Mar 8 1979
From The Space Library
March 8-12: Columbia, the first reusable Space Shuttle orbiter, started on its way to space Thursday, March 8, with a nine-hour tow by truck from the Rockwell International hanger at Palmdale, Calif., where it was assembled, to the DFRC at Edwards Air Force Base, 38 miles away, where it would be mounted on a Boeing 747 for a brief test of the orbiter plane assembly before flying to KSC. In Lancaster, Calif., the orbiter's 78-foot wings hung over the sides of the two-lane road into town, barely clearing utility poles, and some street lights had to be moved to clear the way. Spectators lined the route to see the five-story-high 122-foot-long orbiter pass by on its 90-wheel trailer, dwarfing its train of security vehicles, trucks, and a fire engine. Onlookers commented on the heavy security arrangements, but NASA officials said that they had to protect the craft from bystanders who might touch the fragile thermal-protection tiles on the spacecraft surface. Obviously missing were a number of black tiles on Columbia's belly and white tiles on its sides, to be added in Florida along with the engines and computers.
The scheduled takeoff for Florida might be delayed because of bad weather, NASA spokesmen warned, to lessen chances of an accident during the cross-country flight; adverse conditions had developed along the route.
The 15-minute test flight Friday of the orbiter-747 combination resulted in extensive damage to the protective-tile surface of the orbiter, said former astronaut Deke Slayton, NASA's manager for orbiter flight tests. As the 747 took off down the runway at Edwards, parts of the dummy tiles, some as long as 2.5 feet began to fall off the spaceship. When the flight ended, Columbia had lost not only some of the plastic-foam dummy tiles attached by tape to the areas around the windows, fuselage sides, wings, and midtail, but also some of the 26,000 actual protective tiles bonded to the spaceship at the plant. "When the dummies began to fall off, the tape which was attached to them started to swirl around and damage some of the real tiles," said Slayton, who flew one of two chase planes to keep an eye on the orbiter 747 test flight. NASA had decided to send Columbia to KSC without about 8,000 tiles that could be installed there; dummies had been used to cover areas where in-flight problems might arise, but after seeing the test results, engineers decided that not all the dummies were needed. Slayton said that the orbiter-747 assembly was now scheduled to depart for Florida on Monday, March 12. The 3,000-mile ferry flight had originally been set for Friday, March 9, but a problem arose in mounting the orbiter on the 747, caused by misalignment of the orbiter to the three struts atop the 747, and the test flight was delayed until Friday afternoon, after which the tile problem occurred.
Although NASA engineers said March 10 that the combination could still fly cross-country March 12, a later report said that 34 dummy tiles were lost and 39 damaged; 7 real tiles were destroyed or lost and 100 damaged. Replacement of missing tiles would delay the trip at least to Saturday, March 17; NASA planned to complete the fix without removing the orbiter from its carrier aircraft. (NY Times, Mar 9/79, A-20; W Post, Mar 9/79, A-3; Mar 12/79, A7; W Star, Mar 10/79, A-5; Mar 11/79, A-6; Mar 12/79, A-4; Today„ Mar 9/79, 1A, 16A; Mar 10/79, 1A, 8A; NASA Dly Actv Rept, Mar 13/79)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
