Dedicated in 1995, it fails to capture this mission and moment six years later.<\/p>\n
In the immediacy after learning of the 9\/11 attacks as they unfolded hundreds of miles beneath him, Culbertson raced to see what he could.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Where he was, there was no internet or cell service. There was no cable television, no stream of nonstop news about unfolding horror. He frantically peered down from the heavens in search of signs of the hell that had been unleashed below.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Smoke is seen pouring from the World Trade Center site in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. This image was captured from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson Jr., a South Carolina native.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NASA\/Provided<\/p>\n
Twin columns of smoke billowed from where the iconic twin towers had just stood in Manhattan. The plumes stretched out to the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
Culbertson used a video camera to capture the historic moment from his isolated perch.<\/p>\n
On the next pass around the planet, some 90 minutes later, their orbit carried them over the Midwest and back toward the East Coast. He looked down and saw the effects of the damage at the Pentagon. As the space station crossed over the eastern shore of Maryland, he looked north. Smoke was still pouring from New York City.<\/p>\n
After another 90 minutes and with the next orbit, the ubiquitous spider webs of contrails left by airplanes beneath them had disappeared.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat really brought home to me that this is a big deal,\u201d Culbertson told The Post and Courier. \u201cWe\u2019ve grounded all the airplanes, and this is going to change everything forever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He wanted to retaliate, \u201cto take it back to whoever was responsible for this.\u201d About a month later, he watched from space as U.S. forces delivered initial blows in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was some satisfaction in that, even though \u2026 the result of war is people dying and that’s unfortunate,\u201d Culbertson said. \u201cBut if you kill a lot of Americans, you\u2019re going to pay for it, and that\u2019s what was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
A quarter-century later, Culbertson said he thinks about that day often. Every time he walks through airport security. Every time he takes off and flies on his own. And, of course, every 9\/11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dedicated in 1995, it fails to capture this mission and moment six years later. In the immediacy after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[50090,105920,860,357375,264408,3631,718,5472,79,5614,193,24265,50089],"class_list":["post-844333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-9-11","tag-astronaut","tag-charleston","tag-frank-culbertson","tag-holly-hill","tag-international-space-station","tag-nasa","tag-pentagon","tag-science","tag-south-carolina","tag-space","tag-terrorism","tag-world-trade-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}