Added: 5 years ago
From: Tolbert1906
Views: 394,946
Sort by time | Sort by thread (beta)

Link to this comment:

Share to:
see all

All Comments (523)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • Welcome home Columbia beautiful

  • Welcome home Columbia beautiful

  • Welcome home columbia beautiful

  • I watched this live, and held my breath all the way thru final approach, landing and rollout. My dad's last project at Rockwell International had been building the tooling for the Shuttle Orbiter Assembly Building at Palmdale, CA. A certain family pride was in evidence at that moment.

  • I was 9 and watched this live on CBS... when Columbia came to a halt Dan Rather said "there's plenty of time to talk and plenty to talk about, but let's take a deep breath and suck up this moment" and that's exactly what I did.

  • I've always thought how amazing it would have been to be in one of the "chase jets" escorting the shuttle to safely.

  • i was not even born when this happened and i now work for NASA. This is truly history.

  • Seems like they needed to tune that speedbrake/nosegear touchdown timing a bit better... And I was 3yrs 'old' when this happened. :)

  • what a clean looking shuttle. as if it was new.

  • @jelneutron3 It WAS new...! This is a video of the first shuttle (orbiter) landing!

  • Man, I was born 4 months later. Just turned 30 last week.

  • @JoeyLeafRunner i was 11 at the time. And what good times they were!

  • amazing stuff.got hand it to the yanks just great

  • I have to hand it you you Americans. You guys rock when it comes to space flight. But to be honest. Concorde wad probably the greater invention. Mach 2.2 drinking champagne on the way to new York in 3.5 hours. But I love the shuttle. You guys are awesome.

  • Viene giù come un sasso!

  • 5..4..3..touchdown

  • Whats that below the craft?

  • @Kitfugl Chase plane. I think it carried out an external inspection during the approach and called out the heights as Columbia touched down. I may be wrong about that though.

    We were driving about 60 miles west of this on the day it touched down. We were driving from LA to San Francisco just south of Bakersfield. We saw lots of planes buzzing about presumably chase planes and support in case it went off course, but never saw the shuttle itself. Heard it all live on the radio.

  • T minus 7 years until my birth :-)

  • 1:23 smooooooth landing, nice guys! =)

  • I was eight years old when they showed this landing live on national tv in mexico, I can't believe how long ago it was and still gives me chills to watch it....

  • I took the day off tomorrow to watch the last one. I grew up with this baby. there will be tears! Oh man I wish Columbia did it to finish it off!

  • @andybabig It would have been so fitting for Columbia to have finished it off. But for it to end without her shows just how much sacrifice goes into something as complex as this.

  • I took the day off tomorrow to watch the last one. I grew up with this baby. there will be tears!

  • Great footage, probably lot's of people like me looking this up with the news the final launch is almost upon us. I was a 10 year old kid who liked to look up at the night sky and wonder, when this happened. I remember being glued to the tv here in the UK for the live launch footage too. Presented by the BBC Tomorrow's World host Michael Rod.

  • I wasn't even born when this happened, but I have a ticket to go see the last launch at the Cape :D

  • I was only 9 years old at the time, but thought that it was amazing that USA did this and was glued infront of our television in Aalborg, Denmark.

  • seems to be like the only air to air shot of the space shuttle landing

  • Look at that old Winnebago! Lol.

  • That was the 2nd Space Shuttle Landing.

    The First being "Enterprise" during a Test

  • A multi million dollar flying machine being met by cousin Eddie's RV. Dont forget the ruber sheets and the gerbials. So sad to see the end comming soon!!!!!!!

  • A multi million dollar flying machine being met by cousin Eddie's RV. Dont forget the ruber sheets and the gerbials

  • My brother, my cousin, and me were watching it live on TV. We were bringing it in vocally. We were like - "Come on baby! Come on! Woooooooo!!!!

  • WIN

  • I was there!!!I was at White Sands when it came in. Unforgettable.

  • @vonkiser Not exactly sure which space shuttle you saw at White Sands, but it wasn't this one. This particular shuttle, STS-1, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

  • @mcotter03 It was STS 3 I witnessed, sorry I was only half ass watchin this.

  • @mcotter03

    It WAS this particular shuttle (Columbia), but on flight STS-3. The only mission ever landing at White Sands.

  • @mcotter03

    And maybe, i should read all comments before answering as it was already explained ;-)

  • Remember this well.The launch and the landing. If I'm not mistaken this was the only time the main fuel tank was painted white. All other launch's remained unpainted to save on weight. Commander John Young and Pilot Robert Crippen was the crew.Young had flown on Gemini 2 times, Apollo 2 times and had walked on the moon.He was the veteran and Crippen was a rookie.At launch Young's heart rate never went over 75 beats per min.Crippen's heart rate went from 90 to 155 beats per min.Mine did the same

  • @profsat5 STS2 was also painted white, From STS-3 and after, the tank was unpainted.

  • "Beautiful, Beaufiful" is not enough!!! These guys did something IMPRESSSIVE!!!! John Young rules!!!!!!!

  • anyone know when they started using the drag cute?

  • @rmhoman

    They started using the drage chute at the STS-49 landing of Endeavour in 1992.

  • I skipped school to watch the launch.

  • @marvchomer I did too ;-)

  • Sad to say that that beautiful shuttle desintigrated in our atmosphere only a few years later. :( RIP

  • Its such a shame to think how this particularly iconic space shuttle ended its career on February 1st 2003. I was only eight years old but i remember it well. RIP to the seven who died on that day.

  • Good old "Flying Brick" Will miss the shuttle program

  • Its the real life Millienium Falcon!

  • 5, 4, 3, TOUCHDOWN!!!....xD

  • @alifajardo1999 he's going by feet from the ground, not time

  • @CaNaDiiAnBaCoN i know that.... i haven't thought about time.... it's just funny how the radio said it... that's all :)

  • Well, you've cooked the brakes on it

  • 20 years after Gagarin flown with a tiny 4 ton spacecraft, we can travel to the space with a 120 ton monstrum. Engineers rules!

  • @panoz0

    but where are we now?

  • Great perspective of how small the fighter jets are next to the shuttle.

  • FAKE!

  • I'm part of history.....I was born that day...damn to think almost 30 years ago this happened...

  • RIP

  • the smoothest landing i have ever seen!

    

  • Wow 30 years went SO fast now looking back!! I remember this landing so very clearly. Hats off to our great "space men/women" over the years! You've done us proud!

    Cheers from NYC.

  • what computer game is this?

  • lol thanks for clearing a RUNWAY for us!

  • I dig this clip, I remember how amazing and inspiring the Shuttle was to myself & lots of other kids back in the 80s.. & incidentally, was that a roach coach rolling out there at the end ?.. I guess the astronauts earned a coupla' burritos after that landing.

  • watched this live in 5th grade... can still remember it perfectly!

  • Today i'm 9 years old and i'm going to be 10 years in a couple of months.Great mission and when i grow up,i want to be an astronaut!

  • Today i'm 9 years old and i'm going to be 10 years in a couple of months.Great mission and when i grow up,i want to be an astronaut!

  • At this Day I´m 10 years old and we watch that live on German TV. Unforgettable!!!

  • thats right, land in edwards AFB :D

  • John Young is THE MAN...Gemini 3, Gemini 10, Apollo 10, Apollo 16, STS-1, STS-9

  • @bennyvega100 wow i was unaware he flew in pretty much every space craft. Thats a damn impressive feat in such a business

  • @bennyvega100 John Young was the first person to fly in space on five or six different times.

    Given that he was the most experienced astronaut in the program in 1981, it was no susprise he commanded the first shuttle mission.

    He likely had the most successful career of any of the "Next Nine" (NASA's second class of astronauts, who were selected in the Fall of 1962).

    I also suspect this video was pool footage.

  • @bennyvega100 And a GT grad! GO JACKETS!

  • @bennyvega100 : Too bad he didn't try Mercury.

  • Wow. The guy (John Young) went to the Moon, and then commanded the first Shuttle mission. Hell of a career!

  • Yep the flying brick is what all the pilots call it, aerodynamics of a pair of pliers. Lol

  • @mocklerchris Pretty sure the pair of pliers is substantially more aerodynamic. ;-) Magnificent ship. She and her crew are sorely missed.

  • Very memorable. I was there watching Columbia's first landing. Hard to believe the program ran this long. We need to continue our adventure with new and better vehicles.

    Bless the crew of Columbia's last flight STS-107.

  • I think it should fly, under power. Otherwise, it flys like a brick.

  • i saw a shuttle about a year ago comming in to land at cape canaveral from halfway across Florida. and if you think this thing shouldnt fly, this thing was whipin accros the sky.

  • where is the drag chute?

  • I was out there on the lakebed for this landing along with a few 100,000 others. I will never forget people pointing out every bird or dust spec in the sky waiting for the shuttle to arrive. The double sonic booms that signaled her arival and the roar of the crown that followed are something I will never forget as long as I live.

  • thanks to all of you who have answered my runway length question without being presumptuous and rude!!

  • I was fortunate to attend this historic event. To see a real space ship come down from space and land for the first time (and it was ours!) was something I'll never forget. JD

  • @Dumitru777 I AM PILOT

  • from logical point of view all those tons the shuttle weights are dead weight

  • i think i had an orgasm about 3 and a half times while watching this.

  • What a beautifull landing, so smooth and perfect

  • Go around! lol

  • Lembro q atrasei pra entrar na escola só pra ver esse pouso historico. O futuro para nós na epoca era ja estarmos em Marte por esses anos de 2010. e com colonia na Lua.

  • sell space shuttless to private corporations and then continiue flights ! Thats idea NASA will earn a money and shuttles still be operating :D

  • Not the first ever Space Shuttle landing, there were many test landings before it actually went into space (worth mentioning because Fred Haise was in charge of a number of them). Having said that, STS -1 was always going to be OK under John Young; can't you see his elbow on the window as he lands it with one hand?

  • @cammiedelany Bob Crippen landed it not Young.

  • @cammiedelany John Young landed the shuttle since he was the commander, it is the commanders job of landing the shuttle not the pilot who was Robert "Bob" Crippen.

  • @josephamaker94

    It was Edwards. I was there to see it with my own eyes. The only mission to land at White Sands was STS-3

  • Noticing the missing braking chute

  • @Randomnick123

    Yep. Endeavour was the first orbiter to have the drag chute, an upgrade following Challenger

  • @KeenCapt The chute was not an upgrade to Challenger. It was 1st used in 1994, eight years after Challenger. It was part of a mod to relieve the stress on the orbiters axle, tires and brakes which themselves were all modified also.

  • @aimhigh59

    First landing with chute was in 1992 on Endeavour's first flight.

  • @Randomnick123 They didn't have them back then.

  • I was 10 years old when this took place!!! WOWWWWW!!!

  • edwards?

  • Beautify, beautiful!

  • I feel lucky to have stood on Daytona Beach sand watching this orbiter take to the sky for its first flight. I had always hoped to see it again someday in a museum. Saddening in so many ways.....

  • That never gets old. Professionals. I love it.

  • Comment removed

  • It's basically a guided falling rock

  • The longest runway at Edwards is 7.5 *miles* long, which is probably long enough to land a shuttle with no brakes or drogue; the SLF at KSC is 15,000; two runways at White Sands NM are 35,000 ft each.

    See List_of_space_shuttle_landing_­runways at Wikipedia.

  • @utubesnamepolsux The 15000 ft runways are long enough to land with no chute. They did it for 13 years before the chutes were added.

  • I wonder if the shuttle had that "new car smell" still at this point!

  • @TracyAndersonFoxhunt lol, ive seen STS-126,128 and 132 they all looked real to me :-),, im guessing your one of the people who also believes in UFO's

  • @kirza94

    he is being sarcastic

  • Nothing's going to beat the shuttle. It was amazing, it could do anything!!!!

  • I remember as a little boy watching the TV totally amaze. the first reusable spacecraft and is still the onlyone. a tribute to human ingenuity.

  • My friends and family have worked with the space shuttle program since the beginning. Some of my friends work for NASA in Florida and at Edwards. My family have built special ground handling equipment for the shuttle program. It hit us hard emotionally at the losses of Challenger and Columbia. We felt that our current President should allow NASA to continue with it's manned rockets to first goto the moon, and then beyond.

  • Its amazing to think that when this happened, the Moon landings of Apollo were still fresh in peoples minds. I'll miss the shuttle, an amazing feat of engineering and a spacecraft that brought many humans into space, which is something that must be done as much as possible!

  • @nickyp28 It has served well but the USA need something more efficient.

  • Enterprise really had the First Ever Space Shuttle Landing but nice anyways!

  • too bad that this space shuttle never again flied after the cloumbia misson....

    rip

  • the idea of this shuttle came sowhat near to the image of a spaceship becoming reality... but we will have to cope with the thought that riding a rocket in a capsule and returning to earth more like a falling stone than a plane is much more rentable :(.

  • I remember watching this and the launch live on tv....

  • I wonder why they wait so long to put the landing gear down. The wheels don't come down until they're almost on the ground.

  • @jsbruzina the reason is that the landing gear cause a tremendous amount of drag and as a result, they want to wait until the last minute for all of the extra friction to happen. You have to remember that the Shuttle is going well over 200 mph and at that speed, the landing gear doors are quite devastating to the airflow.

  • They used no brakingchute back at that time?

  • @labacu90 Chutes were not added until the early 90's...

  • lol. was that NASA's motorhome?

  • lol... it fares at like 100 ft

  • They're retiring the shuttle fleet, and the ARES Program has been canceled. Space development is going to be interesting for the next couple of decades.

  • Its very sad that Columbia will be destroyed upon re entry to earth many years from here and join it's sister Challenger in the dark pages of NASA. May both crews of those shuttles R.I.P.

  • Must be awesome to be in the chase plane (in real life) seeing the Shuttle fly so close next to you. Especially around @1m15s .. really diving and flying low above the ground. :-D

  • @trashmail8 must been a goof feeling for the astronauts when they saw the airplane for the first time too :) I saw this landing during my military service in the swedish airforce, we all shouted and applauded.

  • @bubediscuss Science yeah!

  • no chute yet huh? I believed all the shuttles had chutes.

  • They do now. They were not out fitted with them until the early 90's. The chute is not required but was added to releave stress on the brakes and axles.

  • America, FUCK YEA!

  • y is there a little plane beside it?

  • Since this was the first landing, the pace and chase plane flies along to verify configuration of the orbiter and take photo's.

  • @ricocasekfan the little plane is a T-38 Talon, acting as a chase plane

  • sis they landed on dirt

  • the back engines are so big it looks that shit is gonna go to space

  • lovely audio. great post, thanks.

  • I don't know how you land a falling rock with no power and little bitty wings. That's incredible. Does anybody know how long the runway is for this?

  • 3 miles

  • I don't know how long this one is but the one in Cape Canaviral is 12,000 ft

  • This is not a "real" runway, the shuttle landed on rogers dry lake where you have very long landing strips. The concrete runways at Kennedy and Edwards are 15,000ft long.

  • @plumbersteve i was pointing to the shuttle program itself, sorry if was misunderstood :o) or i explained it badly!

  • @plumbersteve

    16,500 feet at Edwards.

  • @plumbersteve

    Edwards has a 15k runway I wonder if this is it ?

  • @1MtnBoy Nope. The 15000 runway is concrete (runway 22/04). This is the dry lake bed which is even longer.

  • @mach25man WoW, I thought the runway that was on the lake bed was an extension of an existing concrete runway. Thanks for the correction : ) I love EAFB

  • @plumbersteve the shuttles are equpied with parachutes that when contact with the earth is made they will deploy and slow it down to normal speed so yes alot of runway is needed but not as much without the chute

  • @popsnacks2 Only Endeavour is equipped with a parachute. (Since it was the last built, they threw some extra features in.)

  • @Corei7Maniac All the orbiters have parachutes. They all got them in the early 90's. Just look at Atlantis when she lands and any other landing video that flew after 1994.

  • @plumbersteve the first shuttle landing a a desert not in cap canevaral so it will be a very long runway. i thing the space shuttle were landing on the Edwards Air Force Base in Kalifornien

  • i don't know which of the runways that was used, if i remember correctly the longest one is about 7km

  • @plumbersteve

    I don't know about Edward AFB, but at Kennedy the runway is amlost 3 and a half miles!

  • @CubesForAKid Both concrete runways at Edw. and KSC are 15000 feet.

  • @plumbersteve the one at the kennedy space center is around 3 miles long. the ones at edwards can be up to 11 miles across the lakebed. but ususally 3 miles is enough. has the highest landing speed of any machine, 230 mph at touch down.

    lol its really called by nasa "the flying brick"

  • @SoccerBoy77 that landing speed explains how it doesn't lose lift i guess. man that's fast!!

  • @plumbersteve over 18000 yards

  • @plumbersteve Its at edwards, I believe in excess of 14,000 feet.

  • @plumbersteve STS-1 has Landed at Edwards Air Force Base. The main Edwards concrete runway is located next to Rogers Dry Lake and combining this runway's 15,000 foot length with a 9,000 foot lakebed overrun gives pilots with an inflight emergency one of the longest and safest runways anywhere in the world.

  • @plumbersteve about 3 miles

  • @plumbersteve its huge, and empty, its light for the amount of wing area it has, its good :)

    the shuttle landing facility on the east coast is about 3 miles long, its the longest runway of its type in the world, this is at edwards air force base and has a different kind of runway, this landed on one of the painted on runways of the lakebed, i dont know which one or howlong it is but i think it is 23R and the runway is 14999FT long, it might have been another runway but im not sure

  • @plumbersteve

    Normally at Cape Canaveral, the runway there is 5 miles long and follows the curvature of the earth, the heightdifference between the start and end of the runway is only 1 inch and is considered to be the most perfect runway on earth, these guys leave nothing to chance..

  • @plumbersteve Google: shuttle runway length; should be the first result: (wikipedia article) 15,000ft. so nine months for an answer. or 15 seconds on the internet. which i assume you were already on.

  • That's really cool! I never knew that spaceships landed the same way as an airplane like that. I always thought they land the way they do in cartoons, like pointing up and slowling coming down haha xD

  • wow!!! :0 he expends damn late his landing gear! Go Space Shuttle!!!! :p

  • he needs to slow down to a safe speed before he can lower landing gear. You dont want to lower your landing gear when you're still going at 280kts!

  • Different aircrafts have different limitations for gear extensions. If it were unsafe, then they wouldn't do it.

  • wow, itl be sad to see the shuttle go, the new Aries and Orion spacecraft seem like a backwards step to me.. Oh well, its still damn exciting! Hopefully NASA can finaly do that Venus flyby that they planned in the 70's..