STS-1 (Space Transportation System-1) was the first orbital spaceflight of NASA's Space Shuttle program. The first orbiter, Columbia, launched on April 12, 1981, and returned on April 14, 1981, 54.5 hours later, having orbited the Earth 37 times. Columbia carried a crew of two—commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen. It was the first American crewed space flight since the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in 1975. STS-1 was also the maiden test flight of a new American spacecraft to carry a crew, though it was preceded by atmospheric testing (ALT) of the orbiter and ground testing of the Space Shuttle system. The launch occurred on the 20th anniversary of Vostok 1, the first human spaceflight, performed by Yuri Gagarin for the USSR. This was a coincidence rather than a celebration of the anniversary; a technical problem had prevented STS-1 from launching two days earlier, as was planned.
Crew
Commander John Young and pilot Robert Crippen were selected as the STS-1 crew in early 1978. Young stated that as the Chief of the Astronaut Office he recommended himself to command the mission. Young, with four previous missions, was the most experienced astronaut in NASA at the time and was also the only member of NASA Astronaut Group 2 still in service. He flew twice on Project Gemini and twice on the Apollo program, walked on the Moon in 1972 as the Commander of Apollo 16, and became Chief of the Astronaut Office in 1974. Crippen, part of NASA Astronaut Group 7 after the cancellation of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), was a rookie and would become the first of his astronaut group to fly in space. Prior to his selection on STS-1, Crippen participated in the Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test (SMEAT) and also served as a capsule communicator (capcom) for all three Skylab missions and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). Columbia carried Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU) for both Young and Crippen in the event of an emergency spacewalk. If such an event occurred, Crippen would go outside the orbiter, with Young standing by in case Crippen required assistance. As of April 1981 Young and Crippen trained the longest for a space mission before flying in NASA history. If STS-1 had launched in March 1979 as originally scheduled "We'd have been launched about halftrained", Young said. As no one had flown the shuttle before, they helped design the craft's controls, including 2,214 switches and displays in the cockpit—about three times as many on the Apollo command module—and many contingency procedures. STS-1 carried 22 manuals, each three inches thick and together weighing 29 kg (64 lb); the procedure for an electronics failure from a cooling system malfunction had 255 steps.
Backup crew
Support crew Daniel C. Brandenstein (ascent CAPCOM) Henry W. Hartsfield Joseph P. Allen (entry CAPCOM)
Mission parameters Mass: Orbiter liftoff: 99,453 kg (219,256 lb) Orbiter landing: 88,662 kg (195,466 lb) DFI payload: 4,909 kg (10,822 lb) Perigee: 246 km (153 mi) Apogee: 274 km (170 mi) Inclination: 40.30° Period: 89.88 minutes
Crew seat assignments
Suborbital mission plan During the original planning stages for the early Space Shuttle missions, NASA management under the Carter Administration felt a need to undertake initial tests of the system prior to the first orbital flight. To that end, Vice President Walter F. Mondale as chairman of the National Space Council suggested a suborbital flight landing at the emergency landing site at Dakar, Senegal. NASA further suggested that STS-1, instead of being an orbital flight, be used to test the Return To Launch Site (RTLS) abort scenario. This involved an abort being called in the first few moments after launch, and using its main engines, once the SRBs had been jettisoned, to power it back to the launch site. This scenario, while potentially necessary in the event of an early abort being called, was seen as being extremely dangerous. Young overruled both proposals, and STS-1 went ahead as the first orbital mission. The NASA managers were swayed by Young questioning the need for the test, and the weight of his opinion was especially strong as he was someone who not only had been to the Moon twice, but had walked on it. He would fly the Space Shuttle again on the STS-9 mission, a ten-day flight in 1983.
Let's not practice Russian roulette, because you may have a loaded gun there.
Mission summary
The first launch of the Space Shuttle occurred on April 12, 1981, exactly 20 years after Vostok 1 (the first crewed space flight), when the Columbia orbiter lifted off from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, at the Kennedy Space Center. The launch took place at 12:00:04 UTC. A launch attempt two days earlier was scrubbed because Columbia's four primary general purpose IBM System/4 Pi computers (GPCs) failed to provide correct timing to the backup flight system (BFS) when the GPCs were scheduled to transition from vehicle checkout to flight configuration mode.
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