Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Whether the flights of Columbia and its sister ships now under construction become as commonplace as more earthbound commuter runs depends on how the spacecraft checks out during the coming weeks. Shortly after the Boeing landed, the shuttle was lifted off its back by a giant hoist that NASA, in characteristic jargon, calls a mate/demate device. Columbia was then towed to its processing hangar, where it will undergo stem-to-stern examination and overhaul...
Engineers are satisfied with the performance of the heat-shielding tiles that protected the spacecraft against the searing, 2700° F temperatures of its re-entry into the atmosphere. But they are still perplexed by many dents and chips in the brittle material, especially on the starboard side. Best guess so far: the damage was incurred during lift-off by ice and insulation that broke free of the shuttle's giant external fuel tank, which contained supercold liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Another puzzle is why the bulky, swept-winged "bird" showed greater lift than expected on descent, which carried...
...NASA plans to fly more than 400 shuttle missions in the next ten years. It has even considered subcontracting shuttle operations to an airline, and United Airlines has expressed interest. Farsighted planners are thinking about more ambitious roles for the shuttle, or its successor. In the future, such a spacecraft may carry work crews into orbit, where they will be left behind inside comfortable modules that could serve as building blocks for permanent space stations. As more components are shuttled up, these centers might begin to produce space goods, perhaps even utilize raw materials, as Gerard O'Neill suggests...
...more distant future, such stations, like the great wheel in 2001: A Space Odyssey, could serve as a launch pad for journeys far beyond the earth, maybe to Mars. Interplanetary spacecraft assembled in earth orbit could be made of much lighter and less costly materials since they would not have to survive the stresses and friction of travel through the earth's atmosphere...
...Johnson Space Center in Houston in anticipation of military launches. Military observers are now regular participants at shuttle planning sessions and have their own facilities inside Mission Control. At the height of the shuttle's development problems, there was even talk that the task of getting the spacecraft off the ground should be turned over to the Air Force, a step that would no doubt have scuttled the civilian space agency for good...