The Huffington Post
|
By Sara Gates
|
Posted: 09/11/12 03:33 PM ET | Updated: 09/11/12 03:56 PM ET
Frank Culbertson On 9/11: Astronaut Remembers What He Saw From Space On September 11, 2001 (PHOTO)
While almost every American can recall where they were and what they were doing during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, no other person shares astronaut Frank Culbertson's story.Culbertson, along with Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Tyurin and Vladimir Dezhurov, was one of three people in space at the time of the attacks. As theonly American not on the planet, the Expedition Three commander first heard the news of the tragedy in a private conversation with the flight surgeon around 10 a.m. New York time.
"I was flabbergasted, then horrified. My first thought was that this wasn't a real conversation, that I was still listening to one of my Tom Clancy tapes. It just didn't seem possible on this scale in our country," he wrote in an open letter NASA published the next day.
