Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Discovery commander Rick Hauck promptly answered with a laconic "Roger go," bringing a smattering of applause and cheers that grew into a chorus near the two-minute mark, when the spacecraft successfully jettisoned its two spent solid rocket boosters. But experienced space observers did not relax until Discovery shut down its three main engines 6 1/2 minutes later, shucked off its external fuel tank, then slipped safely into orbit about 180 miles above the earth a half hour later. Declared elated space engineer John Kaltenbach: "This was the one that had to fly. It looks damn good. Oh, it just...
...David Hilmers, manipulating controls in the cabin, raised and tilted the TDRS package in the cargo bay, and activated springs that pushed it out of the open doors into space. After Hauck and pilot Dick Covey had maneuvered the shuttle to a safe 45 miles away, the TDRS rocket ignited, sending the satellite farther away from earth. Later that night, the TDRS rocket's second stage precisely nudged the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit, where it hovered 22,250 miles above the Pacific Ocean...
...hours during the Thursday-morning countdown, however, the shuttle shuffle appeared destined for a scrub. All week NASA technicians had isolated small glitches, from a tiny gas leak on a main engine to a slight scratch on a thruster rocket. Finally they seemed confident that only bad weather might postpone the shuttle's launch. Although launch day dawned bright and sunny, meteorologists warned that the high-altitude winds in the shuttle's flight path, normally unruly in the Cape Canaveral region during late September, had uncharacteristically died down. The problem: Discovery's computers had been programmed to maneuver the craft...
...House to investigate the causes of the Challenger tragedy, NASA spent $2.4 billion redesigning and replacing crucial components of its shuttle fleet. Over the past two years, the space agency has made more than 400 changes in the winged orbiter -- including a much touted new escape system -- the solid rocket boosters, the orbiter's three liquid-fuel engines and the huge external fuel tank. What is more, each of the modifications or changes was laboriously reviewed by the Discovery astronauts. "NASA went far beyond our recommendations and fixed all that we wanted," says Robert B. Hotz, a member...
...changes, none was more carefully scrutinized than the redesign of what proved to be Challenger's fatal flaw: the joint between segments of the solid-fuel rocket booster. Zeroing in on the booster joints, which are sealed by rubber O rings that are supposed to prevent leaks of superhot gas from the burning fuel, a team composed of outside experts as well as specialists from NASA and Morton Thiokol, manufacturer of the rocket, evolved a design that eventually withstood five full-scale, two-minute stationary firing tests at Thiokol's Utah proving grounds...