Jul 4 1982
From The Space Library
Crowds estimated at half a million watched Columbia's fourth return to Earth, the first to use a concrete runway at Edwards Air Force Base. Among about 30,000 guests invited by NASA to the occasion were President and Mrs. Reagan. His comment at the touchdown was "Happy Fourth of July, and you know this has got to beat firecrackers." The fourth flight, STS-4, was classified as the last of four test flights but carried more than 22,000 pounds of cargo, including a secret military payload. Although security considerations kept it from being photographed for viewers, the 50-foot mechanical arm designed to move objects in and out of the cargo bay and capture objects in space had been in use on this flight to move an 800-pound contamination monitor around the cargo bay.
The runway, about 300 feet wide and 15,000 feet long, was about the size of the one at KSC made for routine Shuttle use after the seventh flight. The fifth (and first operational) flight scheduled for November would carry two commercial communications satellites, one for Canada and one for Satellite Business Systems; each ,customer would pay NASA $21 million if the spacecraft reached orbit safely. Shuttle Program Manager Glynn S. Lunney said that NASA would do well to achieve one launch per month by the late 1980s and, ultimately, 24 to 30 per year. (NASA MOR M-989-82-04, July 19/82; NY Times, July 5/82, A-1, 8; W Post, July 4/82, A-1, A-11; July 5/82, A-1; July 6/82, A-9)
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