NASA hit the challenge hard. The space agency built a bird radar to scan for flocks that could fly through a shuttle?s launch path and pose an impact risk.

Engineers told Congress that shuttle missions might fly up to once a week, allowing NASA to amortise its development costs over lots of launches; in the event there have been only a handful each year.

We knew as we were going through the interview process that there was no suggestion that any of us would fly on the shuttle.