Author Topic: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way  (Read 105680 times)

Offline Ares67

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OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« on: 10/12/2014 08:02 pm »

Offline Ares67

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #1 on: 10/12/2014 08:04 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #2 on: 10/12/2014 08:05 pm »
On the Shoulders of Giants

“But in the stillness of the moment
 It takes for a Polaroid picture
To capture our faces forever and
The world has turned a touch on its axis
And the only thing certain is
That everything changes”


- Frank Turner, “Polaroid Picture,” Tape Deck Heart, Xtra Mile Recordings 2013


While adding the story of the May/June 1983 European visit of the prototype orbiter Enterprise to my recent STS-7 history report I soon realized that I wanted to tell you much more about the only orbiter vehicle I’ve met up close and personal than would reasonably fit into the story of “Sally’s Ride” (although ten years later, looking from a nearby viewing site while touring KSC, I’d see Endeavour STS-56 sit on the launch pad, and another five years later, from a safe distance of several miles away, I’d watch Discovery being launched on mission STS-91). So, here is the result of my having second thoughts...

As always, by combining and presenting all of this information, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants who have closely documented this story in many other places. I want to start with Robert Godwin’s introduction to his collection of ALT/STS 1-5 documents for Apogee’s NASA Mission Reports series. Apart from “Space Shuttle STS 1-5 – The NASA Mission Reports,” I highly recommend reading Dennis R. Jenkins’ “Space Shuttle – The History of the National Space Transportation System, The First 100 Missions” and Thomas A. Heppenheimer’s “Development of the Space Shuttle 1972 – 1981, History of the Space Shuttle, Volume Two,” which represent the backbone of this collection of texts and images through which I want you to relive those pioneering days of the shuttle program when Enterprise herself was standing on the “shoulders” of a giant… and jumped!

Enjoy.

- Oliver, aka Ares67

Offline Ares67

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #3 on: 10/12/2014 08:07 pm »
From Vision to Reality

“Ire audaciter quo nemo ante iit”

- “To boldly go where no man has gone before”


(By Robert Godwin)

On November 17, 1783, King Louis XIV of France had provided the Montgolfier brothers with two condemned prisoners from the Bastille. Most of the late 18th century physicians were in agreement that if a man were to step inside the rickety gondola suspended below the brothers’ 72-foot-long balloon and allow himself to be carried aloft he would surely die of catastrophic hemorrhaging. As the volunteers were less than forthcoming the King nominated two convicts.

At the last minute, in a moment of bravado worthy of any latter-day astronaut, a local man declared that if this was to be the first time that a human would fly, it should surely not be a convicted murderer. Monsieur Rozier proceeded into the gondola and after making certain that the ropes were safely secured to the ground, his 180-pound payload was sent aloft to an altitude of 80 feet. Less than two hundred years later, on April 12,1981, a payload of 180,000 pounds was strapped to 4.3 million pounds of high explosive and propelled with two equally hardy adventurers, to an orbital altitude of 145 nautical miles.

The history of aviation has spanned just more than two centuries and has induced such an incredible assortment of heroic travelers that it required a new term to enter the lexicon of the English language. American writer Tom Wolfe immortalized the “Right Stuff” in his book of the same name. In the annals of aviation, the Space Shuttle has earned a place alongside the Montgolfier’s balloon, the Wright Brother’s Flyer, Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, the Russian spacecraft Vostok, and the United States’ Apollo.

The shuttle’s story dates back to before WWII, when an Austrian engineer named Eugene Sänger put pen to paper and outlined the principals of hypersonic flight. Sänger had written a report for the Luftwaffe which proposed a rocket plane with a dry-weight of 20 tons and a payload capability of 80 tons. To get such an enormous load off the ground presented the same problems as it does today. Sänger suggested a straight takeoff track over three kilometers long. His subsequent report ended up on the desks of, amongst others, Wernher von Braun, General Dornberger and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. At the end of the war, Sänger’s ideas were part of the treasure trove appropriated by the allies and, despite Stalin’s best efforts to locate the Austrian genius, Sänger lived on to a ripe old age in the West.

By the 1950’s Wernher von Braun and many of his team had integrated into American society and were working towards their dream of colonizing space. Due to the frosty political climate prevailing between the West and the Soviet Union, von Braun was encouraged to spend his efforts on building bigger and faster ways to deliver a nuclear warhead to Moscow. The ICBM became the preferred big money project, but Sänger’s work was not forgotten and the possibilities of hypersonic winged flight continued to be explored in the high California desert. By 1959 the culmination of these efforts produced the X-15 rocket plane which flew to altitudes of over 60 miles and tested the concepts of winged reentry as well as the idea of using ejectable fuel tanks. The X-15 landed as a glider back on the runway at Edwards Air Force Base under the control of the pilot.

On April 12, 1961, the rules of the game changed when the Soviets launched a Vostok capsule to an altitude of 203 miles. Yuri Gagarin had been strapped on top of an R-7 ballistic missile. Sputnik had proven three years earlier that the Soviets could drop a bomb anywhere they wanted, but Vostok 1 proved that a man could survive the dramatic and punishing forces atop a missile. At this moment winged spaceflight took a giant leap backwards. The Space Race was fully engaged and missiles were now the order of the day. Reusability was quickly forgotten. For the next decade the hypersonic revolution wallowed in the backwaters of obscurity in the deserts of California.

Just as April 12, 1961, had been a bad day for winged spacecraft, July 20, 1969, was a good day. As history will never forget on that day two men stepped out on to the lunar surface and effectively ended the space race in dramatic style. In a moment of incidental irony it is often forgotten that the first of those men, Neil Armstrong, had spent most of his early career as one of a handful of test pilots flying the X-15, at that time the world’s only winged spacecraft.

Less than two weeks after Apollo 11’s crew returned to a triumphant welcome, Wernher von Braun made a presentation to the Space Task Group about the future of manned spaceflight. In von Braun’s version of things the enormous Saturn V and a newly proposed winged Space Shuttle would combine forces. These two heavy lifters would be used to build space stations, moon bases and even permanent settlements on Mars by 1986.

This wildly optimistic vision would be stymied by everything from politics to oil embargoes. President Nixon wanted a cheaper an less audacious plan that did not include the continuing production of the mighty Saturn rockets and in which these lofty goals would be considerably restrained. Reusability became the name of the game and the only way to make a spacecraft reusable was to put wings on it. Suddenly the pilots of the Mojave were pushed into the limelight.

On August 12, 1977, two men, ex-Apollo 13 astronaut and Edwards test pilot Fred Haise and co-pilot Gordon Fullerton sat at the controls of the first Space Shuttle, named Enterprise. Carried aloft to an altitude that would have Monsieur Rozier gasping for breath, Haise and Fullerton launched the 90-ton glider away from its carrier plane and into the history books. In just less than six minutes Haise and Fullerton brought the 180,000 pond glider to a perfect landing on the desert runway.

After a handful of similar test flights, which Haise and Fullerton shared with another X-15 pilot, Joe Engle (and his crewmate Richard Truly), the Enterprise was shipped off to Florida. A series of further tests ensued which saw the orbiter mated to its fuel tanks and strap-on boosters.

On April 12, 1981, two astronauts climbed aboard the fully fueled and integrated Space Transportation System, Columbia STS-1. John Young, a veteran of both Gemini and Apollo, and Robert Crippen had been selected to take the shuttle on its first full flight into space. Twenty years earlier on the same day a Russian missile had propelled 10,395 pounds into space using 1.1 million pounds of thrust. Gagarin flew 25,000 miles in 108 minutes. On this day 180,000 pounds would ride atop 7.7 million pounds of thrust, an increase in engine and fuel efficiency of over 300 percent. However, this crew would be landing on a runway after traveling over a million miles in a little over 54 hours.

Today the Space Shuttle still stands at the top of the list as the greatest flying machine ever built. The wildest imaginings of Monsieur Rozier could not have envisioned the Space Shuttle, and yet, only 150 years after his immortal flight Eigen Sänger’s sketches laid the foundation for the reality we know today.

(Robert Godwin, Introduction to “Space Shuttle, STS Flights 1-5 / The NASA Mission Reports,” Apogee Books, 2001 – edited)

Offline Ares67

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #4 on: 10/12/2014 08:08 pm »
Boldly going…

"You know, I'm a little partial to the name ‘Enterprise’."

- U.S. President Gerald Ford, talking to NASA Administrator James Fletcher, after the White House literally had been flooded by a tsunami of letters written by Star Trek fans asking for OV-101 being named after their beloved NCC-1701. In honor of the United States’ Bicentennial celebrations in 1976 the first shuttle orbiter was supposed to be named “Constitution” – ironically, after the letter campaign, it actually was named after a “Constitution-class” Starfleet vessel…


“I’ll make one prediction that there will be a great demand for a new kind of astronaut – one with pointed ears.”

- U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), commenting on the obvious Vulcan connection to the Enterprise’s rollout


“And I will see my dream come alive at last.
I will touch the sky.”


- Diane Warren, “Faith of the Heart,” Star Trek: Enterprise theme

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #5 on: 10/12/2014 08:10 pm »
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

The rollout of a new aircraft is somewhat like the entrance of a queen, and NASA was ready to celebrate with a brass band and plenty of red, white, and blue bunting. In keeping with the Bicentennial, the orbiter was to be christened “Constitution”. But one well-connected space buff, Richard Hoagland had other thoughts (yes, that was the future infamous “Face on Mars” activist)

Hoagland had worked as a science advisor within Walter Cronkite’s organization at CBS and was intimately associated with the fans of the TV series Star Trek. He, as well as many others within the community, considered that OV-101 should be called “Enterprise,” after the starship, and persuaded his fellow Trekkers to bombard the White House with a hundred thousand letters that demanded this name.

Here indeed was the voice of the people, a voice that President Gerald Ford could not ignore. Within NASA, some officials disliked that name, as it suggested a link between the shuttle program and the television series. Others supported it, asserting that it would give the program ready recognition. The final choice, however, was Ford’s. On September 8, 1976, he had a 45-minute meeting with NASA Administrator Dr. James C. Fletcher and gave his assent.

The name “Enterprise,” illustrious in U.S. naval history, has been given to the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, CVN-65, to a World War II carrier, CV-6, and to an American sloop in the Revolutionary War. The name “Constitution” has met with objections that the shuttle is considered an international effort in which several countries would participate.

Referring to the Star Trek letter campaign, Aviation Week magazine commented on the “power of an aroused involved public – especially in an election year.” The Washington Star in an editorial said it was “pathetic” that the public desire for drama in outer space had not been killed by the mundane discoveries on Mars, Venus, and the Moon, and predicted that “nothing exciting will happen in the real-life Enterprise,” even though the naming incident confirmed a public desire “to associate space with adventure and suspense.”

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #6 on: 10/12/2014 08:14 pm »
GRATIFIED SMILES

The rollout took place on Constitution Day (!), September 17, 1976, just before 11:00 a.m. PDT. Two thousand people showed up, some of them driving from Los Angeles along the Antelope Freeway. Morning mist was in the air along that route; mountains stepped into the distance in tiers, successively hazier and less distinct. Smog and drizzle had threatened for several days to spill over into the high desert from the Los Angeles basin, but on rollout morning the weather at Palmdale was ideal – clear, light wind and comfortably warm.

Three-level workstands had been pressed into service as camera platforms for still, motion picture and television cameramen behind the invited guest seating area. Others of the 185 newsmen covering the rollout sat in the press section near where Orbiter Vehicle 101 came to a halt behind a star-spangled tractor. Nearby the reentry-smudged Apollo 14 Command Module sat on a dolly as a link in the evolution of spacecraft.

Special guests that morning included Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who was flanked by several members of the show’s cast – actors Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koenig. They all had very gratified smiles as the orbiter, white and black with the name “Enterprise” prominent on its side, came into view from behind a wall and the Air Force band of the Golden West, in fact, played the Star Trek theme music.

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #7 on: 10/12/2014 08:15 pm »
O Captain! My Captain! – Where have you been?

Ah, there you are…

;)

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #8 on: 10/12/2014 08:19 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #9 on: 10/12/2014 08:21 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #10 on: 10/12/2014 08:22 pm »
CHALLENGE AND ADVENTURE

The Space Shuttle “is probably the best investment the United States Congress has ever made,” U.S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater (R-Arizona) said, speaking before the assembled crowd. “We are on the verge of a new era,” the senator said. “The Space Shuttle will present us a remarkable opportunity to explore the new frontier of space for the benefit of all mankind.”

Goldwater was one of several dignitaries who spoke at the unveiling of the Enterprise, the first reusable Space Shuttle vehicle. Keynote remarks were made by NASA Administrator James Fletcher, who called the event “a very proud moment” for the agency. “With the Space Shuttle program, Americans and the people of the world have made the evolution to man in space – not just astronauts,” he said.

The administrator noted that while shuttle crews must meet rigorous standards, “passengers can qualify with normal good health.” The shuttle is “the natural progression” of all our space programs and insures that “man has entered the environment of space permanently,” Fletcher said. This reusable transportation system, which combines the best features of spacecraft and aircraft, “will carry the technology of many countries to benefit this nation and all the nations of the world,” the NASA administrator concluded.

U.S. Rep. Olin E. Teague (D-Texas), chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, told the group, “Today marks a major milestone in our space program. This is the first in a fleet of space vehicles which will enable us… to greatly enhance life here on Earth.” Teague praised both government and industry efforts for making possible, for the first time, “low cost, routine access to space.”

The rollout program was opened by John F. Yardley, Associate NASA Administrator for the Office of Space Flight, who acted as master of ceremonies. U.S. Senator John V. Tunney (D-California) welcomed the guests to California. He called the shuttle “the gem of American space exploration for the next decade” and noted the practicality as well as the “challenge and adventure” of the program. Willard F. Rockwell, Jr., board chairman of Rockwell International, predicted “one of the most exciting chapters in American history” in the productive use of space that the shuttle would make possible.

Following a local welcome by U.S. Rep. William M. Ketchum (R-California), special guests were introduced. These included from JSC, Director Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., program officials Robert F. Thompson, Aaron Cohen and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, and ALT crewmen Fred W. Haise, Joe H. Engle, Charles G. Fullerton and Richard H. Truly.

When all the speeches were over and the band had packed away their instruments, Enterprise became a backdrop for hundreds of you-take-my-pictures, I’ll-take-yours tableaux. Spectators were surprised at the orbiter’s size. With a length of 122 feet and a wingspan of 78 feet it is about as large as a DC-9 airliner. People were free to walk beneath it and touch it.

The scene was repeated the following day on a much larger scale as Enterprise was rolled out of the hangar again and parked on the ramp for the general public and for Rockwell International employees. Meanwhile, work crews were already relocating telephone poles and Joshua trees in preparation for the overland move of OV-101 from Palmdale to Dryden Flight Research Center in January 1977.

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #11 on: 10/12/2014 08:24 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #12 on: 10/12/2014 08:25 pm »
PLANS AND PROMISES (1976)

The Space Shuttle system consists of the orbiter (the Enterprise), a large liquid-fuel tank that will not be recoverable, and two reusable solid-fuel boosters. The shuttle is designed to be used as many as one hundred times on missions ranging from an average of seven days to as much as a month, with a two-week turnaround and preparation period for the next flight.

In the words of James Fletcher, “Any discussion of future space initiatives must start with the Space Shuttle, the key to opening up near space to quick, easy, and economical access. With the Space Shuttle, operations to and from low-altitude Earth orbit – for both manned and unmanned exploration, science and applications – will become routine and relatively inexpensive.”

NASA and the Pentagon are already pushing Congress and the President for funds to construct two or three more shuttles, but both agencies are beginning to meet increased opposition, led by Walter Mondale. Opponents say that the shuttle will be used to “make work” and thus to spend increased money on space exploration. No small part of the questions are concerned with the shuttle’s ability to be used militarily, examining up-close Soviet spy satellites and even (though the Pentagon denies this) as a nuclear bomber.

Regardless, the shuttle promises a tremendous diversity of missions. NASA has reportedly come up with over five hundred possibilities, including satellite placement, maintenance, repair, and retrieval; placement of scientific labs in orbit; establishing an optical telescopic observatory above the atmosphere will for the first time be feasible; and delivery and construction of powered space vehicles for missions to deep space.

The reported cost will be in the neighborhood of ten million dollars per mission, according to NASA estimates, even though the agency quoted a price of around twenty million to a European consortium which is working on a manned laboratory designed to be placed in orbit by the shuttle. This is still in marked contrast to the average of thirty million per throw-away rocket launch at present.

The Enterprise will not be the first shuttle to go into orbit, but will be used to make the necessary atmospheric flight tests. The second orbiter, OV-102, will make the first orbital flight in March 1979, if everything goes according to schedule. The Enterprise will probably make her first spaceflight sometime in 1983.


See also: “What Shuttle Should Have Been…”

http://www.wired.com/2012/03/what-shuttle-should-have-been-the-october-1977-flight-manifest/


(Roundup, Vol. 15, No. 19, Sep. 24, 1976; Starlog, Issue No. 3, January 1977; Eleanor H. Ritchie, “Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1976 – A Chronology,” The NASA History Series, 1984; T.A. Heppenheimer, “Development of the Space Shuttle 1972-1981,” Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002 – edited)

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #13 on: 10/12/2014 08:28 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #14 on: 10/12/2014 08:30 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #15 on: 10/12/2014 08:34 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #16 on: 10/12/2014 08:36 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #17 on: 10/12/2014 08:39 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #18 on: 10/12/2014 08:41 pm »

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Re: OV-101 Enterprise – It’s Been A Long Way
« Reply #19 on: 10/12/2014 08:45 pm »

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