Space Shuttle Missions playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL432F188226C29E68
more at
http://scitech.quickfound.net/astro/space_shuttle_news
.html
NASA film made shortly before the first flight of the
Space Shuttle Columbia,
STS-1. Narrated by
James Doohan ("
Scotty" of
Star Trek the original series--but without the accent) with appearances by
Isaac Asimov and
James Michener.
"PRESENTS A SIMULATED FLIGHT OF THE
SPACE SHUTTLE COLOMBIA. SHOWS ASTRONAUTS AND SCIENTISTS, BOTH
MEN AND
WOMEN, TAKING
PART IN WEIGHTLESSNESS TRAINING AND IN
WORK SESSIONS. STRESSES INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM, DESCRIBING THE EUROPEAN
SPACE AGENCY PROJECT, AND POINTING OUT AVAILABILITY OF SHUTTLE TO OTHER COUNTRIES FOR
RESEARCH PROJECTS."
NASA film HQ-295
Reupload of a previously uploaded film, in one piece instead of multiple parts, and with improved video & sound.
Public domain film from the
US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/
3.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-1
STS-1 was the first orbital flight of NASA's
Space Shuttle program. Space Shuttle Columbia launched on 12
April 1981, and returned to
Earth on 14 April, having orbited the Earth 37 times during the 54.5-hour mission. It was the first
American manned space flight since the
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project on 15 July
1975. STS-1 was the only US manned maiden test flight of a new spacecraft system, although it was the culmination of atmospheric testing of the
Space Shuttle orbiter.
Mission summary
The first launch of the
Space Shuttle occurred on 12 April 1981, exactly 20 years after the first manned space flight, when the orbiter
Columbia, with two crew members, astronauts
John W. Young, commander, and
Robert L. Crippen, pilot, lifted off from Pad A,
Launch Complex 39, at the
Kennedy Space Center. This was the first of 24 launches from Pad A. The launch took place at precisely
7 a.m. EST. A launch attempt two days earlier was scrubbed because of a timing problem in one of Columbia's general-purpose computers.
Not only was this the first launch of the Space Shuttle, but it marked the first time that solid-fuel rockets were used for a NASA manned launch (although all of the
Mercury and
Apollo astronauts had relied on a solid-fuel motor in their escape towers). STS-1 was also the first
U.S. manned space vehicle launched without an unmanned powered test flight. The STS-1 orbiter, Columbia, also holds the record for the amount of time spent in the
Orbiter Processing Facility (
OPF) before launch --
610 days, the time needed for the replacement of many of its heat shield tiles.
The primary mission objectives of the maiden flight were to perform a general check out of the Space Shuttle system, accomplish a safe ascent into orbit and to return to Earth for a safe landing. The only payload carried on the mission was a
Development Flight Instrumentation (
DFI) package, which contained sensors and measuring devices to record the orbiter's performance and the stresses that occurred during launch, ascent, orbital flight, descent and landing. All of these objectives were met successfully, and the orbiter's spaceworthiness was verified
...
Columbia reached an orbital altitude of 166 nautical miles (307 km). The 37-orbit, 1,074,567-mile (1,729,348 km)-long flight lasted 2 days, 6 hours,
20 minutes and 53 seconds.
Landing occurred on
Runway 23 at
Edwards Air Force Base, California, at 10:21 am
PST, 14 April 1981.
STS-1 was the first test flight of what was at the time the most complex spacecraft ever built. There were numerous problems...
A tile next to the right-hand
External Tank (ET) door on the underside of the shuttle was incorrectly installed, leading to excessive re-entry heating and the melting of part of the ET door latch.
The astronauts' on-orbit visual inspection showed significant damage to the thermal protection tiles on the
OMS/
RCS pods at the orbiter's aft end... Post-flight inspection of Columbia's heat shield revealed that an overpressure wave from the
Solid Rocket Booster (
SRB)'s ignition had resulted in the loss of 16 tiles and damage to 148 others.
The same overpressure wave pushed the body flap below the main engines at the rear of the shuttle well past the
point where damage to the hydraulic system would be expected, which would have made a safe re-entry impossible. The crew were unaware of this until after the flight, and
John Young reportedly said that if they had been aware of the potential damage at the time, they would have flown the shuttle up to a safe altitude and ejected, causing Columbia to have been lost on the first flight...
- published: 21 Nov 2015
- views: 675