Beautiful Drop for a New Bird

The space shuttle safely finds its own way home

The dream of making space a routine human habitat took a dramatic leap toward reality last week. Like a fledgling leaving the nest for the first time, NASA's new space shuttle OV (for Orbiter Vehicle) 101 cut loose from the 747 mother ship and maneuvered safely to earth on its own. As NASA officials--and much of the nation via television--watched with ringers crossed, the shuttle, christened Enterprise after the spaceship in Star Trek, swooped in graceful arcs down through the clear desert air over Edwards Air Force Base in California. Then, as if both ship and crew had been doing it forever, it touched down perfectly and rolled to a stop on the 11-km.-long (7 miles) bed of Rogers Dry Lake.

Enterprise's stubby wings were carrying not only the promise of far easier access to space, its exploitation and, yes, even colonization, but the future of America's shrunken space program as well. Ever since the Apollo 17 mission put the last Americans on the moon more than four years ago, NASA has been slowly turning away from one-shot man-in-space spectaculars. Instead, it has been concentrating an increasing amount of research and money on development of the space shuttle, a "pickup truck" of a craft that could be shot into orbit, stop off with men and equipment at a galaxy of space satellites and skylabs, and return to earth safely, making at least 100 round trips before being retired. By successfully completing the kind of landing it will have to make each time it returns from space, the Enterprise has helped to justify NASA's plans and hopes.

The space shuttle's historic test began at dawn, when a cherry picker lifted Pilot Fred Haise Jr., 43, a civilian, and Copilot Charles Gordon Fullerton, 40, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, aboard the craft. Two hours later, engines roaring, the 747 mother ship raced down the runway and rose into the air with the Enterprise clinging to its back like a mating insect. Accompanied by five silver T-38 chase planes that drifted around the pair like pilot fish escorting a shark, the odd couple climbed slowly to 8,100 meters (27,000 ft.). At that altitude the 747 flew over an imaginary hump, then nosed downward to pick up speed. At 7,230 meters (24,000 ft.), Haise fired the three explosive bolts holding the two ships together. To the relief of some engineers who feared the Enterprise might not be able to clear the 747's tall tail, the two craft separated cleanly, as the carrier pulled down and to the left. Enterprise, free for the first time in her short life, soared buoyantly up and to the right.

Having no power and weighing as much as 40 Chevrolet sedans, the shuttle was essentially an overweight glider. But despite the still-unexplained failure of one of the ship's five computers, her brief flight went exactly according to plan. "You're flying good," said one of the chase pilots, as the free-flying Enterprise tested her wings for the first time. A few moments later, Haise and Fullerton dropped the heavy craft down, then pulled up in a "flare," or simulated landing maneuver, to evaluate the orbiter's landing characteristics. "It's really there," said a delighted Haise of the shuttle's ease of handling. "Really tight."

Two 90DEG turns aligned Enterprise with the runway, leaving 1 min. and 59 sec. to landing. About 54 min. after the 747 first began to take off, Enterprise touched down at a speed of about 338 km. per hr. (210 m.p.h.)--by contrast, a 747 typically lands at 170 m.p.h. Trailing a billowing cloud of white desert dust, the craft rolled more than two miles and came to a gentle stop on the dry lake bed.

Officials of NASA and visiting dignitaries were ecstatic. Said John Young, a veteran of three space flights who now runs the training program for the shuttle's first pilots: "This ship's going to revolutionize the way we do business in space!"

If it passes a series of further tests, the shuttle will start doing just that in March 1979, when it is scheduled for its first flight into space. In normal operation it will not be borne aloft by a jetliner but will rise from Florida's Cape Canaveral on the back of two booster rockets and a tank of liquid propellant. At an altitude of 45 km. (28 miles), the boosters will drop off into the Atlantic, where tugs will pick them up and tow them back to Cape Canaveral for reuse. Just before the shuttle goes into orbit, about 10 min. after blastoff, the liquid fuel tank, which will not be recycled, will drop away and plunge into the ocean. When its mission is completed, the shuttle will head back down into the atmosphere and land at Edwards. There, it can be remounted on the carrier plane, flown to the Marshall Space Center in Alabama and readied to be sent aloft from Canaveral again as soon as two weeks after touchdown. A runway is under construction that will enable the shuttle to land at Canaveral, too.

On its second test flight, the shuttle will carry its first payload in its big cargo bay: a pallet containing six experiments designed to measure air pollution, conduct geological mapping and check ocean color to measure algae concentrations. A third flight will test the craft's manipulator, a triple-jointed retractable arm that can reach out 15.6 meters (52 ft.) in any direction and hold objects in a clawlike hand earnestly labeled in NASA jargon an "end effector." By the fifth flight, engineers hope to use the arm to extract a rocket and fix it to the drifting Skylab, which will then be boosted higher into orbit so that it will not fall back to earth and burn up in the atmosphere. On future missions, the shuttle could remain aloft for 30 days, and place several satellites in orbit on a single trip.

Between 1980 and 1992 NASA is planning for 560 flights at a rate that will eventually reach more than one a week. Such shuttle service could do for space travel what air economy fares did for family vacations. The commercial possibilities are striking. Western Union, Telesat Canada and Intelsat, as well as Satellite Business Systems, a private company with a plan for linking computers around the world via satellite, are expected to sign contracts that will guarantee them the right to launch communications satellites from shuttles in the early 1980s.

Commercial clients, in fact, are expected to account for 12% of shuttle traffic during its initial years of operation. But NASA's biggest customer will be the Pentagon. The Defense Department has already reserved space in the orbiter for the sixth trip--possibly to launch a spy satellite--and is expected to use 20% of the shuttle's capacity for the next few years. NASA officials have already compiled a three-quarter-inch-thick Space Transportation System User Handbook that sets out shuttle fare schedules, offering everything from a $3,000 "getaway special" for someone interested in putting a 200-lb. payload into orbit to a $19 million charter flight in which the purchaser can have the whole cargo bay to himself. The fares represent genuine bargains for private companies. The cost of launching a satellite by shuttle is only one-third of the price of orbiting the same item by unrecoverable rocket. Shuttle services are even more economical for the Department of Defense, which will get a $19 million charter flight at a discount rate of only $12.7 million. "More and more people are coming in and asking about our program," says Clifford Charlesworth, manager of the shuttle payload program. "Just as you couldn't envision the 747 at Kitty Hawk, we can't now envision all the uses of space. But they are there."

Far more exotic uses indeed seem likely. Astronomers are hoping to send a space telescope into orbit aboard the shuttle. Freed from the interference caused by earth's atmosphere, man will be able to look unhindered into space--to find out, for example, how stars and planets evolve. Scientists believe it may one day even be possible to carry out special manufacturing activities in the shuttles. Examples: perfect ball bearings, formed outside the distorting pull of gravity; mixing pure Pharmaceuticals in the germfree vacuum of space. All the components necessary to build an orbiting space station could be hauled aloft by space trucks and assembled by floating mechanics miles above the earth.

Colonies in outer space are unlikely to be created in the next few years. But those connected with the space-shuttle program agree that they are well within the realm of possibility; so are space flights just for the fun of it. NASA has yet to print up tickets for the day when a jaded jet-setter walks into the agency's offices and tries to discover the latest In place for an outer-space trip. But agency officials have in fact discussed just that possibility: the OV 101, after all, carries a three-man crew and accommodates four passengers.

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