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.

STS-1 causeway pass and brochure

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This week, some mementos of the first space shuttle launch.

On 12 April 1981—the twentieth anniversary of the first human spaceflight—space shuttle Columbia launched on STS-1, the first orbital test flight of the Space Transportation System. The flight was originally intended to have taken place in June 1979.

Thirty years later, it’s perhaps easy to forget just how revolutionary the space shuttle was, how utterly unlike any previous spacecraft. The delays in the program were due to the need to develop completely new technologies that a re-usable spacecraft demanded. Two key technologies that accounted for a large proportion of the delays were a heat shield that would not be sacrificed during re-entry, and engines that could be fired around fifty times when all previous similar engines were designed to be fired just once.

This brochure, issued by the Kennedy Space Center, describes the space shuttle, outlines the mission profile for STS-1, and introduces the crew:

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

Today, in 2012, there’s a certain amount of hand-wringing that NASA does not presently have human spaceflight capability, despite the work currently proceeding on various designs for the Commercial Crew Program and on the Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle. It’s worth remembering that by the time STS-1 launched, America had been without human spaceflight capability for nearly six years—the last flight had been the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project of July 1975.

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Copyright information: the brochure and pass are works of NASA. As works of the United States federal government, they are in the public domain.

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:

108-KSC-79P-119

108-KSC-79P-319

108-KSC-79P-118

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:

108-KSC-79PC-294

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

79-HC-425

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.

Approach and Landing Test project medallion from NASA MFA Office

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This week’s artifact is a medallion and certificate that NASA’s Manned Flight Awareness Office issued to employees and contractors upon the successful conclusion of the space shuttle Approach and Landing Test (ALT) program in 1977.

These tests validated the aerodynamic characteristics of the space shuttle orbiter in a series of flights in conjunction with NASA’s Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA). The initial flights saw the prototype shuttle Enterprise carried on the SCA from takeoff to landing, but in the final five flights, Enterprise was released in mid-air to glide back to the runway at Edwards Air Force Base by herself.

The medallion itself is is 38 mm (1½″) across and made of very light metal; mostly aluminium I think. According to the text on the reverse, it contains metal taken from Enterprise—one source on the Internet states that the material was taken from the left wing.

 
The obverse bears a relief depiction of the ALT patch design. The reverse carries the message:

“Thank you for your contribution toward making the Approach and Landing Tests of the Space Shuttle Orbiter successful. We would like you to have this memento made, in part, of metal taken from the Enterprise.”

It also features facsimiles of the signatures of the four test pilots who flew Enterprise during the tests.

I obtained this medallion in its original plastic packaging and have removed it only to photograph. The relatively rough manufacture of the item is evident here.

The accompanying certificate measures 305 mm × 240 mm (12″ × 9½″) and is printed on card. It’s larger and printed on heavier stock than the Skylab and Apollo–Soyuz certificates in my collection.

It too carries a depiction of the program patch, along with a silhouette of the Enterprise separating from the SCA. As depicted, Enterprise is flying without her tailcone, the configuration used in the final two flights of the program. There’s space for the name of the recipient (which I've blurred out here for their privacy), a message of thanks, and facsimiles of the crew signatures.

The message reads:

“The crews of the Approach and Landing Test Program are pleased to present you with this medallion in appreciation of your contribution to the successful ALT flights of the space shuttle orbiter Enterprise”

At the bottom is a circle the size of the medallion, together with a printed version of the reverse of the medallion, in case the recipient wanted to affix theirs to the certificate itself.


The ALT program was important in ensuring that the space shuttle flew as well in practice as it did on paper, and turned theory into practice. With the program a resounding success, Enterprise moved to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsvile for vibration tests as work continued on preparing the space shuttle for service.

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Copyright information: the medallion and certificate are works of NASA. As works of the United States federal government, they are in the public domain.

Sally Ride lithograph from NASA and People Weekly magazine

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An inevitable part of ageing is watching time claim your heroes one by one as the years go by. This week, the world lost Dr Sally Ride all too early. She was only 61.

On 18 June 1983, Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew as a mission specialist on space shuttle Challenger’s second flight, STS-7. This mission also made her—at the age of 32—the youngest American to fly into space, a record that stands to this day.

The copy of this portrait in my collection is a standard NASA lithograph, 8″ × 10″, serial HqL-135 and dated 1983. However, the picture was taken at the time of Ride’s selection into the astronaut program in 1978. She was one of six women out of the thirty-five people in this group. They were the first new astronauts recruited into the space program since the Apollo era and called themselves “TFNG”, publicly “thirty-five new guys”, but also familiar military slang for “the fucking new guy” in an astronaut corps that was still dominated by military test pilots.

Perhaps nothing speaks more painfully eloquently of the cultural importance of American women becoming astronauts than some of the questions put to Dr Ride at a press conference shortly before STS-7.

Some of these questions were documented by Michael Ryan, who wrote a feature on Ride for People Weekly at the time (“A Ride in Space”, 20 June 1983, pp.82–88). Ride was also pictured on the cover:

As recorded by Ryan, these questions included:

• “Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?”
• “Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?”
• “Will you become a mother?”

Ride refused to answer this kind of crap, retorting instead, “How come nobody ever asks Rick those questions?” (Rick Hauk, the former US Navy fighter pilot and test pilot who was assigned to fly Challenger on their mission). My favourite of her responses was:

It may be too bad that our society isn’t further along and this is such a big deal.

Note that even the editor responsible for the magazine cover called these questions “dumb” and “chauvinist”. Awareness was certainly growing.

Elsewhere in the People Weekly article, Ride’s mother, Joyce, recalled that Johnny Carson had joked on-air that the the launch was being postponed until Sally Ride could find a purse to match her shoes.

This, of someone with a PhD in astrophysics and whose selection into the astronaut corps confirmed her place as one of the best, brightest, and most capable people of her generation.

Thirty years and a generational change later, it might be a little less likely that a woman would be treated this way today, but unfortunately, such attitudes are not confined to the history books just yet.

Following her death, it has emerged that Ride spent the last twenty-seven years of her life in a same-sex relationship. Her partner of all those years, Dr Tam O’Shaughnessy, will not be entitled to all the benefits to which she would be entitled if theirs had been a heterosexual relationship, as explained on this NASA table: Benefits Available to Same Sex Domestic Partners. I think this is profoundly sad and unjust. To me it seems that Ride’s words apply equally:

It may be too bad that our society isn’t further along and this is such a big deal.

when “this” is the sex of one’s partner.

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Copyright information: the portrait lithograph is a NASA publication and as a work of the US federal government, is in the public domain. The People Weekly cover is copyright Time Inc. 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.

Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Test 5 press kit items from DFRC

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This week I present the press kit from space shuttle Enterprise’s fifth and final free flight.

Before the space shuttle commenced operations, NASA validated the airworthiness of the orbiter design in a series of  test flights. The initial flights were “captive” tests, mounted on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), NASA’s modified Boeing 747. From 12 August 1977, the captive flights were followed by five free flights in which Enterprise was released from her mother ship to fly free to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in the Californian desert. 

NASA planned that after these Approach and Landing Tests (ALT), Enterprise would spend a year undergoing vibration tests to verify other aspects of the shuttle design and would then be returned to Rockwell International (today part of Boeing) to be refurbished for orbital flight. This refurbishment never took place (a ground test airframe was refurbished instead to become Challenger) and the only times Enterprise took to the air again was as cargo atop the SCA on her way to various exhibition sites. These destinations included the 1983 Paris Air Show, the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, Enterprise’s current home.

Each of the Approach and Landing Tests was a little more ambitious than the one that went before. They began with Enterprise fitted with a streamlined tailcone covering the blunt rear end of the shuttle where the main engines were designed to fit, and with the shuttle descending to land on a dry lake bed with plenty of margin for error. By the fifth flight, of 26 October 1977, Enterprise was flying without the tailcone, with dummy main engines in place, and headed for touchdown on a conventional concrete runway.

It would be the worst landing of the whole shuttle program.

The NASA press release describes the test as planned for that day:

Coming in slightly fast, Enterprise missed the intended touchdown point, landed long, bounced back into the air, then started to roll before the crew brought her back down safely. 

This video shows the landing:

Lag in the responsiveness of the flight control system, together with the generally poor visibility from the Shuttle’s flight deck, had led the crew (commander Fred Haise and pilot Gordon Fullerton) into a series of overcorrections or “pilot-induced oscillation” (PIO). 

As a result, after this test, the flight control system software was modified to counteract the tendency for pilots to overcorrect in this way, at the expense of a little control sensitivity.

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Copyright information: the press kit is a work of NASA. As a work of the US federal government, it is in the public domain.