Fwd: 35 Years Since STS-1

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: April 10, 2016 at 8:27:41 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 35 Years Since STS-1

 

Brings back a lot of memories and I am sure it does for a lot of others. It was a really honor to be an Orbit Team Bronze Flight EGIL for STS-1, Flight Director was Chuck Lewis and I had a Great SSR backroom support Jerry Pfleeger, Dennis Webb, and Dick Brown.

Unfortunately after STS-1 I was banned to Span, as Gene Kranz didn't allow Systems Division Branch Managers to man consoles on future missions. As we needed to be training others and Managing the work of the Branch. It was the correct decision, but no more fun of getting to man a MOCR console during the mission.

Gary

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
April 9th, 2016 

'You Don't Go Fly When You Got Debts': 35 Years Since STS-1 Inaugurated the Space Shuttle Program (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

 

STS-1's launch in April 1981, some 35 years ago this month, began a new era of spaceflight. Photo Credit: NASA

Thirty-five years ago, on 12 April 1981, the first winged orbital space vehicle carrying human pilots was launched from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Aboard Columbia for STS-1—the long-awaited maiden voyage of the shuttle era—were Commander John Young and Pilot Bob Crippen, tasked with spending two days evaluating the performance of the most complex manned spacecraft in history. Since it was formally approved for development, almost a decade earlier, the reusable shuttle had been directed to a mandate of flying routinely, transporting satellites, laboratories and people into low-Earth orbit, but before it could be declared "operational" it would have to perform four Orbital Flight Test (OFT) missions, of which STS-1 was the first.

It would also mark the first occasion in the history of the U.S. space program that a crew had been aboard for the inaugural voyage of a new spacecraft; the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft had all flown unmanned, before their systems were trusted with human pilots. Within the ranks of the astronaut corps, opinions were mixed. Fred Haise saw an unmanned first flight as trickier than a manned one. "It would have been very difficult," he told the NASA oral historian, "to have devised a scheme to have flown unmanned. I guess you could've used a link and really had a pilot on a stick on the ground…but to totally mechanically program it to do that—and inherent within the vehicle—would have been very difficult. With a crew on-board, able to handle the multitude of things that you could work around, inherently made the success potential of a flight much greater."

Others were more sceptical. "I didn't see any need in risking humans and I didn't think humans would be as proficient as automated equipment," recalled Henry Pohl, then-head of engineering and development, in a NASA oral history. "By that time [the late 1970s], we had the know-how and we could build robots or the automated equipment that can detect things long before a human can detect it and I thought the vehicle was going to be so difficult to land that we really ought to land it with automated equipment."

The STS-1 stack rolls out to Pad 39A in late December 1980. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

When Young and Crippen were named in March 1978 as part of a "pool" of pilots to fly the OFT shuttle missions, it was apparent that they might not survive Columbia's first mission. Three years later, shortly before heading to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, Young and fellow astronaut Joe Allen went to lunch in the cafeteria at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. Young had no money, so Allen paid for him. Afterwards, Young insisted on paying him back. Allen laughed and told him to forget it. "No," replied Young. "You don't go fly these things when you got debts." In Young's mind, he would fly into space on arguably the most hazardous piloted mission in U.S. history with all of his earthly debts settled.

On 29 December 1980, Columbia—attached to her bulbous External Tank (ET) and twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs)—rolled out from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to Pad 39A for final processing operations. In late February, her cluster of three main engines were successfully test-fired for 20 seconds, and liftoff was provisionally scheduled for no earlier than 17 March 1981. However, numerous technical obstacles and a human tragedy conspired to push the STS-1 mission into April. Firstly, technicians needed to repair a section of debonded insulation on the ET, which pushed the launch to 5 April, after which a strike by Boeing machinists enforced a further delay to 10 April. Several technicians were left unconscious by a dangerous accumulation of nitrogen gas, whilst working in the shuttle's aft compartment, leading to the tragic deaths of John Bjomstad and Forrest Cole.

T-0 on 10 April was timed to occur at the opening of a 6.5-hour "window", which opened at 6:50 a.m. EDT and whose parameters were dictated by the requirement for adequate lighting to satisfactorily photograph Columbia's ascent and preserve the option for a daylight landing opportunity at White Sands Missile Range, near Alamagordo, N.M., should a launch abort require Young and Crippen to perform an emergency landing after one orbit.

Shortly before 4 a.m. EDT on 10 April, the two astronauts boarded Columbia for what turned out to be a relatively uneventful countdown, until its final stages. Then, at T-9 minutes, during the final programmed hold in the countdown, a problem cropped up in one of the shuttle's General Purpose Computers (GPCs). It was described by NASA as "a timing skew"; in effect, the backup flight software was unable to synchronize itself with the primary set. Unlike earlier manned spacecraft, the shuttle was totally reliant upon its computers to run the main engines, move the elevons, control its heading, and operate the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS). The units were so critical that five GPCs were carried: four primaries, which ran the same software and "voted" before issuing commands, and a backup. If one of the primaries disagreed with the others, it was "outvoted" and considered faulty. The backup computer contained a different set of flight software, so that if all four primaries became corrupted, it could take over.

Young and Crippen depart the Operations & Checkout (O&C) Building for arguably the most hazardous human space launch ever attempted by the United States. Photo Credit: NASA

Taking advantage of the lengthy window, T-0 was rescheduled for 10:20 a.m. EDT, as engineers wrestled with the software, but when a solution proved elusive it was prudently decided to stand down for 48 hours. Later that evening, the problem was isolated and the countdown resumed on the 11th. "The software," recalled astronaut Gordon Fullerton in a NASA oral history, "became the biggest stumbling block. The software in these computers not only control where you fly and the flight path, but almost every other subsystem! Getting the software wrung out and simulators writing the checklists…we didn't really have it nailed down by STS-1. There were a lot of unknowns, [but] you just finally have to set a launch date and say 'We're going to go'. You cannot be 100 percent sure of everything."

After spending the 11th maintaining their proficiency, the astronauts headed into the suiting-up room in the small hours of the 12th, to be greeted by the result of the suit techs' humor. "John Young made a big deal about the size of the American flag on his suit," remembered technician Jean Alexander in a NASA oral history. "It came in with kind of a small version and they got several sizes before he was satisfied and it was kind of a joke, so on launch morning there was a motel that we stayed at Cocoa Beach and they had this huge flag on a pole [outside] a real-estate office next door. One of the suit techs that was down there for launch talked the real-estate people into letting him take that flag down and he took it to the suit room for suit-up morning and had it actually cover one whole wall! When John walked in, he said 'John, is that big enough?'" The episode lightened the mood sufficiently for what was about to come.

Unlike their previous attempt, the countdown on 12 April 1981—which also happened to be the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering orbital flight—proved charmed, which came as a pleasant surprise to Crippen. As the clock paused at T-9 minutes, Launch Director George Page told the men that he would extend the "hold" slightly, to ensure that the team were sufficiently calm and focused for the events ahead. "It was for a few minutes," Crippen noted, "to get relaxed." At T-5 minutes, Crippen started the shuttle's Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) and verified their nominal performance.

The final minute was laced with the excitement and technobabble of the first flight of an entirely new U.S. piloted orbital spacecraft, which has not been seen since, and which will not be seen again until either Boeing or SpaceX lofts its first crewed CST-100 or Crew Dragon, sometime in 2017. "The firing system for the sound suppression water system will be armed just a couple of seconds from now," came the call from the launch commentator. "T-45 seconds and counting…the Development Flight Instrumentation recorders are on…T-35 seconds, we're just a few seconds away from switching to the redundant set sequencer…T-27 seconds, we've gone for redundant set sequencer start…T-20 seconds and counting…T-15…14…13…12…T-10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four…we've gone for Main Engine Start…" as a shower of sparks from the hydrogen burn igniters gave way to a sudden, low-pitched rumble and a sheet of translucent orange flame, "…we have Main Engine Start…"

Six seconds before 7 a.m. EDT on 12 April 1981, anything slumbering on the Space Coast was slumbering no more, as the rumble of Columbia's engines intensified into a mighty crescendo. Almost as quickly as it had appeared, the orange sheet of flame was gone, to be replaced by a trio of dancing Mach diamonds, as supersonic exhaust gases surged from the engine bells. A vast cloud of smoke quickly obscured the entire vehicle. The commentator's next few words were drowned out by the ear-splitting staccato crackle and brilliant fireshow of the SRBs, which ignited precisely at T-zero, and precisely on the hour. From the press site, Columbia seemed to punch its way upwards from the smoke, accompanied by the shouts, whoops, and cheers of 3,500 spectators and hundreds of thousands more who were watching on television. "We have liftoff of America's first Space Shuttle…and the shuttle has cleared the tower…"

Young (left) and Crippen at their respective flight deck stations during training. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

From their seats, Young and Crippen later recalled that Columbia rocked, perceptibly, backwards and forward, accompanied by a sharp increase of noise inside the cabin. Crippen would remark that, although the roar of the main engines definitely got their attention, it was the punch-in-the-back ignition of the SRBs which convinced and assured them that they were really going somewhere. For the first few seconds, as they cleared the tower and soared into the clear Florida sky atop two dazzling columns of flame, the cockpit instruments were blurred by the vibrations, though not unreadable. By the time that the shuttle rolled over onto her back, ten seconds into the flight, and established herself on the correct heading for a 40.3-degree-inclination orbit, the two men reported that the vibrations had lessened to a point that allowed them to read their instruments without problems.

"Roll Program!" radioed Young as Columbia performed an axial rotation to orient itself onto the proper flight azimuth, seemingly "rolling" onto its back.

"Roger, Roll," replied Capcom Dan Brandenstein.

At the post-flight debriefings, Young told engineers that Columbia's ascent was considerably more rapid than he had experienced during his two Saturn V launches to the Moon. Analysis also showed that STS-1 had caused significant damage to Pad 39A, which could have been catastrophic: the shockwaves produced by the main engines and the SRBs had buckled a strut linking Columbia with the ET. Had the strut failed, it was subsequently determined, the result could have been a Loss of Crew and Vehicle (LOCV) event and steps were taken to strengthen the struts in readiness for future missions.

Climbing through the low atmosphere, the wind noise outside gradually intensified into something which could only be likened to a screaming. A minute into the flight, as Columbia approached an altitude of 9.3 miles (15 km), she passed through a period of maximum aerodynamic turbulence, which required the GPCs to throttle the engines back to just under two-thirds of their rated thrust. The passage through this period, nicknamed "Max Q", was accompanied by an increase in the noise and vibration of the engines, although their performance remained within structural expectations. Shortly thereafter, the three engines were throttled back up to full power.

"Columbia, you're Go at throttle up," radioed Brandenstein.

"Roger, Go at throttle up," acknowledged Young.

The sound from the boosters, meanwhile, remained sporadic and decreased to virtually nothing as the time approached, 132 seconds into the ascent, for their separation. Shortly before the SRBs burned out, Brandenstein, told the crew that they were now "negative seats," meaning that Columbia was too high to use the ejection seats. Fortunately, the vehicle was performing beautifully. In his 2006 autobiography, Riding Rockets, veteran astronaut Mike Mullane recalled listening with relief as each abort-boundary call was passed up by Brandenstein; each call signaled "the sweet song of nominal flight".

When the separation motors fired and the SRBs fell away, Young and Crippen reported a bright, orange-yellow flash, which appeared to stream up in front of the shuttle's nose and back above the front windows. Separation of the boosters was accompanied by a harsh, grating sound, although both performed nominally, parachuting down into the Atlantic Ocean for recovery and reuse. With them gone, the astronauts now found it much easier to flip switches in the cockpit. At this point, the so-called "T-Fail-Pitchover" maneuver was executed, placing the horizon in their direct field of view for the first time, and Young and Crippen saw penny-sized to fist-sized particles flooding past the windows.

"What a view! What a view!" radioed Crippen, jubilantly.

"Glad you're enjoying it," replied Brandenstein.

Young and Crippen flew on for six more minutes after SRB separation, reaching Mach 19, at which point the engines were throttled back to maintain around three times the force of terrestrial gravity in order not to over-stress the vehicle. Throughout the entire ascent, the commander's heart rate rose no higher than 90 beats per minute, whereas that of rookie Crippen peaked at nearly 130. The first flight of a fleet of shuttles which would revolutionize U.S. exploration of the heavens had begun, and a 30-year chapter in the history books had begun. After STS-1, Young would quip that he was so old that his heart would not beat any faster. However, Flight Director Neil Hutchinson had another explanation: the calm, cool Young must have been asleep the whole time!

 

Copyright © 2016 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
April 10th, 2016 

'To Come to California': 35 Years Since STS-1 Inaugurated the Space Shuttle Program (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

 

After its Thermal Protection System (TPS) successfully bore the brunt of the fiery return to Earth, Columbia performed an unpowered, "deadstick" landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on 14 April 1981. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Thirty-five years have now passed since the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Program. On the morning of 12 April 1981, orbiter Columbia rocketed away from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), kicking off a new era which would see more humans delivered into the heavens than at any other point in history. As described in yesterday's AmericaSpace article, the two days of STS-1—crewed by Commander John Young and Pilot Bob Crippen—was one of the most hazardous spaceflights of all time, marking the first occasion on which a brand-new spacecraft had undertaken its very first mission with humans aboard. There existed a very real risk that Young and Crippen might lose their lives, not only during launch and ascent, but also during Columbia's hypersonic re-entry and desert landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. That landing took place on 14 April 1981.

Plunging into the "sensible" atmosphere at Mach 25, subjecting a patchwork of Thermal Protection System (TPS) tiles to extreme re-entry temperatures, and accomplishing an unpowered, "deadstick" touchdown at Edwards were core requirements for the shuttle. Although the last few minutes, from passing subsonic velocity in the low atmosphere to the runway, had been exhaustively rehearsed during Enterprise Approach and Landing Tests (ALTs), the 45 minutes from the "de-orbit" burn of Columbia's Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines, through the searing furnace of re-entry and the complex series of aerodynamic turns needed to "bleed off" the craft's speed and align her for touchdown, were largely unknown. To play things safe, NASA opted to use the wide expanse of dry lakebed at Edwards for the first four test flights.

This offered Young and Crippen a somewhat greater margin for error, although it was anticipated that when the shuttle became fully operational and its aerodynamic performance was better understood, precision landings on a narrower concrete runway at KSC would become the norm. Four hours before landing, at around 9 a.m. EDT on 14 April 1981, the two astronauts closed and latched Columbia's payload bay doors for the final time.

 

Columbia becomes the first piloted orbital spacecraft to land like an airliner. Photo Credit: NASA

Twenty minutes before the de-orbit burn, they oriented their craft tail-first and switched on two of the three Auxiliary Power Units (APUs). These were responsible for controlling the shuttle's flight surfaces and hydraulics throughout re-entry. Fifty-three hours and 28 minutes after launch, passing over the Indian Ocean, the OMS engines ignited in the vacuum, slowing Columbia sufficiently to begin her perilous, high-speed glide to a landing strip on the opposite side of the planet. The 2.5-minute burn was reported with typical coolness by Young: "Burn went nominal."

"Nice and easy does it, John," replied Capcom Joe Allen from the Mission Control Center (MCC) at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. "We are all riding with you."

Minutes later, Columbia was turned around and her nose pitched "upward" at a 39-degree angle. Young and Crippen removed the safety pins from their ejection seats and the overhead escape hatches, then switched on the third APU. As the spacecraft entered the denser portion of the atmosphere, the tracking station on the island of Guam in the Central Pacific noted bursts of Columbia's pulsing thrusters. Traveling at close to 16,000 mph (25,750 km/h), they hurtled onward and onward, as the color of ionized atmospheric gases morphed from a pale pink into a deeper pinkish-red, then reddish-orange, like a blast furnace.

As a tense world waited, the NASA Public Affairs Officer (PAO) reeled off a steady stream of updates. "We will be out of communication with Columbia for approximately 21 minutes," he noted, making reference to the lengthier-than-normal period of radio blackout, caused by the accumulation of a plasma "sheath" around the orbiter. "No tracking stations before the West Coast … and there is a period of about 16 minutes of aerodynamic re-entry heating that communications are impossible … " During this time, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO), flying almost directly beneath Columbia's path, acquired an infrared image, revealing Columbia's meteoric descent. The aircraft had earlier taken off from Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii and established itself at an altitude of 44,880 feet (13,700 meters), about an hour before the spacecraft attained "Entry Interface."

Descending lower now, the astronauts were, at length, able to receive Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) radio calls, crackling between Mission Control and one of the T-38 Talon chase aircraft which would accompany the shuttle down to the runway. "Hello, Houston," Young called, "Columbia's here! We're doing Mach 10.3 at 188 [thousand feet]." For the majority of this period, except for the so-called "roll reversals"—a series of S-shaped curves to reduce speed—the computers were primarily responsible for flying the vehicle. Shortly after the orbiter crossed the California coastline, near Big Sur, Young took manual control. Long-range tracking cameras on Anderson Peak captured the first ground-based images of Columbia, flying at an altitude of more than 22 miles (35 km).

 

Columbia is approached by recovery and servicing vehicles on the Edwards runway in the minutes after Wheels Stop. Photo Credit: NASA

"What a way to come to California!" exulted Crippen.

Still traveling at well over four times the speed of sound, the shuttle passed over Bakersfield, Lake Isabella, and Mojave Airport, enabling the astronauts to verify by glancing through their windows that the ground track was "right on the money." Young then executed a sweeping, 225-degree turn to align his ship with the dry lakebed Runway 23 at Edwards. Dropping to below 7.5 miles (12 km), he took Columbia's stick and would later remark that control was crisp and precise.

Watching the arrival of America's first space shuttle from orbit were tens of thousands of people, including Larry Eichel of the Philadelphia Inquirer. His testimony encapsulated the anxiety of everybody awaiting this historic event. "The shuttle appeared far above the north-east horizon," he explained, "a white dot against a cloudless blue sky. That dot was dropping so fast that to an eye accustomed to watching the more gradual descent of commercial jets, it seemed inevitable that the shuttle would crash to the desert floor."

As Columbia drew closer, her speed brake was gradually retracted and was fully closed by the time the vehicle was 2,000 feet (600 meters) above the runway. Falling precipitously, seven times steeper than a commercial airliner, and almost twice the speed, the reaction of Eichel that a crash was about to occur can, perhaps, be forgiven. It was at this point, however, that Young pulled back on the stick, lifted the nose, and transformed his ship, in a split second, from a falling brick into a graceful flying machine.

Weather conditions in the California desert were near-perfect and surface winds were calm. At 10:20:35 a.m. PDT (1:20:35 p.m. EDT), Bob Crippen deployed the landing gear and all six wheels were down and locked into position within the 10-second time limit. Columbia touched down perfectly, 22 seconds later, at a speed of 212 mph (342 km/h), and rolled for almost 9,850 feet (3,000 meters), before coming to a smooth halt. The speed brake was opened and full-down elevons were applied, giving the astronauts an impression of considerable deceleration. "As it touched down," recalled Eichel, "at a speed 80-90 miles an hour faster than a commercial airliner does, the rear wheels nestled into the hard-packed sand, kicking a rooster-tail high into the air." The countdown to landing was echoed by both the public affairs spokesmen at Edwards and by the crew of one of the T-38s, who were first to welcome Young and Crippen back home with a resounding "Beautiful! Beautiful!"

Rookie astronaut John Creighton was aboard a U.S. Army helicopter at Edwards that day, and he later described the remarkable efforts of some spectators to get a close-up view of Columbia's first return from orbit. "All kinds of people had camped out there for several days," he told the NASA Oral History Project, years later. "There was a fence and there'd been a patrol to keep people back there. As soon as the shuttle rolled to a stop, these people charged forward, [this] fence went down and they got motorcycles and cars that went out racing. This was about five miles from where the shuttle actually landed and the only way you could see was with binoculars, but, boy, they wanted to get an up-front view! The security folks didn't know what to do, so they told the helicopters to try to get this crowd under control, so these helicopters would swoop down in front of the on-charging group of cars. The helicopter pilots loved it. They were having a great time trying to head off all of these people!"

 

Pilot Bob Crippen descends the steps from Columbia, as Commander John Young (at the foot of the stairs) looks on. Photo Credit: NASA

Post-landing analysis revealed that Columbia's right-hand inboard brakes suffered higher-than-anticipated pressure, which caused a slight tug to the right, just before the wheels stopped. Young compensated for this by balancing the total braking to either side of the shuttle, maintaining a near-perfect course straight down the runway centerline, stopping at the intersection of Runways 23 and 15. One notable surprise was the sheer amount of lakebed debris—pebbles and grains of sand—kicked up by the wheels.

"Do I have to take it to the hangar, Joe?" quipped Young.

"We're gonna dust it off first," retorted Joe Allen with a chuckle.

Immediately after wheelstop, the astronauts unstrapped and began safing the OMS and Reaction Control System (RCS) switches before the arrival of the ground crew. When the latter arrived, they first hooked up sensitive "sniffer" devices to verify the absence of toxic or explosive gases and attached coolant and purging lines to Columbia's aft compartment to air-condition her systems and payload bay and dissipate residual fumes.

Whilst this procedure was underway, the ground teams worked in Self-Contained Atmospheric Protection Ensemble (SCAPE) suits, then moved an airport-type stairway over to the hatch. Years later, Joe Allen would find it amusing to watch Young and Crippen, who looked like ordinary people as they came down the steps … surrounded by the ground team, whose cumbersome SCAPE suits made them look like the astronauts!

John Young, who had remained totally cool throughout re-entry, now let his excitement get the better of him. As soon as he got outside, about an hour after touchdown, he bounded down the steps, checked out the tires and landing gear, and jabbed the air triumphantly with both fists. He even kicked the tires, which scared the life out of the engineers, because they contained 375 psi of pressure. Combined with the hot brakes, there existed a real possibility that a tire might explode. Young, of course, could be forgiven. He was over-excited after completing the most audacious flying challenge of his career.

And it showed.

"I've often claimed that John calmed down" by the time he got outside, Bob Crippen said later, but noted with a twinkle in his eye: "You should've seen him when he was inside the cockpit!"

 Copyright © 2016 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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