Jun 27 1982
From The Space Library
NASA launched STS-4, fourth test flight of Space Shuttle Columbia, from KSC at 11 a.m. carrying Ken Mattingly as commander and Henry Hartsfield as pilot. This was the first time that the Shuttle had lifted off on schedule, but the chase planes televising separation did not show the opening of parachutes on the two reusable solid-fuel booster rockets, and there was no sign on the ocean surface of any of the six maim chutes or either of the boosters, which cost $24 million each. Boosters from earlier launches were towed to KSC for refit. After disassembly and cleaning, the first six motor igniter-nozzle assemblies were returned to Thiokol's Utah plant for rebuilding at $7 million each; this procedure had saved NASA $36 million per flight for the first three flights.
The launch was imperiled the night before by a one-hour hailstorm with pellets "the size of golf balls" denting about 400 of the black protective tiles on the Shuttle's undersides. Workmen on hastily erected scaffolds had applied a hardener to strengthen the tiles. Enough water soaked the tiles to make the crew need to bake the underside of the Shuttle in the sunlight for 10 hours to dry it out, so that low temperatures on the night side of the Earth would not freeze and further damage the tiles. Mattingly and Hartsfield had begun to power up the 2,000-pound cargo put in the payload bay by the Air Force as well as four experiments managed by MSFC, including the first use of the Shuttle by a commercial firm. Press reports called it "an open secret" that the U.S. Air Force instruments included an extremely sensitive infrared telescope, an ultraviolet telescope, and a new space sextant designed to navigate spy satellites without ground command.
Hartsfield, on his spaceflight, suffered nausea but was later able to eat dinner. Instead of televising a view of the payload bay as other crews had done, or using the camera on the end of the 60-foot robot arm to show the Earth as they saw it from space, the crew merely described the view, expressing surprise at the amount of detail discernible. The seven-day mission would "wring out the wrinkles" in the Shuttle not dealt with on the first three flights. NASA said that it would name a board to review "in excruciating detail" how the boosters could sink in 3,500 feet of water although the drogue parachutes were found floating 150 miles downrange. (NASA Release 82-87; MSFC Release 82-56; NASA MOR M-989-82-04 [prelaunch] June 18/82; W Post, June 28/82, A-1; June 29/82, A-2; Dtln Gd, June 28/82; Marshall Star, June 30/82, 1)
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