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Launch of Columbia on First Space Shuttle Mission, STS-1

submitted by jonny

1 decade 6 years 8 months ago

On April 12, 1981, the space shuttle Columbia was launched, beginning the first manned shuttle mission, STS-1, and a new era in space flight. It was the first of four successful test missions to prove out the shuttle systems. Note the white External Tank.
Another view of the launch through SRB separation (video not as good):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwLlzUSOW_E
The landing at Edwards AFB 2 days later:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPexsehcMhw
And a short compilation clip of the mission:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt1aR72iZm8.

6 Comments

looks like an old Atari game....like the international space station does now...

*requeue

Re-queueing this video for one more try; last queued Saturday, September 1st, 2007 1:20am PDT - requeue requested by submitter jonny.

ant

Why was it so white before and these days with colors?

Why was it so white before and these days with colors?

I'm not really sure. And I probably should know since they build those tanks about 30 miles from where I grew up. My best guess is that they changed the foam material in which the tanks are encased after the test missions. I looked for other archive photos to see if the other 3 test missions had white external tanks. Could only find the 4th and it did. The next photo I could find was many missions later, so I'm not sure when it changed over.

It's just a matter of a bit of paint on the early ones. They were painted white, at some point they decided they could save 600 pounds by leaving it with just the primer. Later they redesigned so had a difference there. Wiki has a fairly good history of them here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle_external_tank#Evolution_of_the_ET

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