AstroRJY - 6/5/2007 12:30 PMMy tape of the STS-53 launch from 12/2/92 has been added to the video gallery at Shuttlesource.com This was one of those DOD research missions on a 57 degree inclination northeasterly trajectory from pad 39A. CDR David Walker, PLT Bob Cabana, with MS's Guion Bluford, James Voss, and Michael Clifford.
nathan.moeller - 6/5/2007 4:04 PMI love the sound of the SRBs in this one! Beautiful launch. Amazing thinking I was in kindergarten. I wish I could have been born in 1970 or something. Old enough to watch all these old launches but young enough to be a teenager in the 80s
AstroRJY - 6/5/2007 1:29 PMI looked up the JSC Astronaut files online and found this: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/astrobio.html"PERSONAL DATA: Born May 20, 1944, in Columbus, Georgia. Died on April 23, 2001, while being treated at University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. He is survived by his wife, the former Paige Lucas, and two grown sons."He died then at 56. He was 48 when he was CDR on this flight. "A veteran of four space flights, Walker has logged over 724 hours in space. He was the pilot on STS 51-A in 1984, and was the mission commander on STS-30 in 1989, STS-53 in 1992 and STS-69 in 1995."The roll call is very faint over the launch noise but it's there. I always thought that was weird too, that they blocked out air-to-ground comm during launch on the 1980's DOD flights. We better not let them be heard saying roll program or go at throttle up!... the communists might learn something! *Gasp*! Haha they had another unclassified DOD launch like that for STS-39 in 1991.
Austin - 7/5/2007 1:02 AMQuoteAstroRJY - 6/5/2007 1:29 PMThe roll call is very faint over the launch noise but it's there. I always thought that was weird too, that they blocked out air-to-ground comm during launch on the 1980's DOD flights. We better not let them be heard saying roll program or go at throttle up!... the communists might learn something! *Gasp*! Haha they had another unclassified DOD launch like that for STS-39 in 1991.Perhaps Jim can speak on this, but I believe that blocking out the transmissions was supposed to make it more difficult to track the vehicle during ascent. They obviously later decided that this was not necessary.
AstroRJY - 6/5/2007 1:29 PMThe roll call is very faint over the launch noise but it's there. I always thought that was weird too, that they blocked out air-to-ground comm during launch on the 1980's DOD flights. We better not let them be heard saying roll program or go at throttle up!... the communists might learn something! *Gasp*! Haha they had another unclassified DOD launch like that for STS-39 in 1991.
Jim - 7/5/2007 5:28 AM"We better not let them be heard saying roll program or go at throttle up!" That is just plain stupid. Some spacecraft have call outs during ascent.
Austin - 7/5/2007 11:11 AMQuoteJim - 7/5/2007 5:28 AM"We better not let them be heard saying roll program or go at throttle up!" That is just plain stupid. Some spacecraft have call outs during ascent. Since even amatuers were able to unscrammble the encryption with very basic equipment probably purchased at the local Radio Shack, my guess is that any other country that we were worried about in terms of picking up the transmissions probably wouldn't have too much difficulty as well.It's almost embarrassing if you think about it.
AstroRJY - 7/5/2007 12:31 PMTrue..and sorry for "comparing" two different unclassified DOD research flghts...geeeezz... but CBS was able to monitor air-to-ground transmissions during the launch of STS-28 in 1989 which was a completely classified flight. It sounded a bit staticy and muffled but was intelligible and audible and they braodcast it live during their launch coverage that day.On STS-27 another 57-degree inclination flight on a classified DOD missiion the ABC reporter Jim Slade made a good point. "You have a 184-foot spacecraft on a 600-foot flame taking off from here and any 2-bit radar in a boat offshore can tell you which direciton it's going."
AstroRJY - 6/5/2007 3:21 PMGlad you're so interested now : ) I was in 5th grade when Challenger happened and became very interested after that and was a total space nerd by the time I was in middle school. Have you ever seen a lunch in person? It's awesome. Better get down to Florida sometime before 2010 if you haven't!
Jim - 7/5/2007 9:04 AMQuoteAustin - 7/5/2007 11:11 AMQuoteJim - 7/5/2007 5:28 AM"We better not let them be heard saying roll program or go at throttle up!" That is just plain stupid. Some spacecraft have call outs during ascent. Since even amatuers were able to unscrammble the encryption with very basic equipment probably purchased at the local Radio Shack, my guess is that any other country that we were worried about in terms of picking up the transmissions probably wouldn't have too much difficulty as well.It's almost embarrassing if you think about it.They weren't able to unscrammble the comm
TJL - 7/5/2007 3:48 PMQUOTE...+0: 21 JSC PAO Jeff Carr: Roll manuever's complete, placing Discovery and crew on the proper heading. Engines at 100%. Question...Didn't all shuttle flights after STS-41G fly at either 104 or 104.5% thrust?
AstroRJY - 7/5/2007 5:23 PMAustin you're on the right track but for this launch, the commentator was not expressing 100% in the process of throtlling down though... throttling from one speed to another generally only takes all of 3 seconds. Normally the throttle bucket starts when the computers onboard sense that the vehicle has reached a speed of about Mach .8 which on recent flights has been at 30 or 31 seconds. It ranges anywhere from 65-74% generally unless they are doing a 2-step throtlle down as for example on 41-D (jsut one of several flights) where they went to 84% and held for a few seconds and then down to 65% before throtlling back up to 104. Even on 51-L they had a 2-step throttle bucket where they went down to 94% for about 12 seconds before they went all the way down to 65% for max q then back up to 104. There are several different throttle profiles designed for the specific trajectories and orbits of each flight.
AstroRJY - 7/5/2007 10:15 PMYou know I was thinking after I posted that that somebody might bring that up, because Navias does do his commentaries that way... I suspect he means the engine throttles are staggered a few fractions of a second apart, just as they are started about 0.2 seconds apart, first right then left then center and cutoff in the reverse order... in that context he means the same one-step from full to 2/3 is done that way but he is talking about something different and probably shouldn't use the term "3-step fashion" because it sounds like something else. (Navias is my least favorite ascent commentator.) They don't go through 3 throttle settings going down form 104 to whatever the max q 2/3 setting is, it's all done at once and takes abotu 3-4 seconds. If you ever watch some of the replays of the DOAMS long range tracker (northeast of the pad) when it's zoomed in tight on the lower parts of the SRBS and engines you cna literally see the throttling ocurring as the engine's shock diamond plumes go back upward into the engines slightly about 30 seconds into flight usually. Another thing to remember is that (according to Jay Greene, one of the shuttle flight directors form the 1980s), the data on the screens in Houston is on a slight delay, so what they are seeing on their screens is telemetry downlinked that actually happened 2-3 seconds before they see it showing up n their screens. Sorry for going on... just other info that occurred to me and wanted to throw that in there.Loved the CNN transcript! Thanks for putting all that on here too, great stuff.
I hate to dig up this old topic, but does anyone still have the video the OP posted? This was my first launch to see and I knew one of the crew members so I'm trying to dig up anything I can find on it.