Space Shuttle Columbia strap and construction photos

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This week, photos of space shuttle Columbia as she neared completion, and a relic—a strap that flew on the shuttle.

Columbia, OV-102, was the second space shuttle built, and the first to fly in space. She was named after the sloop on which Robert Gray undertook the first American circumnavigation of the world in 1790 and explored the Columbia River in 1792. Construction began on 27 March 1975 at the Rockwell International plant in Palmdale, California (today, part of Boeing) and almost four years later, on 24 March 1979, Columbia arrived at the Kennedy Space Center for final integration and testing prior to launch.

This series of photos shows workers at Kennedy in 1979 attaching some of the 34,000 tiles that formed Columbia’s thermal protection system (TPS)—or heatshield:

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Note the numbers printed on the tiles, which indicated their placement on the spacecraft.

On 16 July that year, the first of Columbia’s three engines (engine number 2006) was fitted to the orbiter:

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The third and final engine (engine number 2007) was fitted on 4 August:

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Even as NASA was issuing these photos to the press, the agency remained optimistic that the shuttle would fly soon. The back of one of these prints states:

“Columbia, the first in a new breed of manned, reusable spacecraft, is being readied for the first launch of the Space Shuttle later this year.”

In fact, Columbia would not fly till April 1981.

Columbia is represented in my collection by a strap from the orbiter. Note that this strap was removed during routine servicing and is not debris from the destruction of the spacecraft in the accident of 2 February 2003 that claimed her and her crew.

The strap is made of fabric (beta cloth, I presume) with press studs fitted to either end. It is 168 mm long and 22 mm wide (6⅔″ × ⅞″). It’s stamped with the word “SCRAP” in red ink, although this is barely visible in this photo. The strap and its NASA scrap tag were supplied to me by David Bryant of The Space Station in the UK. Note Columbia’s number—OV-102—written on the tag.

While all the other relics in my collection are samples of various materials, this is a complete unit, and is therefore one of my very favourite pieces.

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Copyright information: all five photos are works of NASA. As works of the US federal government, all are in the public domain. I’ve noted their NASA serial numbers under each photo. I do not believe that the scrap tag contains enough expressive content to be eligible for copyright protection, but if it did, it is also a work of the US federal government and would be in the public domain anyway.

Space Shuttle Enterprise insulation sample

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This week, a photo of—and a physical relic from—the prototype Space Shuttle, Enterprise.

Construction work on NASA’s first Space Shuttle orbiter, serial OV-101, commenced on 4 June 1974 at the Rockwell International plant in Downey, California. (Rockwell International is today part of Boeing; the plant in Downey was closed in 1999.)

While development continued on the various shuttle subsystems, NASA planned to use this prototype for a variety of airframe tests before refitting her as an actual spacecraft. OV-101 was therefore constructed without engines or any of the associated plumbing for them. In place of the heat-shield tiles that form the thermal protection system (TPS) of an operational shuttle, she was fitted with blocks of polyurethane foam. On her nose, she carried a needle-like air data probe taken from a U-2 spyplane. This probe was to be used in aerodynamic tests of the orbiter in flight, both in “captive” mode mounted on a carrier aircraft, and flying free as a glider.

Although Enterprise was always destined for space, it eventually turned out to be easier and cheaper to refit NASA’s full-size engineering test airframe into a functional spacecraft than to refit Enterprise. Therefore, the shuttle program’s static test article (STA-099) became an orbiter (OV-099, Challenger) and Enterprise was destined for publicity tours and eventually to become a museum piece.

This photo shows the orbiter in 1983, being prepared for an appearance at that year’s Paris Air Show:

The following year, Enterprise appeared at the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, and in 1985 was stripped of useful components in preparation for museum display. During this process, on 29 April 1985, insulation material was removed from Enterprise’s payload bay doors.

This is a small sample of that insulation, which I obtained from David Bryant of The Space Station in the UK, together with provenance tracing the ownership of the sample between NASA and him:

The insulation is matting made from some kind of fine synthetic fibre with some heavier strands running through it. Bright white, it has an almost silvery sheen. The box in which the sample lies is around 8 cm × 5.5 cm (3” × 2”). The accompanying scrapping paperwork from NASA identifies it as “Type III, 3 lb/ft³, 2300° F” (48 kg/m³, 1260° C).

Epilogue:
On 18 November 1985, Enterprise arrived in Washington DC and NASA transferred ownership to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, marking the first space shuttle’s official retirement. She remained there on display until 27 April 2012, when shuttle Discovery took her place at the Smithsonian and Enterprise was transferred to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City.

Correction:
When I first published this post, I misidentified the photo as Enterprise undergoing final assembly at the Rockwell International plant in Palmdale, California, sometime in 1975 or 1976. Further research identified the correct point in Enterprise’s career, and the correct copyright status of the image.

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Copyright information: the photo of Enterprise is  a NASA image, part of the Dryden Flight Research Center collection, serial EC83-24309. As a work of the US federal government, it is in the public domain. 

Skylab reboost concept art

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After the Skylab 4 crew returned to Earth in February 1974, NASA had no further plans for the space station and shut down its systems. Prior to undocking, the crew had used the engine of their Apollo spacecraft to nudge Skylab into a higher orbit, roughly 440 km above the Earth. However, even at this height, the Earth’s atmosphere is dense enough to exert significant drag on a satellite. A period of increased solar activity in the 1970s made this situation worse for Skylab. This activity caused the density of the atmosphere at Skylab’s altitude to increase, and therefore the drag on the station to increase in proportion.

Based on measurements taken during the Skylab missions, NASA predicted that the station would remain in orbit another nine years, re-entering Earth’s atmosphere sometime in 1983.

Doomed if left where it was, the station still represented a valuable collection of resources in orbit: air, water, and shelter that NASA had already  paid to carry up there. By 1977, with the Space Shuttle program well underway, NASA planners recognised an opportunity to save the station for refurbishment and reuse. With orbital flights of the shuttle scheduled to begin in mid 1979, NASA contracted Martin Marietta Corporation (today, absorbed into Lockheed Martin) to develop a booster that could be carried to Skylab by a space shuttle and used to raise Skylab’s orbit out of imminent danger, as illustrated in this piece of concept art:

Here’s a close-up of the booster module itself, designated the Teleoperator Retrieval System (TRS):

It’s docked to the main port of Skylab’s Multiple Docking Adapter (MDA). The square plate visible at the centre of the cluster of engines carries an attachment point to allow the shuttle’s robot arm (Remote Manipulator System — RMS) to grasp the module and manœuver it into position. Note also that Skylab’s main solar array has been re-folded into its launch position (it’s the long, flat, rectangular structure along the side of the station with the words “United States” barely legible along it). I presume this was to keep the station’s centre of mass as close as possible to the TRS’s line of thrust during the boost, as well as to minimise stresses on the array—although the solar panels on the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) are still fully deployed.

Safe in its new orbit, Skylab would then be ready for renovations and expansions to keep it in useful service perhaps as far as 1989. Alternatively, NASA also considered the possibility of using the TRS to de-orbit Skylab in a safe, controlled manner, far away from human populations (Skylab’s orbit carried it over around 90% of the world’s people).

However, none of this was to be. Solar activity through the 1970s remained higher than predicted, and by April 1979, it was clear that Skylab would not last longer than a few more months. It was also clear that the Space Shuttle was nowhere near ready: ongoing problems and delays with its revolutionary new heat shield and engines postponed the first orbital flight past the end of the year.

On 11 July 1979, Skylab’s orbit decayed and brought the station down in an uncontrolled¹ re-entry over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.

On 12 April 1981, the first space shuttle flew.

Incidentally, I’d love to know the name of the artist who did the original painting. If you know, please leave me a note!

Footnote:
¹ Well, almost uncontrolled. As the station crossed the east coast of North America, headed  south-east on what was almost certainly to be its final orbit, ground controllers fired the station’s thrusters to set it tumbling in its orbit. This tumble was intended to maximise the atmospheric drag and bring Skylab down as quickly as possible, hopefully somewhere in the South Atlantic or Indian Ocean and before it re-appeared over the Pacific North-West of the United States.

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Copyright information: The print in my collection was formerly held by a newspaper archive. It is a black-and-white version of NASA image S78-23631. As a work of the US federal government, this image is in the public domain.