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Archive 1

Musical tribute

How about a mention that Rush (band) commemorated this flight in their song "Countdown" on Signals? In addition to lyrics about mixing science and the "bright stuff of dreams" the song includes excerpts of the transmissions from mission control during the launch. Al 18:16, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Mission problems

Given the number of things that went wrong on STS-1, I thought it was worth mentioning the most serious ones and splitting them out into a seperate section. I'll add more when I get home as I don't have the anomaly report and post-flight briefing files here: at a minimum, the bugs in the re-entry guidance system and John Young's consequent manual piloting of much of the re-entry should be included. Mark Grant 11:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there a reason why someone deleted everything I added without even posting here? If no explanation is forthcoming, I'm going to put it back tomorrow. Mark Grant 12:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, your edits screwed up the table code for the infobox which, in turn, put the entire article out of whack [1]. --Zpb52 19:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
No they didn't. Looking back through the history, it was the edit before mine which screwed up the table. Mark Grant 21:03, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
And it took about a whole thirty seconds to figure out why that change broke the message box and fix it. Mark Grant 21:09, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

You've removed it again. Why do you keep removing a section that's entirely pertinent to the subject and which received a lot of media attention at the time of the flight? Mark Grant 21:36, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Pictures

Can anyone see a good reason for removing the 'Pictures' heading from the gallery? Someone keeps removing it, and while I could agree that it's somewhat superfluous, I do think the formatting is better with the heading than without. Mark Grant 00:31, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


Suspected Vandalism

I removed the following as it appears to be vandalism: * The toilet suffered from 'low urinal flow and a feces separation problem'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.42.29.152 (talk) 03:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I put it back: it's documented in both the crew debriefing and the in-flight anomaly report. The toilet took a few flights to debug, which isn't surprising when you consider they could only test it in 20-second dives on zero-g parabolic flights. Mark Grant (talk) 01:22, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Launch pad tragedy

Should there be mention in this article of the launch pad accident three weeks before launch that resulted in the deaths of two Rockwell International technicians from nitrogen asphyxiation? These were the first launch pad deaths since the 1967 Apollo 1 fire. References: Time, Wired, NYTimes -- Thinking of England (talk) 09:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think so, but nothing has been added to the article. The technicians died in a Nitrogen rich environment, that was present to stop fires. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.128.197 (talk) 18:19, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

post T-0 launch

I've removed the claim that this was the only STS mission launch after T-0. While it may be true the references provided do not support it. The primary reference provided was to a message board, hardly a reliable source. The YouTube video supplied of the launch is not definitive as the voiceover stops short well short of T-0 making it difficult to determine exactly when Columbia launched. My guess is it was around T+1 but without a reliable source, speculation doesn't belong in the article. --RadioFan (talk) 13:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Original Planned Launch Date

The article doesn't mention whether the actual launch date was the originally planned one; I think that should be made clear, if someone can fill it in. 71.203.125.108 (talk) 06:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

What does STS stand for?

None of the pages on either Wikipedia or at nasa.gov say that STS stands for. Is it an abbreviation? 67.188.128.117 (talk) 17:57, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

It is an abreviation. It stands for Space Transportation System, you can also find the meaning in the first line of the Space Shuttle program article.--NavyBlue84 19:03, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Note the Space Transportation System article is no longer a redirect to Space Shuttle program, because they are not the same thing. The Shuttle program took the name of what was intended to be a much more ambitious (and expensive) system of (mostly) reusable vehicles, because it happened to be the only part of the system which survived the political realities of what the US government was willing to spend in a post-Apollo program world. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:18, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Secret military telescopes?

I remember watching the landing on television. Before the Columbia came back to earth, and amid concerns that too many tiles had fallen off, the US government released images of the Columbia in orbit. These were supposedly taken from two high-powered telescopes, one on the east coast and one on the west, and the information was processed by a computer. The image shown on television looked like a razor-sharp color photograph of the shuttle. Viewers were told that the government was deeply reluctant to release the imagery, as the telescopes had been top secret. (I quote all from memory.)

I haven't found this referenced anywhere. Was there any truth to this, or was this a clever opportunity to spook the Soviets into thinking the US had imaging capabilities that were far beyond what was really possible? Or am I not recalling this correctly? ProhibitOnions 12:07, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

More on the above. I've done some more searching and think my suspicions were correct. Scroll down to the bottom of this [2]; NASA did indeed reveal hi-res images of the Shuttle showing no major damage to the underside. These were taken with a spy satellite, because ground-based imaging in 1981 wasn't very good [3]. (For comparisons, look at [4].) This site repeats the belief that there were images made of Columbia, but claims that this was probably an urban legend [5]; however, as stated in the article above, this was not the case.
What I suspect happened was the television networks either conflated a story about high-powered telescopes with supercomputer imaging with the release of the Columbia pictures, concluding erroneously that the spy satellite images of the Shuttle were from top-secret military telescopes; or that Uncle Sam did see a great opportunity to "reluctantly reveal the existence of" amazingly powerful (non-existent) military technology that the Soviets weren't even close to having.
If this can be better sourced, we probably ought to mention this in the article. ProhibitOnions 19:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Several points: Much of the information in the above web sites is provably wrong. E.g, the statement that "Silver Veil" imaged STS-1 from 1100 nm (2037 km), and the STS-1 crew knew nothing about it. (1) It's physically impossible to form adequate images from that distance. It's a simple mathematical calculation. (2) It is extremely unlikely the crew knew nothing about it. Attitude position of the orbiter is crucial to obtain the properly lighting angle for best visibility. They'd have had to orient the vehicle for this.
It's already been sourced in Aviation Week & Space Technology. See [6]. A KH-11 spy satellite can only get useful images of another satellite if three criteria are favorable: (1) Distance (2) Angular velocity, and (3) lighting angle.
Distance must be less than about 300 km for adequate resolution. Resolution is simple to calculate since the KH-11 mirror size is pretty much known: about 2.4 meters. Resolution in a vacuum for high-quality optics is diffraction-limited, meaning it will achieve the mathematical limit. The formula is straightforward.
Angular velocity means the KH-11 can possibly only compensate for target relative motion at a certain number of degrees per second. Simple trigonometry shows to image a ground-based target at the known KH-11 orbital height and speed requires about 2 degrees/sec motion compensation. The upper limit isn't known, but it's possibly greater than this. Optical spy satellites are in polar orbits and the shuttle in a mostly equatorial orbit, so they cross at nearly 90 degree angles. Therefore motion compensation limits how close the image can be formed, and the ultimate resolution.
The exact orbital trajectories of STS-1 and KH-11 spy satellites are known -- independent ground-based observers tracked them. Mathematical examination shows there were multiple imaging opportunities.
As the above web site shows, analysis of known KH-11 satellites show there were multiple imaging opportunities for STS-1. The table lists 7 cm resolution as the known best case, but if motion compensation is better than 1.6 degrees/sec, resolution might have been better.
It's unlikely in 1981 that ground-based assets could image STS-1 with adequate resolution. This requires advanced optical imaging interferometry, which is very unlikely to have existed them. It does exist today, and there are DoD facilities in Hawaii and New Mexico that can form high resolution images of satellites. See Starfire Optical Range: http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/SOR/.
Using DoD imaging assets (whether ground or space-based) was discussed numerous times during the STS-107 mission that ended in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Unfortunately multiple requests by concerned engineers to image Columbia while on orbit were stymied by NASA management.
From a Wikipedia article standpoint, the AW&ST article is probably an adequate source, although you'd have to examine the exact wording. Joema 16:46, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
There were in fact images of STS-1 taken with NRO satellites. Hans Mark was Deputy Administrator of NASA, and was previously the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. He called the NRO from mission control and requested the photos. I wish I could provide a source for this information, but I'm simply a student taking a class of Dr. Mark's. TaylorR137 (talk) 00:21, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

launch video

Is there a good launch video available anywhere? If there is someone upload it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.130.253.13 (talk) 00:17, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Table of attempts in mission summary

I'm wondering if the table in the mission summary is necessary? It has only two entries and 7 of the cells are empty. I don't think the overview it provides is worth the space it takes up on the page. Appelsauze (talk) 22:11, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

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Apollo 9 LM ascent stage was still in Earth orbit during STS-1.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_9 the ascent stage of the Apollo 9 LM, "Spider" was still in Earth orbit while STS-1 was. Should a mention of that be in this article? Bizzybody (talk) 02:31, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

No. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:10, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Regarding SRB Separation

"with John Young later admitting that had the crew known about this, they would have flown the shuttle up to a safe altitude and ejected, causing Columbia to be lost on the first flight.[21] This appears to contradict remarks Young has made several times stating how skeptical he was of the prospects of successful ejection whilst the SRBs were still attached and burning"

These two things seem to be mutually exclusive, as the shuttle could be piloted to a safe altitude after separating the SRBs. In fact, every abort mode would have to happen AFTER the SRBs were expended. Surely that would include ditching via the ejection seats. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.38.203.220 (talk) 18:03, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

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