STS-1 Heroics & Hindsight

Today, April 12th, marks 29 years to the day that Astronauts John W. Young and Robert L. Crippen climbed through the hatch of Space Shuttle Columbia and rocketed of pad 39A a top the worlds largest solid-rockets...they were the first human beings ever to do so. It was 1981 and the space shuttle had arrived at operational status a few years behind schedule, it had been six years since America had last launched a vastly different spacecraft on the Apollo-Soyuz mission.

What I call the "early shuttle program" (basically pre-challenger) has always fascinated me it's always seemed like a time with such innocence. When Young and Crippen climbed into Columbia on STS-1 it boggles the mind how little we knew about the craft that we were launching them in. The shuttle had great promise of 100 flights per orbiter (currently the entire program has just over 100 flights combined) and launch turnarounds of just a few weeks (in reality that turned out to be more like months). On STS-1 we strapped the astronauts into some SR-71 ejection seats wearing some SR-71 pressure suits and sent them on their way. Their lives were in the hands of a whole host of technologies that had never been tested operationally on orbit.

So many of the regulations and safety procedures associated with the shuttle we take for granted today weren't in place in 1981 or really before the 1986 and the Challenger disaster. For example after the first few flights crews didn't even wear any kind of pressure suits on launch just a simple oxygen mask. In addition the early shuttle program featured interesting experiments like the "Carbonated Beverage Dispenser Evaluation payload or CBDE" otherwise known as Coke and Pepsi's specially developed cans for space. Something that would seem a bit out of place in the current shuttle program. Another striking example I saw from STS-1 is the image of Young and Crippen climbing down a standard set of aircraft stairs onto the tarmac after landing at Edwards. Today there is lots of "safeing" that must occur before the crew exits the shuttle. It was a different time.

Only the first few shuttle flights were considered "test flights" after which it was declared operational ejection seats removed, pressure suits discarded. In hindsight it is amazing how little we knew about this almost incomprehensibly vehicle we'd built. Looking back over everything we've learned about the shuttle both as a result of the two disasters and just flying it 100 or so times there's probably an argument to be made that we had no business flying such a complex vehicle operationally in the first place.

There are numerous examples just from STS-1 but one that sticks out to me is that it was discovered after landing that a "tile gap filler" had protruded and caused additional heating in one of the landing gear wells. In fact as a result of one of the holes punched in Columbia's side heat traveled through the landing gear compartment and into the main part of the shuttle, ultimately causing it to breakup and be lost. More striking though is that on one of the post-Columbia flights, STS-114, an EVA was actually done to remove a protruding gap filler because of concern that it might cause increased heating.

Just to recap in 1981 on the first ever flight we had heating in the landing gear well eerily similar to what destroyed Columbia and then a protruding gap filler which after Columbia was deemed so dangerous that it would be removed with a special EVA. Post-Columbia disaster on every mission that has flown there has been a full inspection of all tiles on the shuttle every nick, ding, divit, regardless of size is photographed and down linked and scrutinized by the engineers on the ground. Even more astounding is that most of the technology (digital cameras as an example) that enables this inspection process to occur during the flight didn't even exist in 1981 when STS-1 flew. The list goes on from there for example tiles were routinely missing on the early shuttle flights. Columbia in particular was plagued with tile adhesion problems. More than a few missing tiles in 2010 and you would probably end up with an extended stay on the space station.

There's no question that Young and Crippen strapping into Columbia, which had never been flown on orbit, for STS-1 is a brave feet worthy of the great steely eyed missile men. Off we went in this new vehicle in the best swashbuckling tradition of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs which had blazed the trail before. However in my opinion the heroics of Young and Crippen become even greater with the hindsight of 100 flights and 29 years worth of things we know now that we couldn't even speculate on at T-0 of STS-1. It almost defies explanation that the first flight went as smoothly as it did with such a complex vehicle and no operational record what-so-ever. History it seems is littered with moments and men that defy the odds, odds that if played out differently would have had drastic consequences on the history we know. 

For that I salute John W. Young (Commander),  Robert L. Crippen (Pilot), and Hail Columbia!