Autor Wątek: [HC] 40 years after its pioneering launch, NASA's space shuttle leaves a 'mixed  (Przeczytany 1936 razy)

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40 years after its pioneering launch, NASA's space shuttle leaves a 'mixed legacy.' Was it worth it?
Andrea Leinfelder Staff writer April 8, 2021 Updated: April 10, 2021 12:38 a.m.


The first space shuttle mission launched April 12, 1981, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA


Space shuttle mission STS-1 astronaut Bob Crippen is greeted by well-wishers at Ellington AFB ceremonies for his and John Young's return to Houston following their space shuttle landing at Edwards AFB in California in April 1981.
Timothy Bullard, HC staff / Houston Chronicle



Space shuttle astronauts Bob Crippen, left, and John Young hold a model of the orbiter Columbia before the first test flight of the space carrier. Larry Reese, HC staff / Houston Chronicle


Space shuttle mission STS-1 astronauts John Young, at microphone, and Bob Crippen waving from podium at Ellington AFB ceremonies on April 14, 1981following their space shuttle landing at Edwards AFB in California. Timothy Bullard, HC staff / Houston Chronicle


Vice President George Bush participates in a teleconference with the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia on April 13, 1981. George Bush Presidential Library and Museum


Space shuttle mission STS-1 astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen on podium at Ellington AFB ceremonies for their return to Houston following their space shuttle landing at Edwards AFB in California. Timothy Bullard, HC staff / Houston Chronicle


Space shuttle mission STS-1 astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen in podium at Ellington AFB ceremonies for their return to Houston following their space shuttle landing at Edwards AFB in California. Timothy Bullard, HC staff / Houston Chronicle


Space shuttle mission STS-1 astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen are greeted by White House chief of staff James Baker at Ellington AFB ceremonies for their return to Houston following their space shuttle landing at Edwards AFB in California. Timothy Bullard, HC staff / Houston Chronicle


Space shuttle mission STS-1 astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen are greeted by well-wishers at Ellington AFB ceremonies for their return to Houston following their space shuttle landing at Edwards AFB in California. Timothy Bullard, HC staff / Houston Chronicle

Bob Crippen’s heart rate jumped to 130. Countdown for the space shuttle’s maiden voyage had reached the one-minute mark, and he was strapped inside for the boldest test flight in NASA history.

Previous spacecraft — for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs — were first launched without astronauts onboard. But the shuttle was significantly more complex.

“We thought it had a better chance of success if we were there,” Crippen said.

The April 12, 1981, launch would be his first spaceflight.

Forty years ago, Crippen’s heart rate reflected a nationwide mood as his first flight coincided with the debut of an engineering marvel. The space shuttle fleet flew 135 missions over three decades, with mission control from the Johnson Space Center. Its crews built the International Space Station, repaired and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope and carried a larger, more diverse group of people into space.

It was also expensive and sometimes deadly. The shuttle never delivered on NASA’s early promises of flying 40 to 60 times a year, which would help bring down the cost of accessing space, and 14 people died between the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia accident in 2003.

“It left behind a mixed legacy,” said John Logsdon, a retired professor and founder of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. “On one hand, the decision to develop it was based on a series of promises basically none of which were fulfilled. And yet it was a remarkable technological achievement and a continuing source of national pride.”

40 years ago

For Crippen, a Navy pilot who grew up in Porter, that first flight began like an aircraft catapult launching planes off a ship: It was a nice kick in the pants.

He launched into space with John Young. The first two minutes of the mission, dubbed STS-1, were loud and the space shuttle Columbia shook as two solid rocket boosters propelled it upward. After the boosters detached, the ride was quiet and “smooth as glass,” Crippen said.

Chuck Lewis, a NASA flight director for later portions of the mission when the shuttle was in orbit, watched from his Clear Lake home.

So he sat on the edge of his chair and worried about the shuttle’s aerodynamics. Unlike capsules, which launched atop a long rocket in a streamlined manner, the shuttle had wings and other protruding features that would have to withstand the forces of launch.

If something went wrong during the first two minutes, Lewis knew the shuttle couldn’t abort its launch. And the ejection seats weren’t really expected to save the astronauts.

“If you eject, you’re going to eject right into a solid rocket booster tail blast,” Lewis said. “You probably would be burnt to a crisp.”

When the main engines shut off, meaning the shuttle had reached orbit, his daughter saw tears running down Lewis’ cheeks.

His shift at the Johnson Space Center began after the shuttle opened its payload bay doors — and just as Crippen reported missing heat-shield tiles on the top back of the vehicle.

“What about the tiles on the bottom?” Lewis recalled thinking. “Those are the critical ones.”

‘Technological hubris’

Developing a winged spacecraft was a giant technological leap, and the heat-shield tiles, essential for keeping the crew alive during re-entry, had long plagued the agency. Early versions of the tiles weren’t strong enough to withstand meteoroid impacts. After the tiles were strengthened, engineers struggled to keep them firmly affixed to Columbia.

The Apollo program had emboldened NASA. But when getting men to the moon, the agency relied on brute force to escape Earth’s gravity. Its capsule landed in the ocean like a cannonball beneath parachutes. The shuttle’s fixed wings, allowing it to glide to a runway landing, would require more sophistication.

“There was a significant degree of technological hubris in NASA’s view of what would be achievable,” Logsdon wrote in his book “After Apollo? Richard Nixon and the American Space Program.”

Further, there was no top-level, long-range planning for what NASA should do after Apollo until 1968, Logsdon said.

Unlike President John F. Kennedy, who threw ample resources into the Apollo program, President Richard Nixon placed human spaceflight alongside other national priorities. NASA hoped for a shuttle, moon base, space station and mission to Mars. Only the shuttle was initially approved.

The Office of Management and Budget had proposed a smaller, more experimental vehicle. But NASA argued for a larger space shuttle that would carry all U.S. missions: military, NASA and commercial.

Nixon chose the larger shuttle in 1972. He liked its ability to carry national security missions. And it created aerospace jobs ahead of his election — setting a precedent that would make jobs an important, sometimes overriding, factor for future space programs, Logsdon wrote.

Launch cadence

Between 1981 and 2011, the space shuttle flew 355 individuals into space. It carried a more diverse group of passengers, including NASA’s first female astronaut, Sally Ride, and NASA’s first African American astronaut, Guion Bluford. People representing 16 different countries flew on the shuttle.

“I don’t think there will ever be a vehicle quite like the space shuttle. It was beautiful,” said Jason Davis, editorial director at the Planetary Society, a nonprofit that seeks to get more people engaged with space.

The initial intent was to launch the shuttle 40 to 60 times a year at a cost of $10.5 million per launch. The shuttle’s launch cadence peaked in 1985 with nine flights. The average annual launch rate was 4.3 a year, and the cost per launch was up to 20 times higher than the 1972 estimate, according to Logsdon’s book.

Extensive refurbishment was required after each flight. And the shuttle lost commercial customers after the Challenger accident in 1986, which prompted a change in national policy to prohibit the shuttle from launching most fare-paying satellites. Most military satellites were also removed from the shuttle and placed on rockets that launch without people onboard. Today, rockets owned by companies, not the government, are launching satellites into orbit.

“You can lose a rocket and it’s a sad day and billions of dollars get lost,” Davis said. “But if you lose a space shuttle, you lose people. And it’s awful and tragic.”

The Department of Defense had determined many aspects of the shuttle’s design, but only 10 dedicated national security missions would fly on the shuttle.

“The increased complexity of a shuttle designed to be all things to all people created inherently greater risks than if more realistic technical goals had been set at the start,” according to a report from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

In orbit

Crippen knew the shuttle was complex, and he anticipated problems on the first flight. The missing tiles didn’t really bother him. They hadn’t been tested as rigorously as the more crucial tiles on the shuttle’s belly.

He spent his two days in orbit testing the shuttle’s various systems. The toilet, unfortunately, wasn’t working properly (bags were on the shuttle as a backup).

Crippen also gave a tribute to John Bjornstad and Forrest Cole, who died after a countdown test just weeks before the shuttle’s first launch.

“They believed in the space program, and it meant a lot to them,” Crippen said while in orbit, according to a NASA transcript.

On the ground, mission control was preparing to bring the astronauts home. Ultimately, they had to trust in the shuttle’s design.

‘An amazing machine’

The design of the shuttle would become a point of pride for the nation.

“You’d be hard-pressed to say we’ve had any other spacecraft or launch vehicle in the last 40 years that’s contributed as much as the shuttle did,” said Jared Zambrano-Stout, a space policy expert with the law firm Meeks Butera & Israel. “That type of technological prowess is not something that any other country has been able to duplicate.”

The shuttle’s biggest accomplishment was building the International Space Station. But it spurred innovation on Earth, too. The shuttle’s fuel pumps inspired a miniaturized heart pump designed to keep patients alive as they waited for a transplant. Aerodynamics research conducted as part of the space shuttle program made trucks more fuel efficient, according to NASA.

The shuttle was also a predecessor for reusability before SpaceX began landing and reusing the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket.

In the Houston area, some 650 people working with NASA’s Johnson Space Center retired only after the shuttle took its final flight.

“People are just really passionate about the space shuttle around here,” said Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, a historian for the Johnson Space Center. “It was an amazing machine.”

Landing

George W.S. Abbey was at Edwards Air Force Base in California when the first shuttle re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. He was director of NASA’s flight operations at that time and would later become director of the Johnson Space Center.

“John (Young) was so exuberant,” he recalled. “He was jumping up and down. So excited that everything had worked as we wanted it to work.”

Abbey wished NASA would have built another winged vehicle. But that isn’t in the agency’s immediate future. NASA is using a capsule for its plans to return humans to the moon. And the Commercial Crew program, where companies own vehicles that carry astronauts to the space station, is using capsules. These turned out to be simpler and faster to design.

Double sonic booms announced that space shuttle Columbia was arriving, surprising the crowd at Edwards Air Force Base. Lewis was watching from Houston’s mission control. He recalls Young getting out of the shuttle, looking at its belly and triumphantly pumping his fist in the air. The tiles had worked.

“Then I knew we had a program,” Lewis said.


Source: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/space/article/40-years-after-its-pioneering-launch-NASA-s-16086053.php#photo-20842363

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Odp: [NYT] THE SHUTTLE: AMERICA POISED FOR A RETURN TO SPACE
« Odpowiedź #1 dnia: Kwiecień 14, 2021, 00:51 »
THE SHUTTLE: AMERICA POISED FOR A RETURN TO SPACE
By Malcolm W. Browne April 7, 1981 [NYT]

1, as the space shuttle's maiden flight is officially called, is to get the Columbia into orbit and back to a safe landing on Earth. If the astronauts John W. Young and Capt. Robert L. Crippen manage to accomplish more than that, possibly the completion of 36 scheduled orbits, space agency officials will consider it a bonus.

The hope is that when the Columbia rises from its launching pad here Friday morning, as plans now stand, it will stay up for an orbital voyage lasting 54 1/2 hours.

But nothing is certain. If trouble develops before the launching, the astronauts might have to leave their cockpit before their craft even gets off the ground, sliding like trapeze artists down an escape wire to a parked military personnel carrier. With a lot of luck, they would then drive to safety.

If a mishap should occur soon after liftoff, the two men might be forced to fire their spine-wrenching ejection seats, allowing them to parachute into the Atlantic.

And if problems should arise a bit later, they might turn around and land at the Kennedy Space Center itself. Still further into the mission, they might park their ship in an emergency, low-altitude orbit, or try for a single orbit around Earth, or land quickly. Alternate landing sites have been selected in New Mexico, California, Hawaii, Spain and Okinawa. Or the shuttle might have to put down in other places, including the ocean.

Ideally, however, Mission STS-1 will go this way: As water sprinklers pour spray into the air around launching pad 39A to reduce the shattering noise of three main engines and two booster rockets, Mission STS-1 will begin. Six seconds later, already traveling 75 miles an hour, the shuttle will clear its support tower at an altitude of 347 feet, with the astronauts pressed by acceleration against their seats.

At eight seconds after liftoff, the shuttle will turn slightly from its vertical flight path toward a trajectory that will put it in orbit. A critical moment will come 53 seconds into the mission, when the air rushing past the accelerating shuttle will exert its maximum dynamic pressure - 573 pounds per square foot of the spacecraft's cross section. If something is going to come loose or break as the result of dynamic pressure, this is the moment most likely to cause trouble.

Past that point, however, the air thins rapidly and pressures decrease. At 2 minutes 12 seconds after launching, connecting bolts will explode and the shuttle will slough off its two 149-foot solidfuel rocket boosters.

Each solid-fuel rocket will have consumed its one million pounds of fuel by then. But since the rockets are among the most expensive elements in the Space Transporter System, they were designed to be reused scores of times. Three huge parachutes will ease each one down into the Atlantic about 7 minutes 13 seconds after the launching, where a ship will be waiting at their calculated splashdown point.

Meanwhile, three hydrogen-powered main engines will continue to accelerate the shuttle, and at 8 minutes 32 seconds after liftoff, the last of the hydrogen and oxygen stored in the huge external tank will be exhausted. By then the shuttle will be traveling 16,697 miles an hour, 73 miles high and 852 miles out over the Atlantic.

Nineteen seconds later, the external tank will drop off and the orbiter will be on its own. For all future maneuvering, including orbital changes and the ''burn'' needed to slow the ship for its return to earth, the Columbia will have to rely on its limited supplies of hypergolic propellants - chemicals that ignite spontaneously on contact with one another.

The empty aluminum tank, weighing some 39 tons, will tumble back toward Earth, and is supposed to break up when it hits the atmosphere. Metal chunks of varying sizes will rain down over a swath more than 2,400 miles long in the Indian Ocean.

At 10 minutes 32 seconds after liftoff, the shuttle will fire the first of three maneuvering rocket blasts, each less than two minutes long, designed to smooth the ship's orbit into a circle 173 miles above the earth.

About an hour and 20 minutes after liftoff, the shuttle will complete its first orbit, and if all has gone well so far, the astronauts' work as test pilots will begin. Their first job will be to test the doors enclosing the shuttle's cargo bay.

Except for some testing equipment, the bay itself will be empty. But hinged to the inside surfaces of the doors are heat radiators that must function reliably if the shuttle is to be a useful space tool. Although the temperature outside the shuttle's thin shell is far below minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit, the inside of the shuttle will get hot. Chemical electricity generators, five large computers and other electronic equipment, as well as the activities of the astronauts themselves, all will flood the crew's quarters with heat. And the vehicle is insulated so well that little heat can escape.

If the cooling and air-conditioning systems dependent on the door radiators should fail, STS-1 would have to abort and return to Earth within nine hours. The doors will be opened and closed twice to make sure latches and fittings are operating flawlessly. They will then be opened until about the 26th hour of flight, then closed for two hours during maneuvering tests.

With the first critical door tests completed 2 hours 25 minutes after liftoff, the astronauts will settle down to the routine of tests and measurements.

After checking navigation equipment, and performing such housekeeping chores as dumping a waste-water tank, the shuttle crew will eat its first meal, scheduled to begin five hours after liftoff. Cruising over southern Africa, the two astronauts will eat a lunch of peaches, beef patties, scrambled eggs and bran flakes, washed down with orange juice and cocoa.

The tests will continue: of the flight control system and reaction control system, of computer functioning, cabin air quality, and cabin television, of medical measurements and emergency procedures. At 13 hours after launching, the astronauts will retire for nearly eight hours' sleep.

The routine will continue, if there are no hitches, through two days and nights. At 53 hours after liftoff, following a final snack and some mechanical checks, the astronauts will begin preparations to return to Earth. Computer-controlled directional rocket thrusters will orient the Columbia so that its propulsion nozzles point forward, and at 53 hours 28 minutes after liftoff, the rocket engines will fire a blast of 2 minutes 27 seconds.

That will slow the shuttle enough for it to fall out of orbit. As it does so, the ship will turn over to let its tile-insulated belly take the main thermal shock of hitting the atmosphere.

Encountering the upper atmosphere at an altitude of 400,000 feet, the shuttle's ceramic-coated tiles will become white hot in a few seconds, and sensors aboard the shuttle and in aircraft below will monitor their performance. The success or failure of those tiles could determine the future of space shuttle missions. If even one tile should come loose while the shuttle descends, searing heat would reach the metal skin and could cause catastrophic damage.

During the 10 minutes in which the shuttle passes through the blast furnace of atmospheric re-entry, mission controllers will be holding their breath.

Once through re-entry, the shuttle is no longer a spacecraft but an airplane, gliding at supersonic speed under computer control. About 20 minutes before landing, Mr. Young and Captain Crippen will take manual control.

Gliding over the California coast at Big Sur, the orbiter will still be flying faster than sound when it reaches the western edge of Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base. It will pass over the dry lake, banking around as its gliding speed falls and crossing Route 58 at 10,000 feet. Then the landing gear will go down, and with its speed reduced to 215 miles an hour, the orbiter will touch down. Within two weeks, if things go according to plan, the craft will be back in Florida getting ready for STS-2.


Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/07/science/special-shuttle-issue-the-shuttle-america-poised-for-a-return-to-space.html

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Odp: [NYT] First Re-usable Spaceship Glides to Landing in Desert
« Odpowiedź #2 dnia: Kwiecień 15, 2021, 01:30 »
First Re-usable Spaceship Glides to Landing in Desert
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD  April 15, 1981


Keith Meyers/The New York Times The Space Shuttle Coumbia lifting off at Cape Kennedy April 15,1981.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- The space shuttle Columbia rocketed out of orbit and glided to safe landing on the desert here today to conclude the successful first demonstration of a bold new approach to extraterrestrial travel, the re-usable winged spaceship.

Heralding its triumphant return with a sharp double sonic boom, one of technology's fanfares, the 122-foot-long Columbia appeared in the clear blue sky, soared over the base, looped back and touched its wheels down in the wash of a mirage on the hard-packed clay of a dry lake bed. Touchdown came at 1:21 P.M., Eastern standard time.

"Welcome home, Columbia!" was the simple message from Joseph Allen in Mission Control.

215 Miles an Hour

Capt. Robert L. Crippen of the Navy and John W. Young brought the 80-ton gliding vehicle with its tubby delta wings to a smooth landing at a speed of 215 miles an hour, about twice the velocity of a jetliner landing.

Never before had a space vehicle returned to the earth in such a way so that it could be flown again. The Columbia and its three sister ships now under construction are each designed for as many as 100 flights to and from the space frontier.

"It was really a tremendous mission from start to finish," said Young, the commander, in a brief post-landing appearance before officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Right on Course in Approach

Moments earlier, the Columbia had come over the California coast, and Mission Control reassured the astronauts that "we've got good data, looking good."

At 1:09, the astronauts were advised, "You've got perfect energy, perfect ground track," meaning that they were on target and slowing for the kind of landing they had practiced so many times.

"What a way to come to California!" Captain Crippen exclaimed.

The Columbia was launched Sunday morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and orbited the earth 36 times over a period of 54 hours and 22 minutes. It was the first orbital test of the shuttle and the first time American astronauts had ventured into space in nearly six years.

"I think we're back in the space business to stay," Captain Crippen said.

The development of the shuttle, a hybrid spacecraft-airplane, has cost almost $10 billion since the project was initiated in January 1972. A fleet of four and perhaps five shuttles is expected to be in operation by the mid-1980's if the Columbia's next three test flights are equally successful. The shuttles, replacing the throwaway rockets and spacecraft of the past, will be used to carry satellites, manned scientific laboratories and other payloads into space.

Declaring that the Columbia had opened the "gateway" to many opportunities for space travel, Dr. Alan M. Lovelace, acting NASA Administrator, said, "I think this epic flight of Columbia proves once again that the United States is No. 1."

After a preliminary inspection of the Columbia, Donald K. Slayton, the orbital flight test manager, reported that the condition of the spaceship appeared to be "pretty good." None of the almost 31,000 heat-shielding tiles that coated the Columbia was lost in re-entry. The delicate silica tiles gave developers some of their biggest headaches, and several were damaged in launching.

In about a week, after undergoing a post-flight inspection at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center here, the Columbia is to be ferried atop a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet back to the Kennedy Space Center. There it will be more thoroughly checked out and refurbished and then sent back to the launching pad for another test flight in about six months.

At Cape Canaveral, Fla., meanwhile, NASA officials said that the two solid-fuel rocket boosters used to lift the Columbia into orbit were less damaged than originally thought and were fully re-usable.

Young and Captain Crippen awoke at about 3:30 A.M. to begin preparations for their return to earth. They were in their 30th orbit, cruising upside down at 17,500 miles an hour.

The astronauts' official wake up call from Mission Control, raucous music followed by a bugle call, came 30 minutes later.

Crippen's First Space Trip

Captain Crippen, 43 years old, was on his first space journey after years as an astronaut-in-waiting. It was the fifth trip for Young, 50, whose last one was a journey to the moon on Apollo 16 in 1972.

Flight controllers announced early in the morning that, after a review of spacecraft and photographic data of Columbia's heat-shielding tiles, there was "no basis for altering our plans for the landing." Several tiles on the two pods housing the orbital maneuvering rockets were lost or damaged in the launching, but this had never been considered a serious problem by project officials.

Before they took out time for breakfast, the astronauts checked flight systems and realigned the guidance and navigation instruments. They tested once again the 44 reaction control thrusters they would depend on for controlling their re-entry.

Only two problems caused much comment between the crew and their flight controllers: a temporary failure of an auxiliary power unit, and a malfunction of a flight recorder. Two, or only one, of the power units would have been sufficient to power the hydraulics for the Columbia's control surfaces: the elevons, rudder and body flaps.

A few minutes after 11:50 A.M., the astronauts were given a "final go" for firing their de-orbiting rockets by Don Puddy, the flight director.

To get in position for the re-entry rocket firing, Young pushed computer buttons to fire the small thrusters and turn the ship around 180 degrees so that the aft rockets pointed forward.

The two orbiting maneuvering rockets fired on computer command at 12:22 P.M., while the Columbia was 169 miles over the Indian Ocean and out of contact with any tracking stations.

When the Yaragadee tracking station in Western Australia established contact, Mr. Young reported that the firing had been nominal, which is the space-engineering synonym for normal.

The next time the astronauts were heard from, at 12:42, in range of the Guam station, they reported that "the doors are plus." That meant the cargo bay doors, which had been open for most of the mission to allow radiators on them to cool the spaceship, were securely closed. The Columbia had also turned back around to face forward for re-entry.

Allen, an astronaut acting as the Mission Control communicator, told the crew, "Everything looks perfect going over the hill," which means out of radio contact.

Young's only reply coming through the radio noise was, "I mark."

Then, at about 12:48, over Wake Island, Columbia pitched up to an angle of 40 degrees, exposing the black tiles of its underbelly to the maximum thermal stresses, and plunged into the upper reaches of the atmosphere at an altitude of about 400,000 feet. A 16-minute communications blackout followed, the result of an expected buildup of electrified gases around the craft that blocked out all radio signals.

The spaceship glowed red hot, with some temperatures on its exterior reaching more than 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit.

After the Columbia crossed the California coast, it proceeded southeast across the coastal mountains, the San Joaquin Valley south of Bakersfield and the Tehachapi Mountains. Then it was over Edwards, down to subsonic velocity, which was when the sonic booms could be heard by the thousands of people who waited along the roads and runways.

"Right on the money, right on the money," Allen reported from Mission Control, talking the crew home.

Telescopic cameras had already detected the bright reflection of sunlight off Columbia. Young, who had been guiding the ship for several minutes, having taken over from the computers, banked Columbia after it passed over Edwards, made a U turn and approached the desert landing strip from the southwest. The Columbia was clearly visible to the unaided eye.

After it rolled to a full stop, a 21-vehicle motorized convoy raced across the desert, leaving a wake of dust, and helicopters flew in.

After more than 150 technicians moved in to secure the craft, it was about an hour before Young stepped down from the ladder. After a few handshakes, he did what every test pilot would do. He walked around the ship, examining the fuselage, and squatted to look at the landing gear. Captain Crippen came out a few minutes later and the two of them were driven in a van to a reception attended by their wives and Government officials.

When they returned to Ellington Air Force near Houston this evening, they were greeted by the cheers of almost 1,500 people. They were also met by top NASA officials and James A. Baker 3rd, the White House chief of staff, who read a message from President Reagan and invited the astronauts and their families to the White House to visit Mr. Reagan "when his schedule permits."


Source: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/nasa/041581sci-nasa-wilford.html

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Odp: [NYT] First Re-usable Spaceship Glides to Landing in Desert
« Odpowiedź #2 dnia: Kwiecień 15, 2021, 01:30 »