Launch of STS-1 (Columbia) - Bigger, Longer, & Better

[BlazingAngels220099]

i cant wait until STS 135 lifts off.

[Fanik10]

In case your wondering why this footage doesn't have the best quality, it's because it was shot IN 198 FUCKING 1!!!

[rbairos1]

I remember getting up early in the morning to record the original broadcast on my shoebox tape recorder as my kindly immigrant grandmother smiled politely.

[jetfreak4]

I always laugh when I hear people say the shuttle could clear its launch tower much faster than the Saturn V. That's pretty much because the launch tower is under half as tall as the Saturn V's launch tower, which was something like over 40 stories.

[350z350zify]

this video braught tears to my eyes, knowing that we are approaching the last 2 launches and we have atlantis doing her final haul. im tearing while writing this. im just gonna have to beg my mom to take me to the launch in november. it makes me sad and happy seeing the space shuttle leaving earth, and seeing it leave forever will be tough since its been around my whole life. im 13

[ncjonson]

launch capcom is Daniel Brandenstein

[gemari77]

Funny how everything turns into a bunch of cuckoos bashing the President.....

[JohnWells1973]

Yeah Cancelling the Constellation is a big Mistake ...Check out my page I video'd a letter to the president asking him to re consider

[sail027li]

: (

[sail027li]

4 more flights, then it's over for US manned space flight ( foreseeable future) : ( The Big O will cancel Constellation if he has his way.

[vicorly]

@sail027li Obama is destroying the manned space program. He needs to get his head out of his Uranus.

[lego2184]

he dos not know what he is doing to America

[korgri]

@vicorly Nah (though the Uranus thing, as always, is funny).. we're being set up for something much better. Constellation was just in the way. Consider there is a satellite up right now that is looking in a specific part of space only for Earth-type planets. Think how much a satellite mission like that would cost to launch and maintain, and what could justify such a mission in such a narrowly specific parameter. Why search for habitable planets far outside our technological reach? Or are they...

[ceredigio]

Is THIS what Obama meant by 'change'???

Whilst I respect the opinion of those who say it would be better doing unmanned space flight than manned, I do not agree with it.

[penfat1]

god bless young and crippen. :)

[Andrewmcmelonse]

It looks so cool white, Its OK red, I would kill to see it painted rainbow!

[ceredigio]

It would only look weird like that

[sail027li]

When are we going to have another victory like this?? Ares won't be the same.

[DruMMerBoY4321]

i have to agree. dont get me wrong, going back to the moon possibly will be a great thing, but we havnt had a life changing feat like the first landing on the moon or the first shuttle launch in a long time.

[korgri]

When I was six years old I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Swapping Apollo-Saturn for the shuttle was like your father coming home to announce that he traded in the Corvette for a Chevy Impala. Even more heart breaking in later years to learn that there plans for riding a manned Skylab-type contraption to flyby Venus. (wiki: Apollo Applications Program) Instead we get this dopey winged hollow turd and pretend it's a Ferrari. Bread and ketchup are not pizza.

[kineticdeath]

@korgri lol theyre 2 different generations of spacecraft entirely so that comparison doesnt count. And i think anyone will find a ship capable of landing on a runway safely after orbiting the planet is a pretty hefty feat. "Swapping" isnt really a good term either, once a saturn was launched it was gone for good, nothing reusable there, the shuttle launches+lands rinse and repeat

If the shuttle wasnt so expensive i dont think it would ever be replaced due to the fact that its a reusable vehicle

[korgri]

@kineticdeath But it turned out that throwing away the saturns was cheaper than

the cost of re-prep for each shuttle launch. The greatest value of the shuttle was that it employed more people and created a greater 'econo-bureaucratic' culture; it made the NASA/economic 'interface' so vast that attempting to dismantle it would adversely affect too many economic variables at once. That a whole new series of industries had to be created to just move the orbiter from point A to B is an example.

[kineticdeath]

@korgri not trying to make out that the apollo and other early space farers werent epic, they all were epic but advancing technology doesnt make the next generation softies and babied in thier efforts. Each generation leads to the next with things learned in the previous being applied to the future.

[korgri]

@kineticdeath The dollar cost of payload pound to orbit would have been much cheaper over the last 35 years had they stuck with an ongoing Saturn production line. But then, not so many dollars would have been spent - and the greater value to the economy (than payload-cost-to-orbit) is creating jobs, moving more currency for an increased number of reasons.

[korgri]

@kineticdeath Not to mention the security concern: several dozen used Saturn boosters in the ocean might make a tempting target for Soviet espionage.. retrieve one, with it's five F1 engines, and the Soviets could have built their own workable heavy booster. I wonder if it ever occurred to them to try and pull one of those used first stages up? They could have built a special sub to taxi it underwater back to the USSR. Of course, it would have made a racket underwater...might be a good movie.

[kineticdeath]

@korgri Im not all up to speed on the space programme but from what i understood the russians do/did have a high end rocket of some sort, energia or some such - but as im not up to speed on that im probably wrong. And i know the shuttle cost blew out of proportion, if the shuttle wasnt so vastly expensive to operate, i dont think it would be phased out cause it could just keep pumping up humans and payloads - and bringing them back again

[korgri]

@kineticdeath Yeah, Energia is what it was called. You can find good stuff on wiki about it. It was only test flown twice, as part of their Boran program, but unlike the Saturn it used the strap on solid rocket booster routine like the American shuttle.

You know, the Russian's moon rocket N1 had a greater thrust at liftoff, but as it climbed higher it fell off. Not to mention that all test launches failed, and used 30 engines on the first stage, a big problem in itself - rocket science indeed.

[kineticdeath]

@korgri i do recall reading about the N1 failures, the engine setup was the fault from what i remember, something about shockwaves from the engines damaging each other. I suppose we could always go for orion hehe

[pnktout]

Woo 1981 I was 6 years old :D

[Andrewmcmelonse]

Its so weird, They could make a rocket with these hi-tech computers but a home PC was.. uh

[paddy9i99]

This is what AWESOME really means. Take note you dumb high school kids, and stop listening to Britney for 5 minutes.

[lunarmodule5]

Great to hear this audio version - I think it's the 1st time I have heard it all "put together" with the PAO and Air-Ground. Thanx for the upload!

[ceredigio]

Why wasn't the PAO loop heard for the first few moments? Shouldn't they have turned down the outside microphones?

[elkinsinbox]

Beautiful, beautiful, spectacular launch.

[UdallIn72]

Hey, how would the ejection seats have worked if used?

Would the whole top of the crew cabin have popped open or something?

Can anybody refer me to a write-up or pictorial of the system? I haven't been able to find a good one.

[khan109]

They used the same system as found in the SRS-71 Blackbird. The first few flights featured only 2 crew, PLT and CDR, which made ejection of crew much more feasible.

[UdallIn72]

Yeah, but what part of the vehicle would they be ejected through?

Were the seats designed to shoot them out the windows?

[f22cool]

they used the same one because of high speed right

[mich1122212121]

There were access hatches above the crew seats that would have jettisoned before the ejection seats were activated.

[mach25man]

The 2 upper windows would blow out 1st. Then the 2 ejection seats were on rails typically used today. The port upper window (window 8) can still be blown today to escape the shuttle on the ground if required.

[parachuteclubbed]

My father woke me up to watch this live, just three days before my 8th birthday. I'll never forget it.

[UdallIn72]

This happened about six weeks before my 0th birthday.

...I'm therefore almost an exact contemporary of the Shuttle program.

I'll be sad to see it end, but, you know--on to bigger and better things with Constellation!

[MHN91]

One of the few memories etched into my mind from childhood was having the entire school packed into the darkened library to gaze in amazement at the history being shown to us live on our lone TV set. These several years later, I can say looking back, that witnessing such a powerful display of human ingenuity and triumph of engineering is a great memory!

If only I could have seen it first hand.

[un4g1v3n1]

1:24 1:58 2:21

Note voice stress and vibration in voice of Shuttle pilot

[panzr]

Fantastic! Something I'll never forget. I was 6 years old and I remember my mother getting me up in the morning to watch this live on TV

[trinitygadget]

Really great video. Thanks for posting.

[flatsignedbooks]

John Young, a true hero in NASA'S books as well as Crip

[Kjr0se]

RIP Space Shuttle Columbia and to the crew that was lost when Columbia broke up on reentry in 2003.

[garethmurtagh]

Great to see this again! It's fascinating comparing this with a modern Shuttle launch, shows just how much camera have improved over the last 27 years!

[airdriver]

I remember this launch heralded the future of space travel. Now nearly 20 years later, all we have is a couple of tin cans in orbit, an upcoming five year hiatus from manned space flight and a souped up Apollo retread called Project Ares.

Nice!

[Basketvector]

Ya, i know. It sucks. But don't poo poo Ares. That's going to kick some ass. Heavier payload than Apollo. A lot of people say it's a step backwards, but no one can accuse th shuttle of being practical.

[airdriver]

But ten years ago we were within a few years of launching the Venturestar class space shuttle. It was a Single Stage To Orbit(SSTO) space craft that would have been the next logical step in spaceflight.

During Apollo, we landed men on the moon using little more than sliderules and very, very basic computers. I would hope with today's technology we could do better than Ares. Its a step backwards, trust me.

[UdallIn72]

Honestly, I don't think there was really anything wrong with the old Apollo spacecraft. I'm glad they're going back to that theme--only with far better computer technology!

...The Shuttle was cool, but it never really amounted to what we hoped it would.

[sail027li]

Agreed - Apollo was 2nd to NONE in drama, & inspiration. STS, as fitful as it was at times, was a step forward. For pure aesthetics, how can you even begin to compare Orion approaching ISS to that of a shuttle approach??

[Dragonx0562]

I have one thing to say about Ares...

Shock absorbers, and counterweights.

[sammyplasm]

thats two things

[omegaman196601]

If I recall correctly John Young's heart rate never exceeded 100 beats/min during the countdown. The man has some guts

[RJY4356]

They said Crippen got to 110 or so but Young "stayed cool at 85" and Young said " I tried but I just can't make it go any faster," and Crippen laughed "Yeah, RIGHT!"

[peaky1988]

Woah, ok smartarse, I was only trying to help! You meet some nice people on youtube...

[amadeus5889]

Go, baby, go go go go go!!!

[RJY4356]

I wish I knew what the heck Young radioed from 1:58-2:00, something about max q.

Also at 2:45 Brandenstein says " Roger Columbia on the nice ride...," but I never heard any such transmission from them about the nice ride before that.

I know that the trajectory of this launch was higher and faster than they had predicted beforehand, hence it being a " hot " first stage.

[peaky1988]

To RJY4356 - max q is the point of maximum dynamic pressure and the shuttle needs to decrease it's velocity otherwise the outside air pressure would damage the shuttle

[RJY4356]

I KNOW what max q is...my comment was asking what Young actually said in that call, the transmission is somewhat garbled and hard to decipher.

[goat60804]

Does anyone have a clean clip of this or know where I can find it? I have tried to reach nasa, but they don't respond and nasa does not have the audio clips of this launch on their online archives.

[uwtitanfan]

I got all of these off a website that had videos

of the early launches, as well as audio of the early launch that went from about T- 5:00 up to MECO. But I don't remember what that site was.

[nick0912nascar]

@goat60804 IMAX videoed the launch with one of their high resolution cameras which is higher res then HD and it obviously looks very good. It was on youtube but I think it got took down since I cant find it. I am assuming it is on their movie Hail Columbia!

[Micke73]

Me and best friend Roger, both 8 at the time, were both in awe back in 1981 when we watched this live on tv. We were so disappointed that the launch got delayed a couple days earlier, but it was so cool watching it when it was finally launched after two long days of waiting! I even wrote an voluntary essay about it for school, but didn't get all the facts right as I thought the maximum speed was 600 km/h (some 375 mph). But hey, I was 8 and that sounded like alot to me, plus no internet... :)

[GilligansDen]

This video of the first shuttle launch still moves me as much as it did in '81. Delays measured in years as well as months, weeks and days to the last minute - no one knew the shuttle was going to launch until the last 10 seconds or so. And no one knew it would actually make it into space. We didn't know if it would survive re-entry and land. The world's very first re-usable spacecraft.

Dumb-shit kids take it for granted today with their cell phones and video games. Its our to love.

[bitrex]

The unfortunate failing of the shuttle was that while it was "re-usable" in its way, it never achieved the turnaround speed and the economy of scale that its designers had hoped. The original design specifications had called for something like 100 flights a year - there was just no way a vehicle so complex could meet that schedule. In the interests of crew safety when they found a damaged tile they'd need to replace the whole section; a cracked LOX turbopump blade called for an engine rebuild.

[GilligansDen]

Agreed. It never lived up to wild expectations. Easy to look back with 20/20 and judge it as a failure. But standing in April 1981 looking ahead offered a different view, one for which the younger generation has no appreciation. Given the circumstances and the times and technology, it is a remarkable spacecraft that served its purpose as best as could be had. Lack of funding and public support is the cause of the "failure".

[nakazatoGTR]

not just funding, but political tweaking really caused its demise, had ther been no political fund snatching, it would have met more of its design purposes.

[bitrex]

Looks like the Shuttle actually launches at about T+ 2 seconds.

[don312000]

T+3 to be exact. The original plan was for the engines to light 3 sec before launch; it was determined the off-center thrust stress was too high at that point as the orbiter was actually moving downward after rocking up due to the thrust. So they decided to go with a start at 6sec so the orbiter would go thru a full cycle and be coming back up; it was too late to reprogram the clocks so for that flight only, they fired the engines at t-3 and launched at t+3.

[cutterschoicenotmine]

yea look wat happened years later to the same craft. teach them to run it into the ground.

[PC3900]

So what's your point - don't try difficult, dangerous things? Nice message - that's the way countries like Mexico, Uganda and Albania think. They can't even build a cloth biplane.

[cutterschoicenotmine]

No, countrys as such dont have hundreds of billions of dollars to use every year. Countries like Mexico are more bothered giving people free healthcare, quality healthcare at that too.

[LordWham]

I played hookey from 6th grade to watch this launch..! We didn't have a VCR back then, so I recorded the launch with an old portable cassette deck. I still have that tape with my stepfather screaming go Go GO GO GO..!!!!! in the background.

[Jimd1701]

The Canadian group Rush did a song called "Countdown" about the first shuttle launch. The music video (featuring NASA footage) is on this site.

[RJY4356]

Wonderful! Ive heard the audio track separately on shuttlesource but all the other videos dont ahve the actual audio mixed with the launch. I've always wished I could unscramble what Young radioed at 1:57 about max q....it sounds garbled.

[87wg]

Would you consider posting some of that coverage? I remember watching it on NBC too -- I think it was Tom Brokaw and Bryant Gumbel, maybe John Chancellor too, doing coverage.

I always loved how that angle they shot from at 1:18 to 1:25.

[Na8ters]

that took balls

[frantic1971]

Watched this live on tv when it happened back in 1981.The younger people who grew up watching shuttle launches can't imagine what an impression this first-ever shuttle launch was.Prior to this we had Saturn V launches which were slow and lumbering and seemed to barely make it off the ground.Here we had the shuttle engines start at 8 seconds and then at zero BOOM! the solids kicked in and whoosh it went up fast!People were awestruck-they had never seen the like! A tremendous impression of POWER!

[frantic1971]

Watched this live on tv when it happened back in 1981.The younger people who grew up watching shuttle launches can't imagine what an impression this first-ever shuttle launch was.Prior to this we had Saturn V launches which were slow and lumbering and seemed to barely make it off the ground.Here we had the shuttle engines start at 8 seconds and then at zero BOOM! the solids kicked in and whoosh it went up fast!People were awestruck-they had never seen the like! A tremendous impression of POWER!

[shelle1even]

Its An Amazing, Bold Conquest! But Thats NASA! People Probably Said At The Time "There Sending An Aeroplane Into Space!?" The ISS Is What we Have Between Apollo & Now? And Its Needed For Future Missions!

[coolboy88888888]

Nasa make's sure to delay shuttle's when they see a problem today. Well they need to extend the shuttle program beyond 2010 cause I bet, you they will be delay's this year like the one in december. If, only nasa had delayed challenger those astronaut's would be alive today. It, seem's to me nasa wanted to kill those astronaut's because they had evidence of problem's with the booster's, & still not delayed it. Nasa, killed the teacher in space & ruined it for other cillivain's.

[Franciszek64]

Agree!!

[coolboy88888888]

There was problem's with the solid rocket booter's from the beginning nasa said. But if nasa had correced the problem they had 5 year's before 1986 to fix the problem they didn't, but nasa had to learn the hard way. Nasa had 5 year's before challenger to fix the problem, they didn't look what it cost them a million dollar shuttle & 7 lives.

[Superedit]

An especially gutsy first flight - considering that the damn thing had never flown before. Poor Columbia...she died young.

[leepmx]

only crazy ppl accept to be an astronaut ,are thosuand and thousand of combustible back these ppl.that´s naughty.

[Zachmister]

The sounds of liftoff frpm the NES game space shuttle project are taken from sts 1

[starbond6]

I knew those voices were familiar!

[RomelioSanz]

Who does cry at the second 22? Why?

[uwtitanfan]

Those were members of the shuttle development team in charge of making sure the SRB's came off as they were suppose to cheering that did.

[ceredigio]

@uwtitanfan Its a bit like the launch control team cheering and whooping in the background as the PAO announces lift off! You heard that on most launches from Apollo thru to shuttle launches in the early 90's.

[uwtitanfan]

These were from different websites, I don't remember which ones. It had audio and video of all the early shuttle launches

[RJY4356]

Thank you for putting the audio track together on here... is it from the shuttlesource archives?