The Cape, Chapter I,
Section 5 The Cape, Chapter I,
Section 5
The Air Force hoped the TITAN 34D and Space Shuttle would
complement each other on heavy space operations in the early
1980s, but the Shuttle's slow development was a cause for some
concern. Though the Space Shuttle would eventually become the
centerpiece of America's space effort, the vehicle was plagued
with thermal tile and engine problems late in its development.
Those problems continued to delay the Shuttle's debut, and they
contributed to the Air Force's decision to hold on to the
"mixed fleet" approach to military space operations
several years before the Challenger disaster. At the beginning of
1979, as Rockwell International struggled to install thermal
protective tiles on the first Shuttle orbiter (Columbia) before
its ferry flight to the Kennedy Space Center, the corporation's
Rocketdyne Division had to retest the orbiter's main engines
to verify the successful redesign of the engines' main oxidizer
valves. That testing was successful, but a fuel valve failed
during another engine test in July 1979. Engine testing resumed
in October 1979, and it continued into the middle of March 1980.
In the meantime, Columbia had been ferried to the Kennedy Space
Center (KSC) toward the end of March 1979. The new orbiter still
lacked 10,000 of its 34,000 thermal protective tiles, and those
tiles were painstakingly installed by a special NASA team at the
rate of about 600 per week through the summer of 1979. Problems
with tiles and engines continued to delay NASA's first launch of
Columbia in 1980, and that mission was eventually postponed to
March 1981. Since the first four Shuttle flights would be test
flights, the first operational mission was not expected before
September 1982. Consequently, some payloads scheduled for Shuttle
missions had to be delayed or transferred to more unmanned launch
vehicles. The Space and Missile Systems Organization contracted
six more TITAN 34Ds with Martin Marietta in the summer of 1979,
and Space Division (i.e., SAMSO's successor) placed another order
for five TITAN 34Ds with Martin in November 1980.31
While work on Columbia continued at KSC, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers marked the completion of IUS processing facility
modifications to the east end of the Cape's Solid
Motor Assembly Building (SMAB) in September 1980. The west
low bay area of the SMAB was set aside to support IUS/Shuttle
payload integration, and a $15,900,150 contract for the
construction of the Shuttle Payload Integration Facility (SPIF)
in that area was awarded to Algernon Blair Corporation of
Atlanta, Georgia on 10 July 1981. Construction on the SPIF began
on 4 August 1981, and it was completed on 15 February 1984. A
separate contract to operate the SPIF was awarded to McDonnell
Douglas Technical Services Company on 22 April 1982, and,
following installation of equipment and completion of the
facility in February 1984, the SPIF was declared fully
operational. The SPIF was designed as a processing facility for
military payloads, but Space Division agreed to let NASA use the
SPIF for civilian payloads on a "case-by-case" basis as
long as the agency paid for the processing work and complied with
the Defense Department's security requirements.32
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Ten Shuttle missions had been launched from KSC by the time
the SPIF went into operation, and those flights set the tone for
the Air Force's launch vehicle strategy in the mid-1980s. The
schedule for the first of these missions (i.e., Columbia, March
1981) had been extremely tight. As events unfolded, three different
problems arose to delay that flight by about one month.
Nevertheless, with veteran astronaut John W. Young in command and
Navy Captain Robert L. Crippen as pilot, Columbia lifted off Pad
39A on 12 April 1981 at 7:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. For that
54-hour mission, Columbia carried instruments to measure orbiter
systems performance, but no payloads were carried in the
orbiter's payload bay. Tests of Columbia's space radiators,
maneuvering and attitude thrusters, computers, avionics systems
and protective tiles all went well, and Columbia's crew landed
the orbiter at Edwards Air Force Base on April 14th. Columbia's
second mission was scheduled to be launched from Pad 39A on
October 9th, but its actual lift-off occurred there on 12
November 1981. The third Shuttle test mission was launched from
Pad 39A on 22 March 1982, and the last of Columbia's test flights
was launched from Pad 39A on 27 June 1982. The mission on
June 27th featured the first Shuttle launch of a Defense
Department payload, and it generated several Air Force "lessons
learned" reports designed to enhance the future of
military space operations aboard the Shuttle.33
The next six Shuttle flights featured a variety of payloads,
problems and mission results. Columbia's STS-5
flight was the first operational mission of the Shuttle
program. Its primary objective was to launch two communications
satellites (Satellite Business Systems' SBS-3 and TELESAT
CANADA's ANIK C-3). The countdown went well on 12 November 1982,
and both satellites were deployed successfully on the first and
second days of the mission. The sixth Shuttle mission (STS-6) was
Challenger's maiden flight, and it featured the first
extravehicular activity (i.e., spacewalk) in the history of
the Shuttle program. Preparations for Challenger's first flight
were anything but uneventful: the launch scheduled for 20 January
1983 was delayed when a hydrogen leak was detected in Main Engine
Number 1 in mid-December 1982; the launch was postponed for two
months, but a replacement engine also developed a leak, and a
second replacement engine had to be checked out and shipped to
KSC in late February 1983. Leaks were detected in another
component of Main Engine Number 2, and all three of Challenger's
main engines were pulled for repairs at the end of February. The
launch was rescheduled for March 26th, but contamination was
detected in the payload bay area in early March, so the launch
was rescheduled for early April 1983. Under the command of Paul
J. Weitz, Challenger finally lifted off on its five-day mission
from Pad 39A at 1830:00 Greenwich Mean Time on April 4th. The
first in a series of Tracking and Data Relay System (TDRS)
satellites was deployed on Challenger's first day in orbit, but
the IUS used to propel the payload into geosynchronous orbit had
a premature cutoff, and several months of altitude correction by
the satellite's thrusters were required before the satellite
entered normal service.34
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Two Hughes HS-376 series satellites were deployed successfully
during Challenger's
second mission (STS-7) in mid-June 1983, but ground control
checkout problems with the TDRS satellite deployed during STS-6
delayed support long enough to push Challenger's third
mission from August 20th to the end of the month. That flight (STS-8) was
launched at 0632:00 Greenwich Mean Time on 30 August 1983, and it
proved to be the smoothest Shuttle mission up to that time. An
Indian National Satellite (INSAT-1B) was deployed from the
orbiter on Day Two of the mission, and TDRS-A communications
tests went well. Extensive testing of the orbiter's Remote
Manipulator System (RMS) was successful.35
The ninth Shuttle mission (STS-9) was Columbia's only flight
during 1983, and it was conducted from November 28th through
December 8th. It was commanded by John Young and piloted by
Brewster H. Shaw, Jr. The flight was primarily a
"shakedown" mission to test the compatibility of Space Lab systems with orbiter
systems, but secondary objectives included investigations into
atmospheric physics, plasma physics, astronomy, material and life
sciences and Earth observations. At least 70 experiments in those
disciplines were performed during STS-9. The Space Lab science
crew consisted of Dr. Byron K. Lichtenberg and Dr. Ulf Merbold.
Dr. Owen K. Garriott and Dr. Robert A. Parker served as mission
specialists. In circumstances reminiscent of STS-8, Columbia's
mission was rescheduled to late October 1983 due to delays in
TDRS-A verification testing. A further delay occurred in
mid-October when Columbia had to be rolled back to the Vehicle
Assembly Building (VAB) at KSC and demated from its external tank
so a suspicious exit nozzle on the right-hand solid rocket
booster could be replaced. The procedure required a complete
restack of the orbiter/booster assembly, and it delayed the
launch until late November. The countdown and launch on November
28th was uneventful, and on-orbit operations went well.
Unfortunately, a significant problem surfaced during deorbit
operations: two of the orbiter's five General Purpose Computers
(GPCs) broke down, and only one of the two computers could be
reinitiated. The Flight Director waved off the planned deorbit,
and the landing was rescheduled to give officials time to study
the computer problem. Columbia finally made a lakebed runway
landing at Edwards about seven hours and 48 minutes later than
scheduled.36
Under the command of Vance C. Brand, Robert L. Gibson piloted
Challenger on the tenth Shuttle mission (41-B) from the 3rd
through the 11th of February 1984. Bruce McCandless II, Ronald E.
McNair and Robert L. Stewart served as mission specialists on the
flight. The mission included the first untethered spacewalks by
McCandless and Stewart, the first use of the Manned Maneuvering
Unit, and the first Shuttle landing at KSC. The orbiter
experienced very few problems during the mission, but Western
Union's WESTAR VI communications satellite and Indonesia's PALAPA
B-2 spacecraft both wound up in useless low-Earth orbits after
their Payload Assist Modules (PAMs) malfunctioned following
deployment. (Both satellites were retrieved during Shuttle
mission 51-A in November 1984.) Challenger landed without
incident on February 11th.37
The Cape: Miltary Space Operations 1971-1992
by Mark C. Cleary, Chief Historian
45 Space Wing Office of History
1201 Minuteman Ave, Patrick AFB, FL 32925