And I thought nothing original or new would be said this weekend.
Culbertson mentioned he had witnessed the invasion of Afghanistan from above.”From where, a C-130?” the soldier asked. A C-130 is a low-flying military aircraft used mainly to deliver troops and supplies to ground forces.
“No, higher,” Culbertson replied.
“Oh, a U-2?” the soldier guessed, referring to the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
“Higher than that.”
From Aug. 12 to Dec. 15, 2001, astronaut Frank Culbertson was aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Two hundred fifty miles above the Earth’s surface, Culbertson was the only American not on the planet at the time of the terrorist attacks. He — along with two Russian cosmonauts — witnessed the horrific events of Sept. 11, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan a month later, from space.
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I follow space topics pretty closely and can’t remember seeing this one. I think I would have remembered it anyway, for this part:
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The next morning, he found out that a former Naval Academy classmate and good friend, Charles Burlingame, was the captain of American Airlines Flight 77, which had crashed into the building the day before.
“Tears don’t flow the same in space,” said Culbertson in a letter he wrote to the public on Sept. 12. “It’s difficult to describe how it feels to be the only American completely off the planet at a time such as this. The feeling that I should be there with all of you, dealing with this, helping in some way, is overwhelming.”
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I was in Tokyo, and the feeling of forced separation was difficult. It wasn’t the first time for me — that was my first morning in Tokyo, when I was woken by knock on the door about what turned out to be the Loma Prieta earthquake in my hometown area. For several days, I had very little sense of what was going on. Luckily, not nearly as bad as 9/11.