If you think about all of the components of a shuttle, all of the thousands of little things, combined with the weather, the probability of everything working is pretty much zero.

I grew up in the labs, and worked very closely with shuttle components,

It's probably going to be a lot like an advanced Apollo capsule.

I thought we'd have a good year. We're coming along. I'm realistic. I know we don't play in a great league. But we're pretty proud of the streak.

Thousands of man hours [were spent] in developing new techniques so that foam in part and other components of the flight vehicle do not come loose during supersonic flight in the atmosphere as the orbiter climbs to orbit,

Thousands of man hours [were spent] in developing new techniques so that foam in part and other components of the flight vehicle do not come loose during supersonic flight in the atmosphere as the orbiter climbs to orbit.