![]() ![]() ![]() Columbia arrived at KSC short some 8,000 of the needed 31,000 tiles. They were superb insulators, but they were fragile and difficult to attach to the orbiter. Technical difficulties had caused production delays, and there was still much work to be done on this complex new vehicle.įor protection from the burning heat of re-entry, the orbiter used a new system of reusable lightweight thermal tiles, made of ceramic-coated silica. The ensuing effort to ready Columbia for its maiden launch posed an unparalleled challenge to the KSC team. The next day, Columbia was towed to the new hangarlike building especially designed to handle this new breed of spaceship, the Orbiter Processing Facility. But for the first two years these orbiters would descend from an altitude no higher than the back of a 747. The 15,000-foot (4,572 meter) long Shuttle Landing Facility runway had been built to welcome an orbiter when it returned from space. It rode piggyback on a specially modified 747 jet. Orbiter Columbia arrived at KSC from the manufacturing plant in California on March 24, 1979. The three newer orbiters would fly as proven vehicles on their first launches. Columbia, the only orbiter that would be available for many months, was chosen for the complete flight test program of four missions. The Space Transportation System (STS), of which the Space Shuttle was the first major part, was expected to mature and evolve in ways hardly imagined at its beginnings.īut first the Space Shuttle had to prove itself. The reusable capability it promised would allow the United States to deliver large payloads into Earth orbit, to repair spacecraft already in orbit, and, when required, bring payloads back to Earth. The Space Shuttle was designed from the beginning as a key link in the exploration and development of the space frontier. There was no longer just a single goal to be achieved. Perhaps no other mission during two decades of manned space flight was as critical to the future of the space program as the first flight of the Space Shuttle.Ĭolumbia - first orbiter off the production line configured for flight in space - represented the first time in America's manned space program that NASA had undertaken an open-ended project. ![]()
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