Mar 20 1980
From The Space Library
MSFC reported successful firing of three Space Shuttle main engines mounted in a test article for 535 seconds in the eighth test of the main propulsion system. A similar firing for 555 seconds occurred 3 weeks ago. In the latest test, engineers for the first time gimbaled the engines while including a "pogo" effect (a phenomenon of cyclic pressures in the propellant system that had occurred in earlier launch vehicles) to demonstrate the engine accumulator's ability to prevent pogo during flight. Another successful first was the simulation of failure in thrust-vector control to see whether redundant systems would perform properly. The test had been planned for early morning so that engineers could observe ice and frost conditions on the external tank when it was filled with supercold propellants during nighttime hours, in the absence of heat from the Sun. Rockwell International's space systems group conducted the main propulsion-system testing for MSFC at NSTL. (MSFC Release 80-41)
JSC described a simulated Shuttle mission ending in a return-to-launch-site abort, as one of a series run in the Shuttle avionics integration laboratory (SAIL) in preparation for launch later this year. The SAIL resembled a full size orbiter stripped of its skin, with wires and connectors bared, configured with the same flight-qualifiable hardware and electrical systems being used on the real orbiter at KSC. SAIL employees would run test sequences on a 24-hour basis to check' out the complex Shuttle avionics system; a typical test would begin with a nominal phase (all systems operating normally), then engineers would inject failures to see if the flight system could cope. The Shuttle dynamic simulator would feed equations for aerodynamics, environment, and motion of the orbiter, solid-fuel rocket booster, and external tank into the test system. More than 300 mock missions would fly in the JSC lab before the projected November launch. (JSC Release 80-016)
JSC reported that the third group of 20 astronaut applicants from the 3,122 received in the fall of 1979 would report March 24 for interviews and physical exams. This group included 9 pilot and 11 mission-specialist applicants; 5 of them were women. (JSC Release 80-017)
NASA noted the 20th anniversary of the first research of the X-15 rocket plane that opened up the realm of hypersonic flight and contributed significantly to the U.S. space program. The X-15 made 199 flights in a joint NASA-U.S. Air Force-Navy research program between 1960 and 1968, during which it set the standing records for altitude and. speed of winged aircraft: altitude of 1,796 kilometers (354,200 feet, more than 67 miles), and on another flight 7,274 kilometers per hour (4,520 miles per hour), or 6.7 times the speed of sound. X-15 pilots included Scott Crossfield, the first; astronaut Joe H. Engle; and Neil A. Armstrong, first man on the. Moon.
In 1954, at the beginning of the X-15 program, hypersonic flight had many unknowns: effects of weightlessness, high heat rates, steep reentry angles, attitude control in space-questions that only actual flight could answer. The program would also explore capabilities and limitations of a human pilot in an aerospace vehicle; analysis of the first 44 flights showed that 13 would have failed without a human pilot. Positive result of the program was the finding that human capabilities of sensing, judging, coping with the unexpected, and using a variety of acquired skills remained undiminished in all key problems of aerospace flight. A significant X-15 contribution to the space program was to demonstrate that simulators could be used for crew training: no X-15s had two seats, so the pilots had to train in simulators. Success of this method led to all-out use of simulators for the space program. Total cost of the program, including construction of three X-15 aircraft, was about $300 million. (NASA Release 80-37; NASA Actv, May 80, 8)
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