Bold They Rise: The Space Shuttle Early Years, 1972-1986

12. The Golden Age

12. The Golden Age How different it was in those early years of shuttle, when we were going to fly once a month at least. That was going to be routine, and we were going to revolutionize space and discover these amazing things, and we still will, but we were just naive, thinking it was going to happen the next year, and not the next decade or the next generation. So there was a lot of naiveté, and maybe it was just us or maybe it was just me, but that was the big change. It’s a little sad that that had to happen, but that’s just maturing the industry, I guess. —Astronaut Mike Lounge sts-51i Crew: Commander Joe Engle, Pilot Dick Covey, Mission Specialists Ox van Hoften, Mike Lounge, and Bill Fisher Orbiter: Discovery Launched: 27 August 1985 Landed: 3 September 1985 Mission: Deployment of three satellites; retrieval, repair, and redeployment of syncom iv-3 Like the 51a mission, which recovered two satellites that had previously failed to deploy, 51i included the repair of a malfunctioning satellite from a previous mission, 51d. The satellite, syncom iv-3, had failed to activate properly after deployment. Mike Lounge recalled that he and fellow 51i mission specialist Ox van Hoften were together when they heard about the syncom failure. The satellite was fine; the failure was a power switch on the computer. “We, essentially the golden age | 259 on the back of an envelope, said, well, what’s the mass properties of this thing? Could it be handled by some sort of handling device by hand? Attached to the robot arm? And then if we had to push it away, what kind of forces would we have to push on it to make it stable, and is that a reasonable thing to do? So we calculated a twenty- or thirty-pound push would be enough.” The calculations were right on. Lounge said computer simulations calculated a push of 27.36 pounds would be needed. Then the question was whether the rescue mission was even feasible. After looking into the challenges further, Lounge and van Hoften believed it was and encouraged their commander to seek approval for his crew to do the job. Joe Engle shepherded the request through center management and up to nasa headquarters and got the go-ahead for the recovery. Explained Lounge, “The key to the success of that mission and being able to do that was nasa was so busy flying shuttle missions that year that nobody was paying attention. If we’d had more attention, there’d have been a hundred people telling us why it wouldn’t work and it’s too much risk. But fortunately, there was a twelvemonth period we flew ten missions; we were one of those.” Discussions about the feasibility of the syncom recovery naturally led to comparisons with an earlier flight. One of the questions, recalled 51i pilot Dick Covey, was, would the astronauts be able to stop the rotation of the spacecraft? Covey said crewmate Ox van Hoften drew the solution on the back of a piece of paper. He says, “It’s only going to take this much force to stop the rotation, so that’s not an issue.” Then [they] said, “Well, you know, does anybody think that we could have a person stop the rotation and do that?” Ox says, “Well, here. Here’s me,” and he draws this big guy, and he says, “Here’s the SYNCOM.” He draws a little guy, and he says, “Here’s Joe Allen, and there’s a PALAPA [satellite]. So if he can grab that one, then I can grab this one.” We said, “Okay, yes.” It was the “big astronaut, little astronaut” approach to things. For Commander Engle, this mission would be very different from sts-2, on which he also served as commander. Engle described his second shuttle flight as less demanding than his first; the biggest difference between the two flights, he said, was that on his second mission—and nasa’s twentieth— there were more people there to help out. 260 | the golden age We had only a crew of two on STS-2, and one of the lessons we learned from those first four orbital flight tests was that the shuttle—the orbiter itself—probably represents more of a workload than should be put onto a crew of two. It...