David M. Brown Quotes
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... the other thing growing up is that I was always interested in science.
Brown, David M. "STS-107 Preflight Interview: Mission Specialist David Brown." NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2002.
Born in the Ukraine to middle class parents, he became an successful engineer in Russia before he emigrated in 1919. America has not only been a magnet for the persecuted and the poor but highly skilled, and educated people came to America for the opportunity to further their career. No companies in Europe were then interested in producing large airplanes. In America, within 4 years he started his own company. He helped to design the famous Pan American Airways Flying Boats and in 1942 his company developed the world’s first production helicopter. He might have done that in France, Russia or elsewhere but he chose America like millions of other immigrants.
David McDowell Brown was a United States Navy captain and a NASA astronaut. He died on his first spaceflight, when the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) disintegrated during orbital reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Brown became an astronaut in 1996, but had not served on a space mission prior to the Columbia disaster. Brown was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
