On The Pad, Ready and Counting

By Frederic Golden

Columbia is about to launch a new era in space travel

Dressed in space suits, the two men ride up the giant service tower, pause for a last briefing and with a chipper, thumbs-up wave climb into their spacecraft. The ship's three main engines roar to life, gulping supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen out of the huge silo-shaped fuel tank As the engines throttle to 90% of full power the spacecraft and tank bend ever so slightly. When they snap back, two solid-fuel rockets strapped to the silo's sides are ignited. Belching flame and smoke, the entire 18-story-high "stack "--spacecraft fuel tank and rockets--blasts free of eight restraining bolts and thunders skyward.

The stack rises over the Florida coast in a great curving arc, with the delta-wing spacecraft slung under the tank and the astronauts riding upside down. At an altitude of 30 miles, the ship is rocked by explosive charges that separate the now exhausted rockets from the tank. Under billowing parachutes, the rockets swing down toward the Atlantic for recovery by ship and later reuse. Meanwhile, the spacecraft accelerates to 17,000 m.p.h. Eight and a half minutes after launch, its main engines shut down. Other explosive charges spin off the empty tank and scatter its fragments like meteorites into the Indian Ocean. Finally the astronauts fire four more bursts--this time from the two smaller orbital maneuvering rockets in Columbia's tail--boosting the ship into a nearly circular orbit 170 miles above the earth. So it should go this week, shortly after the sun rises over Cape Canaveral on Friday. If there are no new hitches Astronauts John Young, 50, and Robert Crippen, 43, will board their 75-ton orbiter Columbia, lift off from the same launch pad that sent Young and other Apollo astronauts to the moon, and spend 54 1/2 hours racing around the earth before bringing down their magnificent flying machine--the most advanced spacecraft ever built--to a daredevil "dead-stick" landing in California's Mojave Desert. That is how a new era in space travel is scheduled to begin.

For the U.S., especially, it should be an auspicious voyage. No American has been in space since 1975. More important, a successful flight will be vindication for U.S. technology. Two and a half years behind schedule, troubled by seemingly endless snafus and cost overruns that brought the total bill to $9.9 billion, "America's space lemon" finally has a chance to silence scoffers. Just as the 15th century caravels of Christopher Columbus --the shuttle's distant namesake--pointed the way to the New World, so Columbia will open the door to the practical day-to-day use of space.

Until now, manned spaceflight has been a most extravagant--some say most wasteful--enterprise. The towering Saturn rockets made only one-way passages Even the tiny "command ships" that splashed back to earth after their journeys to the moon never flew again. The shuttle orbiter has been painstakingly designed for use again and again, perhaps as many as 100 times. Not only will that make spaceflight less costly, it should encourage a whole range of activities, from launching and retrieving new types of satellites, including power plants that can snatch energy from the sun, to setting up permanent orbital observatories and space factories.

Making use of the weightlessness of orbit, such workshops may one day produce crystals of exceptional purity, new pharmaceuticals and alloy castings better mixed than any on earth. Not the least of the shuttle's benefits will be military. Seeking a commanding role in the new "high ground" of space, already ambitiously exploited by the Soviets, the Defense Department is booking nearly a third of the 150 shuttle flights planned lor the next five years. Future shuttles may set up way stations for missions to the moon, to the planets and eventually perhaps, to the stars.

For the moment, NASA'S task is far less ambitious. Columbia's initial launch as well as its three follow-up voyages' scheduled over the next nine months is designed to get the bugs out of its new Space Transportation System (sts), as the shuttle is called. No payload will be carried in the 60-ft.-long cargo bay except for two small instrument packages that will collect data on the orbiter's performance. The load on the spacecraft's engines and structure will be kept to a minimum. Such caution seems prudent: unlike the Apollo spacecraft, the shuttle was never subjected to an unmanned test in space.

In a machine as complicated as Columbia, almost anything could go wrong. The main engines, pound for pound are the most powerful ever built, capable of generating enough electricity to light up New York State. Its outer skin of silica tiles must withstand frictional temperatures as high as 2400DEG F as the orbiter hurtles back into the atmosphere. Columbia's innards contain enough wiring and pipes to equip a small skyscraper. Yet all its myriad components have undergone every conceivable test short of actual flight.

The shuttle also has some powerful onboard watchdogs: five computers, each capable of 325,000 operations a second. If anything goes wrong, even a trivial drop in pressure, they will flash a warning to the astronauts. Says Young: "If there is a vehicle that we can have confidence in, it is this one."

There should also be plenty of confidence in the astronauts. Young has logged more time in space than any other one of NASA'S current crop of astronauts. Born in San Francisco and an honors graduate in aeronautical engineering from Georgia Tech, the former Navy test pilot flew two Gemini missions, came within 69 miles of the moon as Apollo 10's command module pilot and finally touched the lunar surface in 1972 as commander of Apollo 16.

Texas-born Crippen, who is still a Navy pilot, became a NASA astronaut eleven years ago. Though he has yet to make a spaceflight, he has done just about everything to prepare for it, even taking part in a 56-day simulation of a Skylab mission. The astronauts have spent more than 1,300 hours in a shuttle simulator at Houston, testing their reactions to every imaginable emergency. Among other things, they have practiced "aborts," setting down at five alternative landing sites along their west-to-east orbital path.

One of the astronauts' first tasks after they reach orbit will be to open the big mechanically controlled doors of the cargo bay. Besides testing the mechanism, the operation is essential for ridding the orbiter of heat from the electronic equipment. The doors will be kept ajar during much of the flight. To shade the exposed bay from the sun, Columbia will fly upside down.

Compared with earlier spaceflights, the shuttle's journey will be a luxury cruise. Columbia's interior is pressurized to a normal earth atmosphere so the astronauts will be able to wear comfortable cotton coveralls for most of the trip. Young and Crippen will sleep in their cockpit seats, tote along an electric food warmer to heat up freeze-dried and other packaged food (sample menu: shrimp cocktail, beefsteak, butterscotch pudding and grape drink). On future missions, with as many as seven people aboard, Columbia will have a fully equipped galley as well as sleeping bunks. Young, who had to make do with the hoses and plastic bags aboard the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft, will probably be particularly fond of a zero-,? toilet with toeholds and a warm-air "flush" to carry off wastes.

The toughest moment should come midway in the third day. Firing small jetlike thrusters, Columbia will maneuver so that its nozzles face forward. Then the orbital engines will be fired to reduce speed and let earth's gravity pull the orbiter down. As Columbia plunges belly up into the atmosphere at nearly 25 times the speed of sound, gases outside the ship will produce enough heat to create a 17-minute communications blackout. To slow the descent, computers will order a series of linked S-turns. When the ship reaches a 5.2-mile stretch of dried lake bed numbered Runway 23 at Edwards Air Force Base, Columbia will make a 180DEG turn and begin its final hair-raising glide.

When Columbia comes out of the turn at a speed of 400 m.p.h., it will be in a fighter-like dive seven times steeper than any commercial airliner's landing approach. (Without engine power, the orbiter is far easier to maneuver at high speed than at low.) At about 1,800 ft. over the desert and only 30 seconds before impact, Young will pull the nose up sharply, cutting air speed to 280 m.p.h., and drop the landing gear. Touching down at 215 m.p.h. (a comparably sized DC-9 lands at 149 m.p.h.). Young can only pray that his tires hold as the ship rolls to a stop. Five months later, if all is A-O.K., Columbia will be back at Cape Canaveral, all fitted out and ready to take off for space again. --By Frederic Golden.

Reported by Benjamin W. Cate/Edwards Air Force Base and Jerry Hannifin/Washington

With reporting by Benjamin W. Cate, Jerry Hannifin

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