whipped across the peaceful dry lake bed where the Columbia first landed in 1981, Air Force Col. Joseph Lanni, who was in the same fighter squadron as Husband at Edwards, remembered the commander as a devout Christian, a proud Texan who once wore cowboy boots to a pajama party and a man who would want America’s space program to move forward after the disaster.

“Rick loved what he did, and he knew it was important, not only for Americans, but also for all of mankind,” Lanni said.

Residents on the Air Force base said a peculiar silence had settled over Edwards since Saturday, when Columbia broke up over Texas, killing Husband and his fellow crew members Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, William C. McCool, Laurel Clark and David M. Brown.

But the silence was shattered Thursday by three T-38 jets and an F-18, which screamed over the solemn ceremony in a missing-man formation.

The loss of the Columbia hit especially hard at Edwards, which is a foul-weather landing alternative for shuttle missions.

Some of the most important advances in aviation were made at the Antelope Valley base, opening crucial doors for America’s exploration of space.

It was at Edwards in October 1947 that Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in a Bell X-1 research rocket aircraft. From 1959 to 1968, the X-15 jet aircraft set altitude records and provided insight into hypersonic flight that paved the way for the space shuttle program.

As a result, the institution gained an understanding of the risk involved in breaking boundaries. In the chapel where Husband once prayed, a plaque commemorates 142 pilots and other personnel who have died at Edwards testing some of history’s most daring machines.

But Thursday’s ceremony was dominated by calls to press on, undeterred.

“So where do we go from here?” Air Force Chaplain Gary R. Goodlin asked. “We go forward ... to the furthest bounds of space and into heaven itself.”

The Antelope Valley also has a special bond with the shuttle program, as the aircraft were manufactured there starting in the late 1970s.

A second memorial service, sponsored by the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster, will be held at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the Hangar at Lancaster Municipal Stadium.