Flying Parachutes will Help Columbia Debris Search Effort
By Jim Banke
Cape Canaveral, Senior Producer
posted: 08:00 am ET
08 February 2003

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The search for debris from shuttle Columbia is getting help from a group of volunteer pilots flying a combination propeller-driven go-cart and fancy parachute.

At first glance you might think they are daredevil weekend flyers who have no business trying to help solve the mystery of why Columbia disintegrated over the skies of Texas last Saturday -- but you'd be wrong.

"We're hardly that," said John Rivers, designer of the flying parachute known as a Destiny aircraft. "Actually, a lot of the pilots here that fly for us are commercial pilots."

One is a veteran commercial airliner pilot who flew DC-9's, while another is a former B-52 bomber pilot who flew in the Persian Gulf War, Rivers said. The pilots have come from Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida.

And now seven of these powered parachute pilots have officially joined the effort to hunt for debris over the otherwise inaccessible swamps and unreachable tree tops near Nacogdoches, Texas.

"The aircraft can fly extremely low so it's great for this overhead observing," Rivers said. "We'll be flying over some swamp and sometimes we'll be flying two to three feet off the deck."

Another 100 pilots stand ready to join the search in the coming weeks and months.

The pilots are serving on a volunteer basis but will likely be reimbursed for their expenses by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The break up of shuttle Columbia scattered debris over four states, much of it in north Texas. As of Friday more than 1,000 ieces had been retrieved, but thousands more still awaited discovery and recovery.

The debris is being taken first to Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louis., and later will be moved to the Kennedy Space Center for additional analysis and eventual burial.

The two-seater Destiny is a light aircraft capable of speeds up to 30 mph but can fly much slower in relation to the ground, especially when flying into the wind.

"We could turn into the wind and fly extremely slow and give us a much longer view and much closer view of the debris," Rivers said.

Officials in charge of the debris hunt have tasked this team of Destiny aircraft pilots with three jobs.

First they are to head for a swamp and look for any debris, deploying visual ground markers and recording Global Positioning System coordinates of anything they see. A ground force will later go into the swamp to retrieve the debris.

Similarly the pilots are to hunt for debris that might be dangling from the treetops, especially keeping an eye out for any data recording tape that may have un-spooled while it fell, leaving long strips blowing in the wind.

Because of their ability to fly slow and low over the trees, the Destiny pilots should be able to recover such debris without damaging it, Rivers said.

Regular aircraft won't be able to slow down enough and helicopters could hover over the site, but the downwash from their blades could damage the tape, if it exists, Rivers said.

Finally, the pilots have been asked to videotape the flight and debris paths with a slow moving platform -- which is what the Destiny aircraft are.

Rivers and his team assembled on Thursday at Nacogdoches but couldn't airborne right away until they had been briefed on how to handle any debris they might come across. There also was some initial confusion as to air traffic control.

Rivers also said that some of the officials weren't quite sure how to deal with the strange looking aircraft.

"It's been a little bit of a struggle here because we haven't had the ability to fly yet," Rivers said. "A lot of that was we're kind of a basic form of flight, but a bit of new technology for some of these agencies."

Rivers got a go from NASA on Friday and completed their first three sorties before sunset, videotaping the debris path and marking a large number of debris sightings. "We had a great first day," Rivers said.

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