An ISU alumnus and NASA flight director for the Columbia mission is dedicated to discovering the truth behind the tragedy.

“We are making progress every single day,” said LeRoy Cain, a Dubuque native.

Cain has been the flight director at Johnson Space Center in Houston for four years and has led 14 missions as flight director. He was in charge of the ascent and re-entry of the Columbia space shuttle. Currently, he continues to investigate possible causes for the shuttle’s destruction, he said.

“I’m leading a team of engineers from the various elements, collecting, collating and interpreting data, and providing direction and priority on areas to pursue and those to put on hold,” Cain said.

He said he enjoyed his time at Iowa State and in aerospace engineering, and he was a hard-working student.

“I worked very hard, studied a lot, and worked at the Hy-Vee on Lincoln Way,” he said. “I did not party much by normal standards.”

Cain said he misses many of his professors from Iowa State. One of those Cain mentioned, Jerald Vogel, associate professor of aerospace engineering, remembers Cain as “one of our better students overall.”

“He’s really a nice guy, easy to get along with and very intelligent,” Vogel said. “Generally, he’s a good person.”

Vogel said it is not uncommon for ISU graduates in the aerospace engineering college to acquire leadership positions, but thought Cain was doing very well.

“I really am happy to see he is where he’s at,” Vogel said. “He moved up very quickly. He must be very good in the business, maybe even better than when he was in school.”

Cain graduated from Dubuque Hempstead High School in 1982, and he graduated from Iowa State in 1988. Following graduation, he began work at Rockwell Shuttle Operations Company in June of the same year as an engineer and flight controller in training. Cain worked in flight control for his first ten years at Johnson Space Center and was selected to be flight director in 1998.

Cain knew each of the seven astronauts aboard the Columbia mission personally, including Laurel Clark, who was born in Ames.

“[Laurel] was very intelligent, extremely transparent, highly motivated and always a friendly individual,” Cain said. “Like the rest of the crew, she was an outstanding person and extremely competent in every way.”

Kevin Schalinske, assistant professor of food science and human nutrition, has been following news of and after the Columbia tragedy because he knew Clark, too. Schalinske went to high school and college with Clark.

Schalinske and Clark both graduated from Horlick High school in Racine, Wisc. in 1979 and attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison for undergraduate and graduate school.

“We knew each other pretty well because we took similar classes,” he said. “We ran into each other a lot.”

Schalinske said he was driving when heard about the disaster but it took a while for him to realize that Clark was one of the crew members because he didn’t realize she was born in Ames, and he wasn’t used to hearing her referred to without her maiden name.

“It took a couple of days for the reality to set in,” he said. “At first, it was just this big thing in the news. Later, the reality set in.”

Unlike Cain’s dedication to finding what caused the mission’s shuttle to disintegrate, Schalinske has been more interested in reading news about the crew members themselves.

“I read what’s in the news, but to me it’s more important to read about the people who died and their backgrounds,” Schalinske said. “I’m sure they’ll find out what happened, but to me that’s not the most important thing. I keep thinking about the people who knew these astronauts.”