Managing chaos
Within a year of that near miss, Culbertson moved on to manage NASA's so-called shuttle-Mir program, spearheading a multinational team that executed nine shuttle docking missions to the Russian space station.
Seven U.S. astronauts spent a cumulative total of 30 months on board Mir between March 1995 and June 1998, and as fate would have it, potential calamity repeatedly struck on Culbertson's managerial watch.
Former NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger was onboard Mir in February 1997 when a faulty oxygen canister set off the worst fire in the history of human space flight -- a 14-minute blaze that filled the station with choking smoke before it finally was extinguished.
The fire blocked the pathway to one of two rescue ships that Linenger and two of his five crewmates would have needed to abandon ship.
Four months later, an unmanned Progress space freighter crashed into Mir during a docking system test, punching a hole in the hull of the station's Spektr science module and prompting an emergency scramble to avoid a deadly depressurization of the entire outpost.
The crash also triggered a serious power outage that left U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and two Russian cosmonauts fending with flashlights in a darkened station as it tumbled in orbit 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the planet.
In between, toxic coolant leaks forced Linenger and cosmonaut crewmates to shut down the station's air conditioning system, which sent temperature and humidity aboard Mir soaring to uncomfortable levels.
A string of failures with oxygen generation and carbon dioxide removal machines left Linenger and his crewmates dependant on unreliable back-up systems, and stress in the wake of the cargo ship crash triggered cardiac problems for one of Foale's cosmonaut colleagues.
Back on Earth, Culbertson served as the American point man on a U.S.-Russian engineering team that frequently worked round-the-clock to stabilize the grim situation on the Russian station.
And as the manager ultimately responsible for the safety of U.S. astronauts on Mir, Culbertson also was an influential figure in both internal NASA and congressional debates over launching David Wolf -- the next U.S. researcher in line -- on a four-month mission to Mir.
Through it all, though, Culbertson kept stressing the criticality of learning to work with the Russians, an old Cold War nemesis that would be a major player in the International Space Station program.
There were cultural, technical and language barriers to overcome, he said, and the orbital crises served to forge a transoceanic bond that would be invaluable in building and operating the new international outpost.
"I think as you look back on it, one of the most important things we learned is that you have to expect the unexpected, and you have to be able to deal with it," Culbertson said in 1998. "And even though we didn't plan some of the more difficult problems we had -- and who would have planned them -- we dealt with them successfully, and we dealt with them as partners with the Russians."
Three years later, the U.S., Russia and 14 other nations have just finished up the first full phase of a $60 billion construction project aimed at raising the new international station -- complex assembly work that largely has come off as planned.
Already equal in mass to the 130-ton Mir, which was de-orbited earlier this year, the 17-story international station now features four pressurized wings that have the same habitable volume as a standard three-bedroom house.
No longer chained to the desk, Culbertson is anxious to float through the hatch.
"I think it'll be very exciting. It's like, you know, opening the door to a new home that you're moving into, but it's already furnished and already operating," he said.
"It'll be a great day, and a little scary in some ways, because we'll be beginning a very long, and very busy expedition of our own."
Hopefully, this trip will lack adversity.
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