Remembering ‘The Flying Brickyard’…
12 Apr 2021
Dear LPG,
I wrote the following thirty years ago after seeing a television documentary on the subject. I found it about three weeks ago, and thought that LPG might like to pay tribute to Columbia and all who sailed in her…
April 12th. 1981 AD marked the first flight of the world’s first reusable spacecraft, and it was almost perfect, but not quite. At the conclusion of the mission, NASA found that 16 of space shuttle Columbia’s heat shielding tiles had fallen off and another 150 had been damaged. On the inside, the only problem was that the zero-gravity toilet broke, fortunately, just before re-entry.
The critical point of the 54-hour mission was re-entry. How would the spacecraft’s heat shield tiles hold up under the extreme temperatures generated during first contact with the air?
As Columbia hit the atmosphere after 36 orbits, the tiles on its underside glowed red and the resulting ionised air (electrons ripped off atoms) cut off communications for 21 minutes. Despite the lost tiles, it came through without any other problems, and pilot, Robert Crippen glided the space plane to a clean landing at Edwards Air Force Base on April 14th. “What a way to come to California.”, he said.
Columbia was a departure from previous space craft in that it could be used time and again. The American rocket society and the British Interplanetary Society had long before suggested such a vehicle, and NASA scientist Wernher Von Braun had pointed out the advantages of a reusable space vehicle as far back as the 1950s.
But it was not until March 1970 that President Richard Nixon announced plans for the shuttle program.
To test the concept, NASA first built an experimental model for atmospheric tests called Enterprise, after the television show ‘Star Trek’.
But the first real space shuttle was Columbia, and like many new technologies, Columbia, at first, had problems.
On its first flight from California to its launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida (while flying piggyback on a 747 jet), thousands of tiles fell off. This delayed its launch and earned it the name ‘Space Lemon’ from critics. The 30,000 tiles glued to the spacecraft also earned it the more affectionate nickname, ‘The flying brickyard’.
The Columbia should have flown in 1979 but, because of the lost tiles, the launch date had to be delayed until the end of March 1981. Then a computer malfunction delayed lift off again. Finally, on April 12th, the Columbia roared off into the sky, its rocket engines were the most efficient ever built at the time, generating the power of seven Hoover Dams.
The trip began a new era, designed to make space flight routine, but Columbia and its sister shuttles would soon be used as moving vans to deploy satellites, pick them up, or fix them right there in outer space.
Well, that is as far as I got all that time ago, but it would be another 13 years of Columbia’s story before its tragic final voyage of 2003 and its seven lost astronauts. But the lessons that were learned continue to provide the clues that will one day allow us to have a reusable space craft.
I just thought it an anniversary to acknowledge…
CSC, Downham
LPG found some more information…
