 A new door to space opens, the space shuttle, everything that has gone before in space. This magnificent treasure is Prologue. We are beginning a new and exciting age, signaled by the flight of Columbia into Earth orbit. Columbia is the first of a fleet of ships of the space transportation system. The others to follow, names which evoke the spirit of our purpose on this new ocean. Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis. And the monitors are all set up. The working environment aboard will be quite ordinary. Yet the meaning of all this to us is far from ordinary. Okay Joe, I think I'm about done here. I'm gonna hit them downstairs and fix something. Space shuttle, taking as many as four satellites into orbit, has the capability of retrieving orbiting satellites, repairing them in space or bringing them back to Earth. Okay Houston, Columbia, we had a good eye and new alignment. Time was four, 55, 57, and numbers are on the tape. And we did get the verification. Roger, we copy. Historian James A. Mitchner in an address to Congress said, there are moments in history when challenges occur of such a compelling nature that to miss them is to miss the whole meaning of an epic. Space is such a challenge. I'm James Mitchner. For most of my working years on this planet, I've been chronicling the rise and fall of human systems. If there is one thing I'm convinced of from years of studying history, it's that enemies do not destroy nations. Time and the loss of will brings them down. To see that this does not happen to this nation of ours, the United States cannot retreat from the challenge of our age. Each era of human history progresses to a point at which it is eligible to wrestle with the great problem of that period. For the ancient Greeks, it was the organization of society. For the medievalists, the spelling out of their relationship to God. For the men of the 15th and 16th centuries, the mastery of the oceans. And for us, it is the determination of how mankind can live in harmony on the finite globe we call earth while establishing relationships to an infinite space. I am struck with wonder at the energy being expended by thousands of people not only in the United States but around the world who have worked long and hard to overcome technical setbacks to make space travel available not only to astronauts but to anyone who wants to journey above our planet and work in space. The space transportation system they've developed introduces the decade of the 80s to the spaceship Columbia the first of many spacecraft that will be propelled not on the top of expensive one-time boosters but by a space transportation system that can be used economically over and over again. Our endeavor guided and informed by a history of successes in spaceflight is of immense proportions. 10,000 NASA employees at six research centers across our nation and other centers in Canada and Europe. The effort has been advanced through over 5,000 contractors, government and industry in over 25 states and 14 countries. It has challenged our creative and engineering genius in both its form and scope that it has been complex and difficult is not deniable but then what monuments to our progress can we name that have been easy. Some say it is our destiny to fill the wide vessel of the universe a demanding role from which we must not retreat. The hangar we call the vehicle assembly building is so large it's to mention so vast that Robert Goddard's first rocket launch would not have escaped its confines, Columbia. Through her we expect much and now sits our expectation in the air cradled to be mated to the two solid rocket boosters and the projectile shaped external tank. It is the day the shuttle passes through the eye of the needle aboard the elephantine crawler transporter. She journeys to pad 39. It is a trip made with deliberate speed, techniques, procedures of that day to come wrapped in attention and detail. Columbia now is not many days from her destination. 15,000 foot runways one in California and the other in Florida will accept the returning ships when operational missions begin. Downrange stations report and Columbia is go for launch. The countdown has begun. Ignition downrange from pad 39. To be towed ashore and used again for another shuttle flight. The main engines continue to burn and the external tank now empty is jettisoned to fall into a remote ocean area. Space shuttle is in earth orbit 150 miles above our planet. Astronauts moving with the rotation of the earth fly into night and into day many times on each orbit. In a 54-hour flight they will see 36 sunrises and 36 magnificent sunsets as they orbit above the planet earth looking down on clouds and life below. Guided by mission control Houston and the pilots fly the shuttle back toward earth a long very fast glide from mid-pacific to California. First at hypersonic speeds then supersonic then as the crew makes an approach to the landing at NASA's Dryden Center the air speed slows dramatically. The orbiter will be taken to the processing facility for a complete checkout before its next mission. Progress is not a monopoly of the United States. The space transportation system will be used by nations of the world. Haloed space aboard shuttle has been booked ahead by many nations. The signature of the program again reflects the words our astronauts left on the moon. We came in peace for all mankind and once again Columbia stands ready to be mated to the solid boosters and the external tank for another mission. Each orbiter is rated to fly up to 100 missions. Astronaut John Young the veteran of the Gemini and Apollo programs and the spacecraft commander of the first shuttle crew to go into orbit. Astronaut Bob Crippen space shuttle pilot on the first flight. Both of these men experienced high performance aircraft pilots. Young and Crippen the specialists analyze everything the procedure of a good test pilot. Each step is questioned tested. Solutions are tried rehearsed and the emergency is again simulated. This is the lesson we have learned in over 20 years of manned space flight. In the cockpit or the cabin of the shuttle a pressure suit is not necessary. Work outside in the near vacuum of space requires a pressure suit. The astronauts flying in a military jet transport are given brief moments of weightlessness as the pilot maneuvers the aircraft. Bob Crippen experiences this as he works in his pressure suit. He must learn to use tools. The problem of handling things with his gloves on is compounded by weightless flight. Astronauts, mission specialists and payload specialists have a preview of the exhilaration and joy of spaceflight. Survival school taught by the Air Force. It includes a bit of sky sailing and parachute training. At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center they experience underwater training with a full-scale mock-up of the payload bay. Crew members work out some of the problems they may encounter in weightless condition. They find that movement underwater under neutral buoyancy strangely approximates the conditions they find in space. In the next five years more than 60 space shuttle flights have been scheduled. We will see Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and Atlantis launching into space from pad 39. The earth and its terrain can be a barrier to communications isolating people and cultures. For some nations it meant safety and protection and an advancing civilization. Others have stayed the same. The struggle has been to live. Food, water, with satellites a new age is dawning for all people. Okay everything's in position now. The role of the mission specialist really starts once the orbiter gets on orbit and at that time it's the mission specialist who's really in charge of the orbiter's mission. The mission specialist's role could could be anything from opening the payload bay doors to using the remote manipulator system which is a big 50 foot long arm that's made by the Canadians to deploy a satellite which we carry up in the cargo bay or retrieve a satellite that might already be in orbit. If there's an experiment that's being carried along by the shuttle on this mission it'd be the mission specialist that would operate the experiment. Anything that the orbiter might be asked to do on that particular mission the mission specialist will be asked to carry that out. Science places the creation of the universe 14 billion years ago. Okay Joe the cameras zoomed in so if he could go to free drift. This shuttle launched telescope may see galaxies at the very time they were formed. Revealing the structure and history of creation deep space probes will add to our knowledge of our solar system of the far planets and the cosmology of the galaxies. In the coming decades the shuttle will place networks of satellites into earth orbit. We will manage our resources, our crops, our land and water, weather forecasting and communication on a global scale. Bremen West Germany where ESSA the European Space Agency is building the space lab which will fly aboard space shuttle. In Europe we are well aware of the space activities taking place in Russia and in the United States and we would like to participate in similar activities to benefit from the same technological advances. Vava Arkels a physicist from the Netherlands a mission and payload specialist and a member of the European Space Agency. There has been a large interest in doing manned space activities and back in 73 they decided to build a space laboratory which would be carried along in space with the American shuttle. About 10 different countries members of the European Space Agency participated in the funding and development of this laboratory Germany being one of the bigger participants. It has insight in its pressurized module an atmosphere which is very similar on earth scientists eventually will go up in this laboratory to do all kind of experiments in space. Okay Houston Columbia we're reading you loud and clear go ahead. Roger we got that done. Let's see Joe we've got a minute from the burn. Space shuttle will indeed be our workhorse in space with as many as four satellites orbited on one mission. The Department of Defense will have payloads on a third of the more than 400 flights scheduled over the next 12 years. Not now an American Soviet monopoly and it will be less so as time goes on. We are approaching the point where the world community and not just a few nations is interested in space. Dr. Isaac Asimov microbiologist author and lecturer. Oh thank you thank you. We are entering a new era of construction engineering and architecture. Now for the first time in space we are going to be able to ignore gravity and build structures that will be strong for other reasons than simply passive resistance to gravitational pull. It's going to be a new kind of architecture we're going to have prefabricated structures which we can just move into position and watch these structures grow before our eyes into new forms and new shapes. The space shuttle will serve the needs of the international community and will be one more strong binding force leading to world cooperation of nations presenting a global front to the space frontier one that will help everybody. All nations give the earth a way of forming a common consciousness of the planet. Aden voyage of the spaceship Columbia signals a new epoch. The ships of the fleet of the national space transportation system, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Columbia will be launched and returned from space on a regular schedule.