HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- As head of Boeing Co.'s NASA business, Mike Mott tries never to miss NASA's broadcasts of space shuttle launches or landings. This one was going to be no different. Then the telephone rang. "I think we've lost Columbia on re-entry," said the voice on the line. It was Steve Oswald, head of Boeing's space shuttle program. "Are you sure?" asked Mott, who hadn't yet turned on his TV in his Houston home. "Do you have confirmation?" "We've lost the signal," Oswald said. Mott didn't ask about Columbia's crew. He felt no need to. The seven-person crew was traveling 18 times the speed of sound 39 miles above Earth when the fiery breakup occurred. For Mott, for Boeing and for the nation, a week of grief, pressure and, ultimately, rededication had just begun. Mott's work would bring him from the Johnson Space Center in Houston to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to a National Cathedral memorial service in Washington, D.C. Ultimately, he would wind up in Huntsville, the birthplace of American rocketry, in his push to rekindle the hope that keeps the American manned space program alive. The clock said 8:13 last Saturday when Mott hung up the phone. He marked the time and got to work. Within minutes, still working from home, Mott broke the news to Boeing's top defense executive, Jim Albaugh. Mott then dispatched recovery teams across the Southwest. He began coordinating communications with NASA. He asked to make certain that a Russian rocket, set to launch to resupply the International Space Station, would have everything the crew might need for an extended stay. Mott pulled Boeing's top orbital-systems engineer from a leadership training program and called him to Houston to help run the investigative work. He stopped former shuttle commander Brewster Shaw from driving to east Texas to recover Columbia wreckage. Mott needed Shaw in Houston to coordinate work with NASA. NASA's "MMT," its Mission Management Team, had gotten a new set of initials, "MRT." Short for Mishap Response Team. It was NASA's way of acknowledging a grim reality. This was no longer an active mission. By 1 p.m., Mott was ready to brief Boeing Chief Executive Phil Condit and the company's 29-member executive council in a global conference call. Speaking from his office at Boeing's Space Park complex near the Johnson Space Center, Mott delivered a key early finding: Data from sensors aboard the shuttle indicated that navigational systems had adjusted the shuttle's path during re-entry. This struck Mott as unusual. Probably important. By Monday morning, a large conference room at Space Park was no longer just a conference room. All day Sunday and overnight, technicians had transformed it into a computer-laden Contingency Operations Center. A large dynamic display screen hung on the front wall. Next to it, a Boeing staffer had hung a poster with a handwritten message: "We will support our customer. We will find the problem. We will fix the problem. And we will fly again soon." As other employees had done, Mott signed the poster. Today, the signatures of Condit and Albaugh are among more than 100 on the poster. By Tuesday, the search for answers was under way. The time for reflection was just beginning. Mott had served as a Marine test pilot. He had spent a career as a NASA administrator, earning the agency's Distinguished Service Medal before joining Boeing in 1998. Dressing for the Houston memorial service where President Bush would speak, Mott reached into his drawer and pinned the NASA medal to his lapel. It was the first time he had worn it since leaving NASA. Alongside it, Mott attached the blue enamel pin from shuttle mission STS-107. It had the crew's last names: Brown, Clark, Chawla, Anderson, Ramon, McCool and Husband. The pins would stay in his lapel all week long. Nothing in his career had prepared Mott for the outpouring of pain and patriotism that followed the shuttle crash. Not even the support he got after he had to eject when a bomb exploded under his F-4 fighter jet during a demonstration flight in 1977. On Wednesday, Mott counted his e-mail. Nearly 300 messages of support came in that day. By Friday, it was time to come to Huntsville. NASA has its roots in this former cotton town where German scientist Wernher von Braun first experimented with rockets, where Alan Shepard's rocket was tested, and where the Saturn V rockets that launched the Apollo space missions were built. Today, Huntsville is one of Boeing's largest NASA installations. Major parts of the International Space Station were built here. The modules that held the science experiments for STS-107 were assembled here. The crew of the ill-fated Columbia mission trained for their scientific work here. Mott's mission: To visit the birthplace of American rocketry and lay to rest fears employees might have about the future of NASA's manned flight program. For much of the nation, the Columbia disaster has sparked a wave of soul searching about the purpose of manned space missions. It has revived questions about the future of the $100 billion International Space Station, the costs and the dangers of space travel, and the value of scientific and defense work that taxpayers should get from their $15.47 billion budgeted for NASA in fiscal 2004. Mott says the search for the cause of the Columbia disaster must be "ruthless," no matter where the evidence leads. "We can't let any [shuttle] systems off easy," says Mott. "We've got to find out where the problem is and fix it." Mike Mott understands such questions. He knows the answers will have a big impact on Boeing's $2 billion-a-year NASA business. But he has heard other voices he thinks ultimately will prevail. President Bush has promised that the space station will continue operations. Condit told Mott that Boeing is determined to keep sending shuttles into space. "The president of the United States says we're still in this, and our chief executive says we're still in this," Mott told employees who assembled Friday for an update on the shuttle disaster--and for news about their job security. "I don't think there's any higher authority that I need. I think we all know what our direction is, so let's all get going." The message was just what Boeing's Huntsville employees needed to hear. Mott hopes the rest of the nation has heard it, too.