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(NASA photo)arranged for Air Force cameras to photograph Columbia’s underside to confirm tileintegrity. Finding the tiles in apparently good order, NASA Mission Control notified thetwo astronauts to prepare for return.Fifty-four hours after takeoff, Columbia glided to a successful landing at Edwards AirForce Base. Although Columbia landed at a faster speed than planned and rolled nearly3,100 feet beyond its planned stopping point, the flight proved the feasibility of theShuttle’s design. [II-30] NASA made three more test launches with Columbia—on****EU4 Chap 2 (161-192)4/2/0112:45 PMPage 179EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN179November 12, 1981, March 22, 1982, and June 27, 1982.

Each time, Columbia experiencedsome anomaly that had to be resolved.50In the aftermath of the first Shuttle flight, the Reagan administration considered thelonger term future of the program. A variety of uses and management approaches were evaluated; ultimately, President Ronald Reagan decided to keep NASA in the lead role in managing the Space Transportation System (STS).

He reiterated the policy that once the Shuttlebecame operational, it would be used to launch all U.S. government missions. [II-31, II-32]The last test flight of Columbia ended symbolically on July 4, 1982, when the orbiterglided to a landing before President and Mrs. Reagan and a crowd of about 750,000 visitors at Edwards Air Force Base.51 To enhance public attention to the July 4th event, NASAhad arranged to fly Challenger, the second of four planned orbiters, to Kennedy SpaceCenter shortly after Columbia rolled to a stop. Challenger took off atop NASA’s Boeing 747carrier plane as Reagan was giving his speech, circled the field, and dipped its wings to thecrowd. [II-33]Space Shuttle Operational Flights—Phase IColumbia’s four successful test flights led NASA to declare that the Shuttle fleet wasoperational—meaning, in theory, that further development of Shuttle systems would beminimal.

With Challenger in preparation for its first flight, and Discovery and Atlantis in production, NASA officials were now ready to push up the flight rate and extend the use ofthe STS to a wide variety of payloads and customers (Figure 2–6). [II-34] (Chapter 3 discusses the use of the Space Shuttle to launch commercial payloads.)When NASA began the Shuttle’s development, the agency expected the vehicle toassume the entire burden of lifting U.S. satellites and other payloads to orbit soon afterreaching full operational status. [II-35] NASA also expected other nations to use theShuttle for access to space, and the agency projected a flight rate of forty-eight per yearbeginning in 1980. Such a high rate would, in NASA’s estimation, have led to a low costper flight and even allowed NASA to recoup much of its investment in the Space Shuttlesystem.52 By the mid- to late 1980s, NASA hoped, reduced costs for operating the Shuttlesystem would allow the agency to fund other projects, such as a future space station.

Thisso-called “Shuttle funding wedge” became a tenant of NASA policy and the agency’sexpectations for major future projects.The number of future projected flights allowed NASA to set its first pricing policy in1975 to garner as many Space Shuttle flights as possible. This policy was intended in part“to effect early transition from expendable launch vehicles.”53 NASA had arrived at a priceof $18 million (1975 dollars) by averaging projected development and operational costsover a total of 572 flights from 1980 through 1991.In the early 1980s, expectations for such a high flight rate had decreased, but werestill relatively high.

In July 1983, for example, Rockwell International forecast that by 1988,overall U.S. demand for space transportation services for civilian and military uses wouldrequire a yearly flight rate of twenty-four launches.54 Based on an expectation of increasingly shorter “turnaround time” for processing each orbiter, NASA expected to meet that50.

For example, during the second flight (STS-2), one of the orbiter’s three fuel cells failed, causingNASA to bring Columbia back after only two and a half days, rather than the planned five.51. NASA extended Columbia’s time in space by one orbit to accommodate the presidential visit.52.

U.S. Congress, Congressional Budget Office, Pricing Options for the Shuttle (Washington, DC:Congressional Budget Office, March 1985).53. C.M. Lee and B. Stone, “STS Pricing Policy,” presented at the AIAA Space Systems Conference,Washington, DC, October 18–20, 1982, p. 1.54. Rockwell International, “Projection of Future Space Shuttle Traffic Demand,” July 1983, RockwellCorporation, Downey, CA.****EU4 Chap 2 (161-192)1804/2/0112:45 PMPage 180DEVELOPING THE SPACE SHUTTLEFigure 2-6. The STS-8 mission on Challenger was the first nighttime launch of the Shuttle era on August 30, 1983.

(NASA photo)rate by 1988. Such forecasts assumed that the Shuttle would fly commercial, as well as government, payloads. It also anticipated that a fifth Shuttle orbiter would be built. [II-36]The orbiter turned out to be much more difficult and time consuming to refurbishand prepare for launch than NASA had expected. This resulted in part from the need tocorrect system design deficiencies throughout the orbiter, which in turn kept the systemin a state of continual development.55 Orbiter “turnaround” time became the pacing itemin efforts to improve the Shuttle launch rate. From 1983 through 1985, NASA steadilyincreased the flight rate until, in 1985, it was able to launch nine flights.

NASA accomplished this feat in part by significantly reducing the damage to the protective tiles afterliftoff and by making small improvements in the SSMEs to reduce the amount of inspection time needed.56 Nevertheless, many observers remained skeptical that NASA would55. Charles R. Gunn, “Space Shuttle Operations Experience,” paper presented at the 38th Congress of theInternational Astronautical Federation, Brighton, England, October 1987.56. Ibid.****EU4 Chap 2 (161-192)4/2/0112:45 PMPage 181EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN181ever be able to reach and maintain a rate close to twenty-four flights per year, given thecomplications of preparing the Shuttle orbiter and other subsystems for launch.In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration, strongly encouraged by NASA, hadestablished the policy that all government payloads would be launched on the Shuttle andthat the Delta, Atlas, and Titan expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) would be phased out.NASA ordered no more Delta or Atlas ELVs after 1982.

Their manufacturers moved toshut down production lines. Because this action removed these launch vehicles from useby commercial interests, commercial communications satellite owners and a few other private payload customers were forced to use either the Shuttle or the European-built Arianerocket. (See Chapter 3 for a discussion of the competition between the Shuttle andAriane.)The Shuttle was maintained under NASA control, although several groups urged policies that would put the Shuttle under the operational control of private industry (or eventhe Air Force). They argued that the private sector would reduce operational costs fasterand more effectively than NASA. Although some officials of the Reagan administrationflirted briefly with the concept, they finally concluded that, in the words of the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the “Shuttle is an important instrument of national policy and is needed primarily for government civilian and military payloads.”57As noted, the operational Space Shuttle turned out to be much more complicated tooperate than had been expected, took longer to refurbish, and cost much more to operatethan NASA had estimated.58 Nevertheless, between its first flight in 1981 and January 1986,it served to carry a variety of life science and engineering experiments into orbit, launchedcommunications satellites and scientific payloads, and launched DOD payloads.59From the beginning, Shuttle planners expected to launch high-inclination payloads,especially polar-orbiting payloads, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, becauseonly at Vandenberg is there an available high-inclination launch path (to the south) thatwould not jeopardize populated areas.

DOD and the National Reconnaissance Office wereespecially interested in using this capability to launch several reconnaissance satellites,which require polar orbit for effectiveness. DOD funded the development of launchpreparation facilities and a launch pad at the site of the Space Launch Complex-6(SLC-6, pronounced “Slick-6”) to launch from Vandenberg.60 However, the Space Shuttleproved unable to meet its payload weight goal of 65,000 pounds to LEO (twenty-eightdegree inclination), which was necessary to launch about 40,000 pounds into polar orbit.That problem, combined with the loss of Challenger in 1986 and the development of theTitan IV, led to the abandonment of SLC-6 as a Shuttle launch site, but only after DODhad poured several billion dollars into upgrading the launch pad and constructing appropriate supporting facilities.The Complementary Expendable Launch VehicleNot everyone in the government agreed with the move toward total governmentdependence on the Space Shuttle.