Today's Space History Lesson
Excellent point. Agree completely.
— William Harwood (@cbs_spacenews) May 4, 2022
Excellent point. Agree completely.
— William Harwood (@cbs_spacenews) May 4, 2022
Story I read is management wanted to get the orbiter to KSC in a hurry to show they are making progress (STS-1 was planned for March 1979). This meant displacing all the good tile attachment people, tools, and facility at Plant 42 in Palmdale to across the country. As a stop gap for tiles yet to be attached, they fastened substitute blocks of stuff. However, those fell off and the news said they are tiles. Another interesting mention about tiles was one of the 2005 systems engineering lectures of MIT OCW that had Dale Myers, Aaron Cohen, and other top managers and engineers of the Shuttle is the program had funding shortfalls, and by 1978 tile mass production yet to be started. Administrator Frosch was able to meet with Carter who got the program an extra $600M so the program can proceed. Frosch was faced with possibility without the extra funding they would only be able to demonstrate a suborbital flight across the Atlantic. First lecture of 15 is here, https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Overall quite fascinating and I was able to see many perspectives of the Shuttle program, it gets me thinking what else is going on with ISS and other major programs of political and budgetry tug-of-wars.
But isn’t Boeing the successor to Rockwell International?
And how many people who I worked with at Rockwell in the early 1980s on Shuttle are at boating 40 years later?
Shiiiiidddd…
How many people who worked on Shuttle during any period are still around?
Boeing dates back to 1921. Boeing bought Rockwell in August 1996 and McDonnell Douglas in July 1997.
two wrongs make a right? How many years was the Shuttle behind schedule… 7?
Shuttle was approved in 1972. We are just now celebrating its 50th anniversary. NASA asked for a 20% contingency for time and dollars from the outset. It was never given. They hoped if everything went smoothly they could fly it in orbit in 1979. It took them the extra 2 years. It flew in 1981.
Boeing is the sole survivor of the companies that designed and built all US manned space hardware: North American, McDonnell, McDac and Rockwell. They ought to be pretty embarrassed by their poor performance and costs on the CST100. But it was not only on the next program but the last one too-NASA took the manned parts of ISS away from Boeing and gave them to the Italians who built the MPLMs, Cupolas, and Nodes 2 and 3. That was after Node 1 had to be redesigned and rebuilt at the last minute because of issues. I’m glad there is an heir apparent now with Space X.
I worked at Rockwell from 1980-1983 in Downey. Walked by Apollo hardware, stood inside shuttles as they were being built. I doubt there is anyone with Apollo experience at Rockwell/Boeing now.
That photo of Columbia is misleading. NASA had 5000 temporary foam plastic tiles bonded to that Orbiter for transport on that 747 from California to Florida. The ceramic fiber tile installation effort in CA had fallen way behind schedule. So, NASA flew Columbia to KSC to finish the tile work there. Adhesive tape was used as a temporary seal around some of those plastic tiles to improve airflow and prevent water seepage. Some of the nearly 5000 temporary tiles didn’t make it all the way.