Deke Slayton poses by the shuttle Columbia at Eglin Air Force Base.
Fun Space Fact: This was Deke’s Facebook profile pic for over a year.
From Retro Space Images, STS-1 astronauts Bob Crippen and John Young inside the space shuttle Columbia in 1980.
“Astronaut Joe Engle (left) and Dick Truly are shown shortly before piloting the space shuttle orbiter Enterprise during its fourth free flight at the Dryden Flight Research Center, October 12, 1978.”
6/18/81: “Commander John Young, who flew America’s first Space Shuttle Columbia, is in London for a two-day visit before going on to the Paris Air Show. Today he paid a visit to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.”
The technicians close the hatch and then head for safety three miles away. We’re all alone on the launch pad.
Launch minus seven minutes. The walkway with the white room at the end slowly pulls away. Far below us the power units start whirring, sending a shudder through the shuttle. We close the visors on our helmets and begin to breathe from the oxygen supply. Then the space shuttle quivers again as its launch engines slowly move into position for blast-off.
Launch minus 10 seconds … 9 … 8 … 7 … The three launch engines light. The shuttle shakes and strains at the bolts holding it to the launch pad. The computers check the engines. It isn’t up to us anymore — the computers will decide whether we launch.
3 … 2 … 1 … The rockets light! The shuttle leaps off the launch pad in a cloud of steam and a trail of fire. Inside, the ride is rough and loud. Our heads are rattling around inside our helmets. We can barely hear the voices from Mission Control in our headsets above the thunder of the rockets and engines. For an instant I wonder if everything is working right. But there’s no more time to wonder, and no time to be scared.
In only a few seconds we zoom past the clouds. Two minutes later the rockets burn out, and with a brilliant whitish-orange flash, they fall away from the shuttle as it streaks on toward space. Suddenly the ride becomes very, very smooth and quiet. The shuttle is still attached to the big tank, and the launch engines are pushing us out of Earth’s atmosphere. The sky is black. All we can see of the trail of fire behind us is a faint, pulsating glow through the top window.
The atmosphere thins gradually as we travel farther from Earth. At fifty miles up, we’re above most of the air, and we’re officially ‘in space.’
-Sally Ride, To Space and Back
Snazzy STS-1.
Oh man, check out this photo of Engle and Truly next to a space shuttle model in 1977. They would fly the real thing on STS-2 four years later.
From Collectspace, a 1983 photo of the first four shuttle crews.
This picture is flawless.
A 1977 concept drawing for a space station. Known as the “spider” concept, this station was designed to use Space Shuttle hardware. A solar array was to be unwound from the exhausted main fuel tank. The structure could then be formed and assembled in one operation. The main engine tank would then be used as a space operations control center, a Shuttle astronaut crew habitat, and a space operations focal point for missions to the Moon and Mars.
The Space Shuttle Columbia (left), slated for mission STS-35, is rolled past the Space Shuttle Atlantis on its way to Pad 39A. Atlantis, slated for mission STS-38, is parked in front of bay three of the Vehicle Assembly Building following its rollback from Pad 39A for repairs to the liquid hydrogen lines. First motion of Atlantis from the pad was at 10:14 p.m. August 8. It arrived at the VAB at 4 a.m. August 9. First motion of Coumbia leaving the VAB for the pad was at 5:47 a
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(Source: fuckyeahspaceshuttle)
