The views of the Earth are really beautiful. If you've ever seen a space IMAX movie, that's really what it looks like. I wish I'd had more time just to sit and look out the window with a map, but our science program kept us very busy in the lab most of the time.

Brown logged over 2700 flight hours with 1700 in high performance military aircraft. Working 24 hours a day in two alternating shifts the crew successfully conducted approximately 80 experiments. The Laurel B.

He died on his first spaceflight when the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) disintegrated during orbital reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. David McDowell Brown (April 16 1956 – February 1 2003) was a United States Navy captain and a NASA astronaut. Brown became an astronaut in 1996 but had not served on a space mission prior to the Columbia disaster.