STS-41-B causeway pass and brochure

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This week, some mementos from Space Shuttle mission STS-41-B (originally designated STS-11)¹ which launched on 3 February 1984.

STS-41-B was Space Shuttle Challenger’s fourth trip to space, and the tenth shuttle flight overall.² In most ways, it was an absolutely typical early-80s shuttle mission. The main objectives were to deliver two unremarkable Hughes HS-376³ commercial communication satellites to orbit: Westar 6 for Western Union (which later sold off its satellite business, today owned by Westar) and Palapa B2 for Indosat.⁴

What made the flight unforgettable, though, was the first flight of the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)—a personal propulsion system like an oversized backpack built for NASA by Martin Marietta (today part of Lockheed Martin). The MMU allowed astronauts to manœuver independently in space, untethered and away from their spacecraft. Astronaut Bruce McCandless’s first test of the system on 7 February provided one of the iconic images of the shuttle program:

NASA image S84-27017

The MMU deserves a post of its own sometime in the future. For today, I’ll focus on the mission itself.

This brochure, issued by the shuttle’s manufacturer, Rockwell International (today, part of Boeing) in January 1984 describes the mission objectives, the cargo, and the crew:

Apart from discussing the communication satellites and the MMU, the brochure also outlines the dress rehearsal conducted during the mission for a satellite rescue to be performed on the next flight. When actually realised, this part was truly deserving of Rockwell’s advertising hype “Another Stride in America’s Space Capabilites”. Putting satellites in orbit was well-established technology, but on STS-41-C, NASA would attempt to repair one in orbit. But back to STS-41-B...

This pass allowed a spectator’s vehicle onto the NASA Causeway to watch the STS-41-B launch. Ten kilometres (six miles) from the launch pad, this was the closest that the public could get.

The pass itself is a fluorescent pink, that unfortunately my scanner reduces to the pale salmon you see here. It’s also in much poorer condition than the other passes in my collection. Please let me know if you’ve got a better one that you’re prepared to part with!

Footnotes:
¹ From this, the tenth shuttle flight, through to the twenty-fifth, NASA abandoned its previous scheme of identifying shuttle missions simply by the prefix “STS” (for Space Transportation System, the official name of the shuttle program) followed by the number of the flight. Instead, the agency adopted a code of two digits and a letter. The first digit represented the financial year from which the budget for the flight came. The second digit represented the launch site for the mission (“1” for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, “2” for Vandenberg Air Force Base, California). The final letter represented the number of the flight in that financial year, so STS-41-B was followed by STS-41-C and STS-41-D. Shuttle flights for 1984, 1985, and 1986 followed this designation scheme. No shuttles ever launched from Vandenberg, so “1” was the only second digit ever used.

² The mission that would have been designated STS-10 was cancelled due to delays with its payload. It was later flown as STS-51-C.

³ Hughes is today part of Boeing.

⁴ Both launches failed and the satellites were trapped in useless orbits. They were retrieved for their insurers in November 1984 by shuttle mission STS-51-A. Both were subsequently refurbished, resold, and successfully reflown on separate expendable launch vehicles in 1990.

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Copyright information: the brochure is a work of Rockwell International and does not carry a copyright notice. As a work published in the United States prior to 1989 without such a notice, it is in the public domain. The MMU photograph and the pass are works of NASA. As works of the United States federal government, they too are  in the public domain.

STS-9 causeway pass and brochure

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Spacelab was a collection of laboratory modules that could be carried in the space shuttle’s cargo bay. The system was built by the ESA (the European Space Agency) as a result of a co-operative agreement with NASA that dated back to 1973. It features very prominently in my memories of the early shuttle program, because it was the payload most frequently depicted. Spacelab seemed to appear in every shuttle-related book illustration, poster, model kit, or toy. The casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking that a particular combination of Spacelab modules was an integral part of the shuttle; a notion completely antithetical to its versatile design.

I’ll present some payload-specific memorabilia another time, but this week, I’ve got some mementos of STS-9. This mission was the first to carry Spacelab to orbit, and launched in November 1983 with the space shuttle Columbia on her sixth flight.

This brochure, issued by the shuttle’s manufacturer, Rockwell International (today, part of Boeing) in October 1983 introduces the mission and its crew:

The brochure contains an interesting inconsistency. The six-page brochure issued for STS-6 earlier in the year has two sidebars; one titled “Mission Log” with a summary of previous shuttle flights, and the other titled “Mission Profile” with a summary of the mission itself. The STS-9 brochure has an equivalent section titled “STS-9 Mission Log”, which to me suggests it should outline the schedule for the mission. It also uses similar graphics to the STS-6 “Mission Profile” but correct for STS-9, including revealing Spacelab to space. However, the text is just summary of the previous eight missions. I wonder if the two sections were condensed into one during preparation of the brochure, perhaps to save pages?

The brochure mentions Rockwell International’s role in readying Columbia for the mission, but somehow does not mention that the NASA contract for integrating Spacelab into the shuttle’s systems went to rival McDonnell Douglas (today, also part of Boeing).

The second item this week is a pass that allowed a spectator’s vehicle onto the NASA Causeway to watch the STS-9 launch. Ten kilometres (six miles) from the launch pad, this was the closest that the public could get.

The pass itself is a fluorescent green, which unfortunately my scanner doesn’t capture well.

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Copyright information: the brochure is a work of Rockwell International and does not carry a copyright notice. As a work published in the United States prior to 1989 without such a notice, it is in the public domain. The pass is a work of NASA. As a work of the United States federal government, it too is in the public domain.

STS-6 causeway pass and brochure

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This week, some mementos of the first launch of Space Shuttle Challenger.

The Space Shuttle program’s journeys into space commenced with a series of four orbital flight tests and one operational mission conducted with Columbia in 1981 and 1982. Following these flights, Columbia was refurbished for the first Spacelab mission while operational flights continued with a new orbiter — Challenger. Challenger’s first mission was STS-6, launched on 4 April 1983.

The main objective of the mission was to deploy the first of a series of new space communication satellites: the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS). This system was to relay telemetry from spacecraft to tracking stations on the ground, increasing the length of time and the frequency with which spacecraft were in contact with Earth, and also the sheer volume of data that could be transferred during these contacts.

This brochure, issued by the shuttle’s manufacturer, Rockwell International (today, part of Boeing) in February 1983 describes the new orbiter, outlines the mission profile for STS-6, and introduces the crew:

The brochure concludes with a very optimistic section titled “The Emergence of a Spaceline”. As originally conceived in the late 1960s, the space shuttle should have launched nearly weekly. These expectations were gradually eroded, although as the program commenced, the shuttle was still intended to replace all other launch vehicles then in use by the United States. The Rockwell brochure does not give specifics about the frequency of flights, but says more generally:

“Turning this technical triumph into a commercial success depends on getting most out of Shuttle capabilities: each orbiter must be reflown as quickly as possible within safety requirements to establish cost-effective operations that attract commercial users.... Soon, the takeoff and landing of Shuttle orbiters will be almost as common as the coming and going of commercial aircraft.”

Sadly, this was extremely wishful thinking, and the largest number of shuttle launches conducted in any year was the nine flights made in 1985.

This pass allowed a spectator’s vehicle onto the NASA Causeway to watch the STS-6 launch. Ten kilometres (six miles) from the launch pad, this was the closest that the public could get to the pad.

The pass itself is a fluorescent orange, that unfortunately my scanner reduces to the pale salmon you see here.

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Copyright information: the brochure is a work of Rockwell International and does not carry a copyright notice. As a work published in the United States prior to 1989 without such a notice, it is in the public domain. The pass is a work of NASA. As a work of the United States federal government, it too is in the public domain.

Space Shuttle Challenger payload bay liner, photo, and brochure

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This week another relic, this time from the space shuttle Challenger, together with some items from around the time of her rollout.

Challenger, OV-099, was the third space shuttle built, and the second  to fly in space. She was named after a Royal Navy corvette which, commanded by Captain George Nares, undertook a pioneering oceanographic survey of 1872–76 now known as the “Challenger expedition”. Construction began on 21 November 1975 at the Rockwell International plant in Palmdale, California (today, part of Boeing) originally as a structural test article, STA-099. This piece of test equipment was a full-scale airframe that would be subjected to various loads so that stresses could be measured throughout the structure. These actual, measured values would then be compared to the values predicted by computer modelling for the design.

NASA planned to refit the prototype space shuttle Enterprise to a fully functional orbiter at the conclusion of a series of glide and vibration tests. However, cost analysis showed that it would be cheaper to refit STA-099 instead. This work began on 28 January 1979 and was completed by 21 October 1981. Challenger was rolled out on 30 June 1982. This photo shows a Rockwell International worker painting the shuttle’s name on the starboard side of her forward fuselage just prior to rollout:

The following pamphlet was published by Rockwell International in June 1982 and might have been available to guests at the rollout:

Challenger is represented in my collection by a sample of fabric that was used to line the shuttle’s payload bay on her first mission, STS-6 in April 1983:

It is a cream-coloured piece of beta cloth 10 cm × 9 cm (4″ × 3½″) supplied to me by David Bryant of The Space Station in the UK, together with copies of the provenance of the sample from NASA to him. Note that this fabric was removed during routine servicing and is not debris from the destruction of the spacecraft in the accident of 28 January 1986 that claimed her and her crew on her tenth mission.

Although I prefer not to include material in these posts that is not actually in my collection, a photo from NASA’s archives provides a sombre epilogue this week.  Following the accident, divers from USS Opportune recovered a 2.9 m × 4.9 m (9′ 7″ × 16′) fragment of Challenger’s starboard wing with part of her name still visible, photographed when it was delivered to the Kennedy Space Center Logistics Facility on 18 April 1986:

STS51L-10187

This is the same section of wing visible in the Rockwell International pamphlet presented above, right under the heading “Challenger The Second Orbiter”.

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Copyright information: the print of the worker painting Challenger’s name that I hold in my collection came from a news archive and is a work of Rockwell International, circulated to the media in 1982 without a copyright notice. The pamphlet is also a work of Rockwell International, dated 1982 and published without a copyright notice.  As works published in the United States prior to 1989 without such notices, these items would be in the public domain. If copyright still exists in these items, it would now belong to Boeing, and use here is claimed to be fair use for the purpose of education and commentary in a non-commercial setting as permitted by 17 U.S.C. § 107. The NASA photo is a work of the US federal government and therefore in the public domain.

Early Space Shuttle concept art

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Even before the Apollo program landed astronauts on the moon, NASA began firm plans for a re-usable spacecraft that would make regular trips into low-earth orbit. The original purpose for such a vehicle was to service a space station that would support further human spaceflight endeavours. These plans included establishing a permanent human presence on the moon, and landing a crew on Mars by the early 1980s.

On 29 January 1969, NASA awarded a first round of contracts to American aerospace manufacturers to define what form this re-usable spacecraft—initially designated the integral launch and reentry vehicle (ILRV)—might take. Over the next three years, NASA evaluated multiple designs as the agency refined the Space Shuttle concept. Some prints in my collection illustrate but a few of those proposals:

This design was one of the earliest; the work of Max Faget at NASA, who called it the DC-3 as an homage to the legendary airliner that revolutionised air travel in the 1930s. The design was similar in general layout to a conventional transport aircraft and much simpler than the exotic spaceplanes that the aerospace industry was proposing for the ILRV. The North American Rockwell Corporation (today, part of Boeing) took up Faget’s approach and earned a development contract for the design in December 1969.

The basic Space Shuttle concept is evident here: a winged spaceplane that lands on an ordinary runway instead of parachuting down like all previous spacecraft had. Note the large payload bay doors in the spine: a feature defined at the very beginning that would persist right through the design process.

The DC-3 was eventually doomed when NASA and the US Air Force were constrained to merge their disparate requirements for a re-usable spacecraft. The DC-3 (by now, redesignated the NAR A-2) could not meet Air Force requirements: specifically, the need for extended atmospheric range after re-entry from polar orbits.

The McDonnell Douglas Corporation (today, also absorbed into Boeing) attempted to reconcile competing requirements with a variable-geometry approach nicknamed the “drawbridge”. Both these slightly different 1970 designs feature a wing that could fold upwards to shorten the re-entry path of a vehicle returning from equatorial orbit or be braced downwards (as in these illustrations) for extended flight after returning from polar orbit.

Slightly pudgier in its lines, this next McDonnell Douglas design from later that year displays the fixed delta-wing and tail-less approach that would eventually prevail. Note the robot arm—another essential shuttle feature—making an early appearance.

This is one of Boeing’s early proposals, also dating from 1970. Like the DC-3, this was not a contender for the ILRV project itself, but was an alternate design strategy that the firm offered NASA instead. It illustrates the philosophy common to all these early designs: unlike conventional launch systems where the lower stages of the vehicle are simply discarded and destroyed when their fuel is exhausted, the shuttle was to use a winged lower stage that would be piloted back to Earth for re-use. In this illustration, the lower stage is launching a conventional rocket stage (Saturn S-IVB) instead of a shuttle.

This next design was a 1971 combined proposal from two firms more traditionally in competition with each other, and shows how a winged orbiter and winged lower stage would launch together.  The Boeing lower stage proposed here was a winged version of the Saturn S-IC stage (the first stage of the Saturn V moon rocket), designated the RS-IC. It was to boost the Grumman (today, Northrop Grumman) H-33 spaceplane into orbit. Note the delta wings and externally carried fuel of the orbiter.

This 1971 design was another joint submission along similar lines. In this case, the winged booster falling away in the first picture was a Convair (then part of  General Dynamics, today part of Boeing) project, designated the B8G.  The futuristic-for-its-day orbiter, the NAR-134-B, was another North American Rockwell design.

Almost there! During 1971, shrinking budgets forced NASA to abandon its insistence on a fully re-usable design and instead consider an only partially re-usable approach. This Rockwell International proposal is already recognisable as the shuttle that NASA would eventually buy. Note that the main engines are part of the booster; the orbiter only carries manœuvering engines, which are not fired during launch. This differs from the eventual direction of the NASA shuttle, but is the approach that the Soviet space program chose for its Бура́н (Buran) shuttle in the 1980s.

Finally, this is the Rockwell design at the point where NASA awarded the final contract for the system, on 26 July 1972. All the elements of the shuttle that would fly nearly a decade later are in place at last—quite a different bird from Faget’s design, but similar in general principle.

Postscript:
As for the space station, the Space Shuttle program continued long after budget cuts forced the cancellation of the station and the shuttle’s main mission. However, by the mid 1990s, shuttles were flying regular missions to the Russian Мир (Mir) space station and then to the International Space Station, neither of which were conceivable in the early 1970s. The program had come almost full circle.

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Copyright information: All the prints in my collection are from news archives and appear to have been circulated to the media without copyright notices. As works published in the United States prior to 1978 without such notices, these images would be in the public domain. Apart from Grumman, every one of the various aerospace companies that produced these images between 1969 and 1972 have since been absorbed into Boeing, and any images not actually in the public domain would now belong to them. If copyright still exists in any of these images, use here is claimed to be fair use for the purpose of education and commentary in a non-commercial setting as permitted by 17 U.S.C. § 107.