David McDowell Brown was born on April 16, 1956 to Dorothy “Dot” Brown and Paul Brown in Arlington Virginia. He attended McKinley Elementary School and Yorktown High School.
As a child Dave Brown had his first experience with what would become a life-long passion - flying. He said, "I was interested in flying beginning at age 7, when a close family friend took me in his little airplane. And I remember looking at the wheel of the airplane as we rolled down the runway, because I wanted to remember the exact moment that I first went flying. So, that's really when the flying interest began for me."
Dave said, "A lot of my classmates were from the government - sons and daughters of army sergeants, senators, generals, admirals - a real smorgasbord of interesting people that were coming and going from the government." Brown said Yorktown high school was the turning point for his life, "I always started things late. I guess I came out of my shell in high school, I decided on the spur of the moment I was going to go out for football and do gymnastics - normally contradictory sports. I think my interest in science blossomed in high school too."
Dave Brown recalled, “The teacher I remember best from my high school was my gymnastics coach, Jesse Meeks. When I showed up I said I wanted to play football and the same guy was also the gymnastics coach and I wanted to do gymnastics too." Brown noted that his coach didn't complain about him wanting to do such non-complementary activities, "He just said, ‘Come on let's go.’ There was none of this ‘We’ve never done this before, I don’t know if you’ll really be able to help the team as much.’ He just said ‘Let’s go, welcome aboard’.”
Brown played football at Yorktown high while student Katie Couric was a member of the cheerleading squad. She was in the class after Brown’s and it was several years before she became famous as a news anchor. Brown joked he didn’t need to become an astronaut to become famous because when he was in high school Katie Couric cheered for him so he was already famous!
Dave went to the College of William and Mary where he majored in biology and was also a member of the school’s gymnastics team. That lead to an unusual summer job. Dave explained, “One day I was in my dorm the phone rang and the fellow on the other end said ‘Hi, you don't know me, but would you like to work in the circus?’ and I said ‘Sure’ and I did for a summer, which was a pretty interesting job.” Brown was an acrobat, 7-foot unicyclist, and stilt walker with Circus Kingdom in 1977.
Dave took flying lessons with the money he earned from part time jobs and soloed on July 8, 1978.
Dave was accepted by two medical schools and selected Eastern Virginia Medical School where he met fellow Class of 1982 student Gordon Iiams who became a lifelong friend. While at EVMS Brown continued his interests in gymnastics and flying.
Dave’s brother Doug was a smoker and Dave was concerned. He showed Doug the cancer-ridden lungs of a cadaver he was dissecting, but it would be another quarter century before Doug finally quit.
While at EVMS Dave was part of the Big Brother program and mentored Skeeter Quales, a 10-year-old boy whose father had left the family. Eventually the family reunited. Dave remained in contact with Skeeter and his family even, after graduating.
After Dave completed his internship at the Medical University of South Carolina he decided to join the Navy. He became a flight surgeon and served two tours aboard carriers, the USS Independence and USS Carl Vinson. The USS Carl Vinson tour included the first time a U.S. warship went into the Bering Sea in the winter since World War II. Dave had a camcorder and went around the carrier filming aircraft landings, doing interviews, and edited his footage into a training film for flight surgeons to prepare for cold weather flight operations. The video earned him the Navy flight surgeon of the year award. McGraw-Hill used video clips of carrier operations for a video called “Flight Deck”, earning Brown his first professional credit as a cameraman.
The Navy gives a very small number of flight surgeons jet training so they can have a better appreciation of cockpit activities from a pilot's perspective. Brown said, "I got a brochure that showed a Navy physician standing on a flight deck next to an F-4 Phantom. I said, ‘Boy, I've got to go learn about this.’ So, I applied; and the first time, they said, ‘No, you're not going to do that.’ So, I thought, and I said, ‘Well, I really would like to do this.’ So I reapplied, and they said, ‘Yes.’ I went as a medical guy off to Navy flight training and ended up flying the Navy A-6." Brown eventually accumulated over 2,700 hours in high-performance jets.
In 1994 Dave applied to become an astronaut. The interview board didn’t select him, but was impressed enough to encourage him to apply again. On the second try Dave was selected, becoming one of the 44 astronauts in the 1996 class.
Dave never lost his love of flying airplanes. He flew NASA’s T-38 training jets that the astronauts use for proficiency as well as for transportation to many of their work locations. He also loved to fly in his spare time, even if his personal planes weren't high performance. Dave owned two light aircraft - a Bonanza and a Super Cub. His home was located on a small airport where he could taxi his plane out of his backyard directly on to the runway. Dave would joke, “I bought a hangar and a house came with it.”
Brown had told friends, “When I’m in the T-38 and see Joe-Blow flying around in a Bonanza I think, ‘That’s just a little general aviation plane; I’m in my jet and I’m something else.’ But when I’m in my Bonanza and see the T-38 I think ‘It’s really cool to have your own airplane and be in general aviation and not be in that high-speed airplane – I can go anywhere in this little airplane.’ It’s great from both sides.”
Without a family to support, Brown spent much of his income on electronics and other technical gizmos. He would refer them as BTUs – Basic Toy Units. When asked how much a particular item cost he might say, “Oh about three BTUs.” A BTU was the equivalent of $1,000. Friends remember he had a wireless Internet connection well before they became commonplace. Many of Dave’s BTUs were video cameras and Macintosh computers. He was documenting all of his training and planning on making a movie about his mission to explain what made spaceflight so special and what drove him to become an astronaut.
Mission Control engineer and neighbor Jeff Kling remembered the debriefing from an extremely long simulation involving the entire team. “Everybody has their technical inputs and Dave’s there with his camera filming the whole thing. Dave’s asked if he has any comments and he says ‘I’m just really glad to be here and I’m ready to go fly.’ That is so Dave – of all the things he could have said.”
What all of Dave’s friends and acquaintances will tell you is it was never about Dave – it was always about you. He was an extremely humble person, never one to brag about his fame or job. Neighbor Cindy Swindells recalls it was six months after she met Dave before she found out he was an astronaut. When he moved in and got acquainted with his neighbors he just told them he worked at NASA. But one day she saw him wearing his blue flight suit and it suddenly dawned on her that he was more than just a typical NASA worker!
Dave did have a family of sorts – a Labrador named “Duggins” which he got as a puppy while he was in the Navy. Doug Brown explained “Duggins flew with him in Dave’s plane up here when Dave visited. Duggins was Dave’s buddy.” Duggins was originally co-owned by Dave and a Navy roommate but when their assignments took them in different directions Dave got Duggins. Because of Dave’s many travels for his work he left Duggins with neighbor Cindy Swindells and her teenage son and daughter. Doug explained, “The neighbors were more than dog sitters. They did it so often Duggins became part of their house too.”
Astronauts say there are four dates you will always remember – when you’re asked to come to Houston for a job interview, when you get the call telling you you’ve been selected, your first launch, and the day the boss calls you into his office and tells you you’ve been assigned to your first mission. The later was July 25, 2000. At that point the launch was supposed to be in June 2001, just under a year away. But the mission kept slipping. The delays were frustrating, but Dave told his friends, "My seat's reserved." He was assigned to a mission, while many of his classmates didn't have flight assignments.
The STS-107 launch took place on January 16, 2003 on a perfect cool day. Once Columbia arrived in space the astronauts set up the Spacehab laboratory for their two week science marathon.
Dave had one of the most difficult jobs for a rookie astronaut - going to bed just a couple of hours after launch. He said before the flight, "Well, I think that probably my hardest job on this whole flight is going to be going to sleep the first night. The blue shift, which is three of us [Dave, Mike Brown, and Willie McCool], we will launch actually in the afternoon and evening of our day. So, about four hours after we get to space, it's “nighttime” for us and we need to go to sleep. So, even though I will have had a long day, I think it's probably going to be pretty tough to go climb into bed and go to sleep. That's probably going to be the toughest thing I have to do the whole mission."
Dave was responsible for many of the experiments - both as the operator and guinea pig. He donated blood several times for experiments that studied how the body processes protein and calcium. His body was used to study the heart and lungs, he ignited tiny flames, and he aimed an Israeli camera to search for dust clouds and lightning on Earth.
Early in the mission, Dave performed a blood draw on crewmate, Mike Anderson - or at least he tried to. The first two times that Dave stuck the needle into Mike's arm, he couldn't find the vein. Dave radioed mission control, "We have a good chance on the third try!" and added, "I don't mind at all." – Of course, he was on the correct side of the needle! Mission control said it was okay if Mike agreed. A couple of minutes later, Dave radioed that the third try was successful. The next day mission control emailed the astronauts, "Special thanks to Mike for 'sticking' it out and giving Dave one more chance to get that container filled. After yesterday, the entire payload crew can truly say - 'I gave at the office!'"
A European experiment tested Dave's heart and lungs. Before the mission Dave noted, "One of the ones that I find very interesting, particularly as a physician, is the question of whether lungs work better if you're lying on your stomach or on your back. If you're healthy, this really doesn't matter. But if you're really sick - say, you're in a hospital, you're seriously ill, you've been in a car wreck, or you have a family member who has been - the question is, Would it be better to roll you over onto your stomach if you're on a respirator in an intensive care unit?" Dave had a personal interest in the experiment: he was dating Janneke Gisolf, one of the European team's graduate students and the two were even discussing potential baby names.
Dave was one of the astronauts responsible for creating tiny flame balls in a sealed container. Things were going well when Dave suddenly announced, "I see one flame ball and its name is Howard." The scientists wondered, "Why did he give it a name and who's Howard?". Later Dave declared, "This one's a girl, and its name is Samantha." Nobody knows why Dave decided to start naming the flame balls, but it was enjoyable for everybody involved. The flame balls were a great hit and ended on a high note - nine simultaneous flame balls, including one which lasted for an incredible 81 minutes.
Dave operated an Israeli dust experiment. A special camera took video images of dust clouds below, and could also be used to image lightning shooting upwards from clouds. Scientists on the ground instructed Dave where to point the camera, and the early lightning runs were a pleasant surprise. Dave said, "I [just] ran the video recorders, the cameras in the payload bay. It was the ground that actually discovered this very brief phenomenon. It's not something we've been able to see with our eyes - at least I haven't. So the 'oh wow' time came a couple of days later when we got a message from the ground and a picture showing this thing that we had filmed, and I was fortunate enough to be the camera operator for it. That was one of the real highlights on the flight for me."
After an amazingly productive 16 days in space, Dave and his crewmates prepared space shuttle Columbia for its journey home.
Columbia reentered the Earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003. A damaged wing resulted in Columbia breaking apart over Texas.
Subject: Flight Day 16 Friends, |