CBS coverage of the second launch of U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia (mission STS-2) on November 12, 1981, including bumpers and commercials. Recorded on Betamax from WBNS 10TV in Columbus, Ohio.
I was in Navy Bootcamp in Orlando, Florida and remembered being able to see this live. What I mostly saw was the smoke stream during the assent. You could barely see the actual space shuttle itself. It's nice to see it again.
STS 2 had only rookies. But this was the only mission in shuttle history to only have two rookies who hadn't been in space before. This was a 1st in the space program to only have two rookies on a space mission.
Joe Engle would have been the lunar module pilot on Apollo 17, but after the cancellation of Apollos 18 and 19, scientist-astronaut Jack Schmitt (a geologist), who had been scheduled to fly on Apollo 18, bumped Engle off of the Apollo 17 crew, denying him the chance to go to the moon. But Engle stayed in the program and got command of the second space shuttle flight, finally going into space in the fall of 1981, fifteen years after being selected as an astronaut and nine years after what would have been his moon flight.
That white tank sure was sharp looking. Really made it easy to see the ship as it flew away. Xould also really see the burn marks that the SRB sep motors caused.
word, i've always loved those retro 80's graphics....nice blend of old and new tech. even tho this was 1981, the news coverage, commercials, and even the way people looked and dressed looked like they were still in the 1960's. i wish i was alive during the 80's to witness stuff like this :(
Her words, "I don't think it's an Orbiter problem". She probably had NO idea how correct she would be in future years. The Space Shuttle Orbiter has NEVER failed, as designed. Challenger, SRB and ET failure. Columbia, ET insulation failure, causing damage to the Orbiter. If the builders of the SRB's and ET had their shit together, neither disasters would have happened. Although, NASA, is at ultimately at fault for sending them "good enough", send it.
A little off subject, but $187 for a 10 inch color portable tv (commercial at 4:40) was a heck of a lot of money in 1981. Today $187 will get you a pretty nice and big flat LCD TV.
Pretty sure it was the fuel cell failure. I read a story about the ECCOM on this launch was telling the flight director calmly on the loop that the fuel cell needed to be shut down. The FD was not acting urgent about it the ECCOM was not getting through to him. He finally turned around and yelled to the FD off the loop (which was a bit of a no-no) "THIS IS THE KABOOM CASE FLIGHT!" and finally got the FDs full attention. He did not get in trouble. It was a serious issue, the fuel cell could have exploded.
Kennedy and Johnson (Democrats) fully for the Apollo program Nixon (Republican) cancelled Apollo program Carter (Democrat) supported Shuttle program Reagan (Republican) would have lived to cut the shuttle program but thanks to Carter it was too far along to cut and he found out that he could have his Star Wars program delivered by said shuttle. You were saying?
I’ll even go one further: Gore (Democrat) has proposed the adoption of a feasible replacement for the shuttle but thanks to Bush/Cheney (Republicans) they nixed that.
I thought Republicans hated government spending. The Shuttle was incredibly expensive. Most of what they did could have been done at a fraction of the cost with rockets.
