STS-1: Postflight Press Conference

okay this is just background Stuff shows the vehicle on the pad uh this shows Bob krippin getting ready to fly and uh there's me and uh you can see my big project the week before flight was uh getting the bigger United States flags put on our pressure suit and the reason for that was one of these bureaucrats told me that it had to be a small flag to balance the space shuttle program and I pointed out to them that the United States was bigger than the space shut program this shows us uh in the van the traditional van had been carrying Apollo crews out uh that we rode out and going into the White Room of the vehicle everybody had to wear those little masks theoretically for our last week there so that uh we wouldn't contaminate them or something they found it nobody at the cape got sick from much being around them this is uh shutting up the hatch uh just prior to launch and that's a don city gets kind of lonely out there this is highspeed ignition of the the three main engines the vibration in the cockpit was very low at this time after the engines light off the instruments just a little blurred but you could read every one of them look at those babies come up to speed this is from the cockpit shows how the vehicle moves back and forth there and this is highspeed photography the bolts blowing and the solid rocket Motors lighting off and all that this water spray right there where they trying to keep things cool and not having much luck and this is very highp Speed photography cuz when it lit off there was a couple of thmps and we started moving up very slowly these are high these are look at these beautiful shocks coming out of the main engine at liftoff and it's moving a lot faster than that this shows how close it comes the intank access arm which is always worried me some it's really getting up and going John and I expected a real hard kicking the pants uh there shows that what it looked like out John's Window call Tower clear right from the cockpit but it's actually a really very smooth liftoff with very little shaking associated with it there's a road program to head us out over the ocean and the vehicle is the the cockpit vibration is such that you can still read all your instruments in there and uh maybe it's maybe 10 cycles per second this shows a roll program from inside the cockpit out the side window and it's a a thing of beauty it's just as smooth as glass there's no acceleration involved and this shows the the vehicle speed picking up it's probably about ready to go supersonic right now almost going straight up and uh we said that's what it was going to do but I didn't really believe it would but it did we were uh getting a little lost on our trajectory here that we're still analyzing right now also I was seeing some debris coming off from up over the nose that was coming back and hitting the wind screen and going over the top of the vehicle that we weren't sure what it is uh like ice or Sophie that the stuff on the external tank that they're still analyzing believe that tail is about uh 750 ft long maybe uh you can see it better from here uh maybe 6 700 ft long maybe uh 150 200 ft wide it's really impressive I'm glad we couldn't see [Music] that thank goodness for no rearview mirror the ride was was very smooth throughout this up in the transonic phase it shook just a little bit there coming through Max 2 this is a a camera inside the exter inside the Orbiter from the ET doors and shows the external solar rocket motor separation a that a spectacular shot and then we show it again from inside the cabin although the light is much brighter than this a big splash across the windc screen this shows that we never saw these pictures but here's a picture of a separation outside from highspeed cameras and ain't that terrific uh from on board Sensations the only thing we really saw was the flash of light and our normal avionic CU that we had dumped the solids we did not see them go away nor F any jokes we're less than one G right after separation transverse G's and this Baby's just chugging along and it's just as smooth as glass that ride is here you see some particles coming by John's Window couple of white objects there went one that was indicative of the kind of stuff that we've been seeing throughout the flight this is back in the this is umbilical separation back in that view that we saw and this is external tank separation and it is a spectacular site that white particles you see there are ice caused by the the hydrogen freezing as it's coming out and perfectly nominal there's the uh the fitting that goes up in the Orbiter there's the umbilical plate there's the tank and as you can see all this black material there that's the way the sopie works it chars and turns black so it's a high heat heting area in there and it really caught it and there's another place that's sort of discolored up here toward the nose of the tank there was supposed to been a tumble valve actuates to start the vehicle tumbling and it did not work and it from our standpoint it gave us a much better view of the tank you'll also see the nose uh discolored it almost looks like the nose is uh it's got all the Sophie gone from it cuz there's a sort of metallic color there but that might be bright yeah we're we're not sure of that and people are analyzing that still uh this is a scene of me climbing out of the climbing out of the seat all the operations associated with the suit and the seat while you're in zg are much easier to handle than it is down here on Earth I'm just stuffing the uh the helmet in a little bag along with a glove so we can we can tuck them away there's quite a few connections on associated with that suit but uh it's no real no problem to handle it all in zero g in one G we had a lot of problem with his helmet is always bumping into the hand controller and firing things there you see it up far out of the way we finally got it right that's floats nicely I'm not going to tell you this picture was made right after we got into orbit because I don't think either one of us is that that gutty but we made it later on and then ran it backward actually we did a suiting exercise while we were on orbit just to make sure that we could get get in the suits and get back in the seats uh with no problem and that's that's when we filed this this is two TV cameras mck together uh one on the left and one on the right shows the initial payload bay door opening uh all of that went went nice and smooth you'll notice the ohms pod coming into view right here this is the first time we saw some some tiles missing off of the ohms pod you notice the door kind of hesitates when it opens too it did this in a picture on the ground and they told us well that was do the fixture the way the door really works the camera on the right is is an ass camera looking forward you can see the windows coming the one on the on the left is a forward camera looking ass all those that door operations went uh as smooth as it could be which uh I was mighty happy because I didn't particularly care about the thought of going outside and trying to trying to do anything associated with them this a view pan in the outside that shows the radiators deployed out there that's a beautiful uh beautiful shot with the television you can also see those radiators when you look out your forward Windows which surpris us a little bit this is a an Ops uh mode 8 check out of the hand controller you move it full throw and then you read on the cathode ray tube which is where I'm looking uh to see if the hand control is working properly and this is very exciting a little bit of this will last you about 6 months this shows a camera forward in the cockpit looking a and with John coming out of the seat uh this was actually some TV stuff that we did for a status report pretty good indication of the kind of problems we have with some of our Comm lines which you had to work pretty hard to make sure you didn't get tied up in those things and we stayed tied up in them the whole flight the government is now looking at wireless mics that I think will really improve the capability of the crew to operate as you can see there I'm having to hold mine next to my mouth so I can talk to people this is a shot down on our mid deck storage area where we uh had all of our stuff stowed and uh this was actually just after the press conference or not press conference after the conversation we had with the vice president zero g is something else that is something that all of you should have an opportunity to experience it is really fun if you can do that in your living room without breaking your leg you sure [Music] would there's no no problem trying to restrain yourself anywhere down there I'm in the process here of changing out one of our Lio canisters which is used to uh that we run the air through to take out all the CO2 and any contamination it's a very easy job we had a couple of troughs down there where we stove uh Lio canisters and you could just fit your legs down in there and kind of push them apart and it restrains you very nicely look at this U just shows the mobility that we have down the mid deck people thought we needed restraint system the tire cells down in there you don't need any of that now watch this Mobility that Bob has when he kicks off and goes up uh to the top side boy I'll tell you if that a't the neatest thing in the world thing about it is you don't really go flying around you need to move a little bit slowly otherwise you'll end up banging into something but there no problem controlling yourself any place you want to go try that try that in one gravity and see where it get you see I just was wearing my socks there I never put any shoes on way on orbit I don't like to when I'm in the house either so it shows what the television will show you out the window and shows what a great view those spectacular Windows gave us here's another television view of the earth now we're coming up the reason I was glad I was fine with a guy like John that's got all the experience we're getting ready to come home and uh sitting beside a man that knows space testing like he does made you feel mighty good we're shutting the doors and all of that again went just like uh just like we wanted it to it uh there were no problems at all associated with it you can notice there's a little bit of jerky motion when it comes down we were lowering the starbard door down easy and you'll notice it bounces pretty good uh which we're having to pass on to other following Crews to make sure when they close it they can don't have any problem with overlap got it all tucked away and we're ready to come home this had them stretch this picture because in the the real world there was a beautiful pink up here due to the Heat this is the first part of entry and uh there's the sunrise coming up and we're moving along at about 300,000 ft and we're just about to 265,000 Ft where we go in our first roll reversal and you'll see that pretty shortly now we're moving pretty fast but not quite this fast yeah that's the first roll reversal and here's the second roll reversal it's done at March 18 1/2 and this is at 2 frames a second so we're moving six times faster than we would in in the real world 12 times maybe yeah marck 18 and a half and you really see those clouds go by even in the real in the real world but it's not quite this fast you certainly next roll reversal is at Mach 9.8 there it goes we did the roll reversal a little bit slower than that too yeah and here we come back at the 4.8 roll reversal that's Baker's feel out there coming across the Hatchy in the the F and the vehicle sort of rolls Rings level and this is about at 880,000 FT and then we went to realtime photography which is only twice as fast as happens in the real world and as you can see everything has slowed down quite a bit we're pretty high right now maybe 75 80,000 ft coming across uh the lake bed areas that we told you all about there's the China Lake up in that area up in there and you can see that the the left window there's Cy back shop L coming in the view at the top right at the top we're coming out to swing around the heading alignment Circle and uh it sure is a beautiful view looking out that window you can see everything you need to see there was just no doubt in our minds that we knew exactly where we were in the flight even uh by comparing what we had on our normal ground track with what we're seeing on the instrument there three sisters up there the right end up to this point uh had been nice and smooth and the vehicle controls really tight it's a nice handling space safe plan Jo up there and we're uh getting ready to go in the turn around what we call our heading alignment Circle that's the Mojave River which is a mainly a dry lake bed or dry River bed out there uh joh is in is driving a vehicle at this this point in time and uh and it really handle nice we were right down the middle of the quarter all the way remarkable thing about the space shuttle is it's all electric and the when you move the wings somewhere they stay there you put the nose somewhere and it stays there it's just just the admirable handling Vehicles you couldn't ask for anything as as responsive and as uh for this kind of a job it does it exactly like you you want it to couldn't have Ed a a better day for coming back in we could have navigated visually all the way from when we hit the coast which was just a little less than Mach 7 Up U south of the San Francisco area all the way down to the San sanen Valley to the Edwards it was no problem knowing where you were at any time there's the highway uh north of Edward there and you swing across the lake bed and uh kind of hard to see at first in these films but there's the old aim point right there we're starting to come down the Glide slope then the runway is still hard to see there we have some uh aim lights that give you an indication of what your Glide slope is out there that we refer to as pathy lights uh we also had locked onto a microwave Landing system and all of those ended up agreeing right on as to where we were no doubt whatsoever here's our old Chase plane he's flying back and for across the bottom of the vehicle taking pictures uh to see if there's any tile damage that would not show up you know they thought they might get some from the rocks and everything on the desert floor so he's covering that right now and Chase plane did a real terrific job the vehicle is very easy to control in this flight regime we're about in the pre-flare right now was flying about uh 285 knots at this point we're like about a 20° Glide float everything was just as smooth as could be there's a we're going in pre- flare and this how it looks out the window you may be able to see two or three of those lights uh two lights two white lights is what we're looking for they're two there we start our pull up now and there'll be three you'll see the third one come on so we're on a 20° Glide slope to pre flare which means we can only land uh right down here at the touchdown Point here's the wheels coming down the wheels really snap down fast they much faster than what I anticipated them and there's a couple of big black marks you'll see coming up here pretty soon there they are that's a touchdown point and here we go boy what a machine it didn't know about that supposed to land on the touchdown point but actually you should understand John was not trying to touch on the touchdown Point what we were trying to do was to find out what the real deceleration K and and touchdown about on an air speed which was about 185 knots and uh all of the alt flights and this one ended up Landing Landing long which looks to us like we have a little bit more lift capability than what what have been predicted and we rolled right up here so uh Kennedy Space Center's recovery team could get a hold of us and hook the cooling up as fast as possible we rolled into the runway intersection we did that on purpose so we hardly used any brakes on this roll out and there's the vehicle sitting and she is a beauty that's uh believe it or not the weight of that vehicle right there is about little right around 99 tons I keep reading where it's uh 150,000 lb or 80 tons but that one right there is 99 tons it's quite a c quite a performance thing to put to return from or with 99 T spacecraft and get her back all in one piece I think