Instead, the orbiter was called Enterprise, like the starship of the television program. That’s why members of the cast and crew of “Star Trek”, including Nichelle Nichols, George Takei and Gene Roddenberry, could be seen in the crowd during the September 1976 launch of the shuttle.
Former astronaut Deke Slayton, manager of the shuttle’s orbital flight testing (OFT) program, described three flights from the “active in captivity” phase at the April 1977 press conference, while Milt Reim, officer of Johnson Space Center Public Relations, look in the background. Credit: NASA
“Most shuttle books available try to do too much and cover the entire program,” co-author John Bisney said in a telephone interview. “And when you have 135 flights for 30 years, it’s hard to condense it into a single book.”
Bisney’s book, which he co-authored with JL Pickering, offers a unique insight into the initial development of the shuttle, the world’s first reusable spacecraft, with a plethora of sketches and extravagant drawings of alternative designs, some of which are still they look remarkable. futuristic.
“Some of the first concepts involved the booster rocket coming back and landing automatically like an airplane,” Bisney said. “Unfortunately, it turned out to be quite complicated.”
The Columbia in 1979, ready to fly on a Boeing 747, formerly owned by American Airlines (hence the livery). Some of its tiles were damaged, as seen, during a test flight in front of the back of the plane. Credit: NASA
Instead, the booster rockets splashed into the ocean after detaching from the shuttle, to retrieve and refurbish them. A modern rocket like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy has booster rockets that can descend autonomously toward Earth and the earth.
The shuttle – officially called STS, or space transport system – flew into space for the first time on April 12, 1981, with the distinction of not having been tested first with an unmanned launch. Astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen flew into orbit, Columbia, for 54 hours before landing safely on Earth. The book’s chronology ends after the space shuttle’s fourth mission, a test flight that paved the way for operational missions.
Many of the photos come from the personal archive of Pickering, one of the world’s largest private collections of manned spaceflight images.
“I give Pickering all the credit, and yes, he had a lot to solve,” Bisney said. “But one of our trademarks is to focus on unusual, rarely seen or unpublished images. If you go to the library and take a book out on the shelf shelf, you usually see the same hundreds of images in each book. And this is understandable., because they are fantastic images. But there is much more to show you ”
STS-2 on the evening of November 11, 1981. It was the last time the launcher launched with a white external tank; the paint was removed for later flights to avoid unnecessary weight. Credit: NASA
The sense of anticipation surrounding the launcher program, which brought American astronauts into space for the first time since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975, is palpable in many of the images. The STS withdrew in 2011, with five orbiters built (only four of which flew into space) and two lost by accident, in 1986 and 2003, with a collective loss of 14 lives.
“When you have 135 missions it’s terrible to lose two. But space flight is a risky business,” Bisney said. “I don’t think it’s as routine as some think it could be.”
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On January 28, 1986, the Challenger space shuttle broke 73 seconds after its flight and killed all seven people on board. After the disaster, NASA landed the launcher for two and a half years as the agency tried to get out of one of the worst periods in its history. The explosion was caused by the infamous O-ring, a rubber seal that helped keep the rocket propellers and the external fuel tank in place. Once the ring failed, due to the icy weather the night before launch, the outer tank exploded. This design flaw and NASA’s failure to address it are carefully described in this powerful four-series Netflix documentary, with unprecedented access to the families of those involved.
This full documentary can be viewed for free on NASA’s official YouTube channel and is narrated by none other than William Shatner, the original Captain Kirk of “Star Trek”. It offers a complete view of the technology and mission setup of the launcher program, with NASA staff offering first-person views.
The full story of NASA’s launcher program itself can be read or downloaded for free online. With a focus on science and engineering, it takes advantage of the agency’s extensive human resources and unmatched photo library.
This Apple TV + Cold War story space drama imagines a hypothetical timeline in which the Soviets first landed on the Moon. The second season features a fictional spaceship called the Pathfinder (which refers to an initial mock-up model of the shuttle, as well as a later mission of the same name to Mars), with nuclear engines and a sleeker, more menacing appearance. It is equipped with weapons and can be happily seen walking to the Moon, an impossibility for real ferries, which were never designed to leave Earth’s orbit.
The definitive centerpiece table on the history of NASA, this volume includes an extensive chapter on the space shuttle program, with stunning large-format photographs accompanied by essays written by NASA commanders and mission specialists. The rest of the book covers all the major milestones of NASA’s first 60 years of operation (1958 to 2018), with more than 400 images in total.
Top image: Robert Crippen and John Young aboard the Columbia in 1980.