Space Shuttle – History of Sorts

The Enterprise

We all know the adventures of the Spacecraft that carries the name Enterprise. Jonathan Archer, may have been the 1st Captain of Earth’s first Warp 5 vessel, Enterprise. Of course there is the famous Captain Kirk. who commandeered the Enterprise NCC-1701.

Of course there was (or rather will be, like the other aforementioned space crafts) USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) under command of Captain Jean Luc Picard, to baldly and boldly go where no man had gone before.

However the original Enterprise had its maiden flight on on February 18, 1977, atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

So lets just remember this anniversary with a few impressions of the Enterprise.

sources

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/multimedia/imagegallery/SCA/201204270017HQ_SCA_Enterprise.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Enterprise

Big Bird in space

big bird

It was announced today that the man who had played Big Bird from, 1969 to 2018 ,Caroll Spinney, sadly passed away aged 85.

However he had escaped death about 33 years earlier.

When NASA first had started planning for the Challenger mission, the agency had approached and invited Spinney to wear the Big Bird suit and take the bird up into space. The aim of the project was to get young children more excited about the space program. Spinney was happy to go partake in the mission as Big Bird. However there were some practical problems when NASA realized, the actual size of Big Bird , he stood at 8’ 2’’ tall. Nasa then opted for teacher Christa McAuliffe instead to become a member of the 1986 Challenger mission and to interact with kids on the ground during the space flight.

Challenger

The launch was scheduled for January 28,1986. Unfortunately only a short time at approximately 11:39 EST. tragedy struck and the Challenger exploded. killing all 8 astronauts .

If the Big Bird suit had been smaller it would have been Caroll Spinney who would have been aboard that Space Shuttle.

space

Donation

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Sources

NASA

BBC

Mercury 7-Astronaut Group 1

On April 9, 1959, NASA’s first administrator, Dr. Keith Glennan, announced the names of the agency’s first group of astronauts at a news conference in Washington, D.C. Now known as the “Original Seven,” they included three Naval aviators, M. Scott Carpenter, Walter M. Schirra Jr., and Alan B. Shepard Jr.; three Air Force pilots, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom, and Donald K. (Deke) Slayton; along with Marine Corps aviator John H. Glenn Jr. This group photo of the original Mercury astronauts was taken in June 1963 at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), now Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. The astronauts are, left-to-right: Cooper, Schirra, Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Slayton and Carpenter.

Mercury represented NASA’s first human spaceflight program, with the aim to see if humans could function effectively in space for a few minutes or hours at a time.

Members of the group flew on all classes of NASA manned orbital spacecraft of the 20th century — Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle. Gus Grissom died in 1967, in the Apollo 1 fire.

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The others all survived past retirement from service. John Glenn went on to become a U.S. senator and flew on the Shuttle 36 years later to become the oldest person to fly in space, age 77. He was the last living member of the Mercury 7 team when he died in 2016 at the age of 95.

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On Oct. 7, 1958, the space agency announced plans to launch humans into space. Project Mercury became NASA’s first major undertaking. The objectives of the program were simple by today’s standards, but required a major undertaking to place a human-rated spacecraft into orbit around Earth, observe the astronaut’s performance in such conditions and safely recover the astronaut and the spacecraft.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision that the military services could provide the pilots simplified the astronaut selection process. From a total of 508 service records screened in January 1959, 110 men were found to meet the minimum standards. This list of names included five Marines, 47 Naval aviators and 58 Air Force pilots.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower insisted that all candidates be test pilots. Because of the small space inside the Mercury spacecraft, candidates could be no taller than 5 feet 11 inches (180 cm) and weigh no more than 180 pounds (82 kg). Other requirements included an age under 40, a bachelor’s degree or the professional equivalent, 1,500 hours of flying time, and qualification to fly jet aircraft.

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NASA officials were pleased so many agreed to participate in the man-in-space project. At the introductory news conference, Shepard said that he was eager to participate as soon as he learned NASA was seeking pilots for spaceflight.

NASA introduced the astronauts in Washington on April 9, 1959. Although the agency viewed Project Mercury’s purpose as an experiment to determine whether humans could survive space travel, the seven men immediately became national heroes and were compared by Time magazine to “Columbus, Magellan, Daniel Boone, and the Wright brothers.”Two hundred reporters overflowed the room used for the announcement and alarmed the astronauts, who were unused to such a large audience.

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Donation

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Sources

NASA

SpaceOrg.com

Challenger 28 January 1986

Challenger-crew

It’s hard to believe that it has already been 33 years ago since the Challenger disaster happened. I still remember it as if it was yesterday.

One thing that I hadn’t thought of was that there was a group of children watching while their Teacher died. Looking back it make sense of course that the pupils of Christa McAuliffe would watch the launch of the Space shuttle since their teacher was on board.

37-year-old Christa McAuliffe was a social studies teacher at Concord High School in New Hampshire. She was selected as a civilian and NASA’s first educator in space through the Teacher in Space Project, designed to generate publicity and inspire kids to reach for the stars. She was even going to teach a few lessons while in space.

Capture

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

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The mission, dubbed Challenger’s STS-51L, marked pilot Mike Smith’s first spaceflight. Just before NASA lost telemetric contact with the shuttle, the crew’s voice recorder captured Smith saying “Uh-oh,” which proves that at least one member of the crew was aware something was going wrong with the launch before the actual explosion.

PILOT

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.

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