Author Topic: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”  (Read 73395 times)

Offline Ares67

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #20 on: 02/18/2012 02:22 pm »
November 24: Atlantis shook off a temporary flight postponement by borrowing a part from the space shuttle Discovery and is back on schedule for its 7:29 p.m. liftoff Nov. 26. A leaky valve in the hydraulic system of engine No. 2 was the culprit, officials said. Kennedy Space Center spokesman George Diller said, "We scrubbed the scrub. By virtue of the fact that installation went on schedule and testing went so smoothly, we picked up the countdown at 2 p.m." Diller said the delay - planned temporarily to have lasted a full day - wouldn't have affected the operation of the mission, because countdown hadn't begun. "It would've been some aggravation, but it wouldn't have been a major slip," he said. (FLORIDA TODAY, Nov. 25, 1985)

Kennedy Space Center workers John Godke, Russell Vessels, Geoff Bowles, orbiter mechanics, Tom Westcott, quality control, and David Coffman, supervisor, have been recommended for the Lockheed Space Operations Co. commendation award by H.C. Byrd, manager of Launch Pad 39-A operations. NASA managers had announced a 24-hour delay in the Nov. 26 flight of Atlantis after tests showed a valve in the hydraulics system of the shuttle had malfunctioned. It happened around midnight Nov. 23, said shuttle chief Bob Sieck. The KSC workers named above "got together in the middle of the night and figured out how to fix it, and by the next morning they were saying" 'OK, Management, we're ready to retest this thing.' They totally exceeded our expectations of what the team would be able to do," Sieck said. (FLORIDA TODAY, Dec. 11, 1985)

Offline Ares67

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #21 on: 02/18/2012 02:25 pm »
November 25: "Everything is ready to support the mission. We are all in a 'go' condition now," said NASA shuttle chief Jesse Moore. Air Force weather officer Lt. Scott Funk predicted scattered clouds, possibly a shower, but probably "a tremendously, clear, beautiful sky with almost a full moon" for Nov. 26's night launch of Atlantis at 7:29 p.m. Mission managers have nine minutes in the first "window" to launch the 100-ton spacecraft. If they fail to meet that deadline, a second window is available from 8:07 to 8:11p.m. The night launch is expected to be visible from South Carolina to Miami. (FLORIDA TODAY, Nov. 26, 1985)
« Last Edit: 02/18/2012 02:26 pm by Ares67 »

Offline Ares67

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #22 on: 02/18/2012 02:34 pm »
Tuesday, November 26, 1985 – “Hey, no sweat”

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #23 on: 02/18/2012 02:41 pm »
PAO: At the left is Mission Specialist Jerry Ross and then Woody Spring, they will be the two making the spacewalks on this mission. And there is Pilot Bryan O’Connor making his first trip into space. And there is Commander Brewster Shaw. There is Mission Specialist Mary Cleave; she will be making her first trip into space. Ans Payload Specialists Rodolfo Neri and Charlie Walker. Walker will be making his third trip into space this time. And of course it’s Neri’s first trip into space. And there is the traditional mission cake…

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #24 on: 02/18/2012 02:48 pm »
PAO: And there is the 61-B flight crew coming out of their crew quarters at the Operations & Checkout Building. They are now onboard the elevator. There are Mary Cleave and Bryan O’Connor, just getting onboard…

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #25 on: 02/18/2012 02:51 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #26 on: 02/18/2012 02:58 pm »
PAO: And here comes the flight crew: Commander Brewster Shaw, Pilot Bryan O’Connor, Mission Specialist Mary Cleave, Woody Spring. there’s Rodolfo Neri, Jerry Ross waving there, and Charlie Walker, McDonnell Douglas… and there is John Young. And all the astronauts are now aboard the astronaut van and will be departing shortly for launch pad 39A.

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #27 on: 02/18/2012 03:01 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #28 on: 02/18/2012 03:05 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #29 on: 02/18/2012 03:11 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #30 on: 02/18/2012 03:13 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #31 on: 02/18/2012 03:17 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #32 on: 02/18/2012 03:20 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #33 on: 02/18/2012 03:24 pm »
Mission Specialist Woody Spring described his impressions at the launch pad for NASA’s “Oral History Project”: “I remember going up in the elevator, and there’s still a bathroom that works like two floors above where the crew goes in. Most of us took the opportunity to take a “last chance” up there, but from up there, the vehicle’s like it’s alive. … It’s full of cryo, you know, cryogenic oxygen and hydrogen, so this thing’s almost squealing with, making these squealing noises and venting off from the beanie cap that goes on top of the external tank. They siphon off the hydrogen that boils off, and that goes over to the burn pond, and so there you are on a dark night, on the seashore, with the xenon floodlights on us, but it’s dark in the background, but then there’s this burn pond, with the hydrogen flames just burning and dancing in the background. Meanwhile, the Orbiter is just telling you, it’s ready. This thing’s alive. I mean, it’s making noises, it’s groaning, it’s creaking, and, oh, wow. This is so cool. This is the big event!”

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #34 on: 02/18/2012 03:27 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #35 on: 02/18/2012 03:33 pm »
PAO: Mission Specialist Mary Cleave in the process of putting on her egress harness now… everything proceeding smoothly in the countdown. A number of activities taking place during the time that the crew is getting onboard. We’ve heard a status in the Solid Rocket Booster retrieval area. The area is clear of ships in a 40-mile radius, so we expect no problems as far as interference in the impact area for this evening’s launch.

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #36 on: 02/18/2012 03:38 pm »
LTD: MS2, this is the LTD on air-to-ground one. How do you read? Over.

Cleave: LTD, MS2, I read you loud and clear. How me?

LTD: I read you five clear. There’s now, Mary, ready for the flight?

Cleave: You bet.

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #37 on: 02/18/2012 03:43 pm »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #38 on: 02/18/2012 03:45 pm »
Here is what 61-B Pilot Bryan O’Connor told the “NASA Oral History Project” about his thoughts during the final moments before lift-off:

“Here I am, sitting in there on my first launch. Now, I’ve been in the simulator and we’ve been through a dry countdown in that vehicle, on the launch pad, going through the countdown and so on. But it’s still my first one and I’m depending on Brewster for moral support. I want him to look confident over there, okay? Because he’s been through this before and he’ll know if something’s wrong, and I won’t. I mean, that was kind of the frame of mind I was in. Other than that, I was focusing on my procedures, my checklists, my cue cards, thinking about what ifs and so on, and trying to keep focused on all of that.

But a couple of times I looked over there to Brewster to see how he was doing, and I got the full confident business from him. He looked over at me and gives me a thumbs-up and this look like, “Hey, no sweat. This is working out fine.” The countdown’s going well, and when we got down to about, I’d say, the fifteen-second point, I took one last look over at him and I noticed he had his gloves off and he was wiping his hands on his pants.

Now, what he was doing was getting the sweat off of them so that when he put his hand around that stick, he would have a good control and so on. But I didn’t want to see somebody whose hands are sweating at this point. That was not good for me, and I took a deep dive in the confidence zone there of, “Oh, my god. My commander, who’s been through this before, his hands are sweating. Why aren’t mine sweating? Maybe mine ought to be sweating. I think I need to be nervous now if he’s nervous.” And that was not a good thing to happen at fifteen seconds. It would have been better if he had done that at like three minutes and I could have got through all that, but fifteen seconds, by the time I’m thinking about this, the engines light off and I had to snap out of it and say, “Well, we’re going anyway. I don’t care if I’m nervous our not; here we go.”

Mission Specialist Jerry Ross, sitting in the aft flight deck at the time, had this to add in a 2004 “NASA Oral History Project" interview:

“And a little bit earlier, Bryan had said, “You know, you think maybe they’re trying to tell us something? First of all, George got off at the Launch Control Center, off the van that takes you out to the pad. And then the guys at the pad strapped us in and closed the door, and then they beat feet back about three miles away. You think they’re trying to tell us something here?”
« Last Edit: 02/18/2012 03:47 pm by Ares67 »

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Re: Atlantis STS 61-B / Looking for “Freedom”
« Reply #39 on: 02/18/2012 03:55 pm »
PAO: T-3 minutes and counting…

LTD: PLT, clear caution-and-warning memory, verify no unexpected errors.

O’Connor: Roger, that’s in work.

OTC: You look go for ET LO2 pressurization.

PAO: The External Tank liquid oxygen pressurization has started and purging of the shuttle’s main engines is terminated. T-2 minutes 35 seconds and counting, retraction of the gaseous oxygen vent hood has started and the Ground launch Sequencer will make a final check that that’s fully retracted at T-37 seconds. Coming up on the T-2 minute-point, the fuel cell ground supplies have been terminated and Atlantis is now running on its onboard fuel cell reactants. The liquid oxygen ullage pressure tests are underway, and the liquid oxygen tank is approaching flight pressure.

OTC: You look go for ET LH2 pressurization.

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