Flying White External Tanks
Editor’s note: At today’s shuttle press conference NBC’s Jay Barbaree read an email from a retired engineer which stated that the only shuttle mission flown with a white, painted external tank was STS-1. That is incorrect. If you look at this image “Space Shuttle Columbia OV (101) is in launch configuration on the pad in preparation for STS-2.” you will see a white external tank. An astute reader also notes that this original NASA PAO caption gets Columbia’s tail number wrong too.