Radiant Lift-Off, Hasty Landing

By Frederic Golden

On its second trip, Columbia comes down early

When he was asked if he had any misgivings about flying in a used spacecraft, Astronaut Joe Engle, 49, replied unhesitatingly. Of course not, said the veteran Air Force pilot, Columbia had been tested as thoroughly as any aircraft ever flown. Last week Engle had some cause to rue those words. Despite a flawless and spectacular liftoff, the orbiting spacecraft soon fell prey to more of the technical afflictions that have plagued the $10 billion shuttle program from its very beginning. Two hours after the shuttle rode its pillar of fire into the Florida skies, alarm lights flashed in the cockpit. It was the first hint of trouble in Columbia's electrical system, and soon fears arose that the spacecraft itself might be rocked by the same kind of explosion that nearly turned the Apollo 13 moon flight into a disaster. Mission controllers in Houston, who took technical command of Columbia 1 sec. off the pad, managed to ease the crisis by more of the improvised remote-control repair work that has saved the day in past emergencies. But one of Columbia's three battery-like fuel cells was ruined and the craft's electrical capability was reduced by a third. After some soul searching NASA's bosses prudently called the mission to an early halt.

Thus at week's end, after only 36 orbits of the earth, instead of the 83 so meticulously planned, Engle and his sidekick, Richard Truly, 44, brought Columbia back to earth. Despite gusts of westerly winds up to 24 knots, it was another picture-book landing on the hard-packed dirt of the dried lake bed at California's Edwards Air Force Base, where Columbia put down after her first sortie into space last April. As the ship touched down exactly 2 days, 6 hr., 13 min. and 10 sec. after the start of her globe-girdling flight, the pilot of a little chase plane said: "Welcome home." And the watching world, even the cool hands at Mission Control Center in Houston, breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Space officials tried to put the best possible face on Columbia's latest troubles, which began two weeks ago when clogged oil filters caused an abrupt postponement of the flight. After all, just getting a used spacecraft into orbit was a notable first. The Soviets, who have been hurtling cosmonauts into space with awesome regularity, have yet to attempt such a feat. U.S. space officials emphasized that all of Columbia's first four missions are in fact test flights. Their purpose is to turn up just such "glitches" as Columbia's problems with its electrical system, before the shuttle spacecraft actually goes into regular service.

As for the flight itself, NASA spokesmen noted that even in their abbreviated tour around the earth, Engle and Truly had still managed to perform most of their work load, especially the key experiment: trying out for the first time in zero-gravity the shuttle's $100 million Canadian-built mechanical arm. On future flights, the arm will be used to place satellites in earth orbit and to pluck them out of space and load them into the orbiter's big cargo bay when they require servicing or replacing. NASA's verdict on the extraterrestrial crane would have delighted any orbiting sidewalk superintendent: the six-jointed 50-ft.-long arm was extended, bent and manipulated with barely a hitch.

Yet, coming as it does after repeated delays, Columbia's foreshortened voyage is sure to raise questions about the shuttle's high cost and low dependability, and about the NASA priority that has drained off funds from many other space projects. Commented Senator Larry Pressler of South Dakota: "I think it's beginning to bother people at a time when we're cutting back everything else." NASA, which originally hoped to launch Columbia's second flight last September, has already all but abandoned its earlier claim that a fleet of orbiters, eventually to number four, will need only two weeks of preparation between flights. Space officials privately admit that each "turn around" will probably take a month.

There have also been strong complaints from the scientific community because the shuttle's spiraling costs have forced the space agency to abandon other explorations. Among the scrapped projects is an unmanned probe that would fly past Halley's comet when the long-tailed intruder returns to the earth's vicinity in 1986, after an absence of 76 years.

But New Mexico Senator Harrison ("Jack") Schmitt, a geologist who in 1972 took part in the last mission to the moon, insists that popular support for space is increasing! He may be right, though the gen eral public was bemused by the spectacle of so costly and complex a machine crippled by a dirty oil filter and failing battery, just like anyone's six-year-old sedan. Schmitt dismisses the shuttle's problems as routine hurdles to be overcome in any race to develop new technologies. Adds Senator Bob Packwood, chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee: "The shuttle's future is secure."

One man who should certainly figure in that future is President Reagan, who stopped at the Johnson Space Center on the eve of the astronauts' return. During the 15-min. visit, he shook hands with the controllers, accepted a button saying "Love a Launch," and took the microphone briefly to wish the crew well. Said the onetime celluloid cowboy: "This is a rare experience for an old horse cavalry officer." But he made no mention of rescuing the space program from its present financial distress.

The fuel-cell problem that cut short the flight involved only one of three battery units (see diagram next page) that provide all the spacecraft's electricity and water through an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Though no larger than a suitcase, the power plants are crucial. If all three failed, the ship's system would come to a halt, leaving it and its crew spinning helplessly through space, unable even to fire the retro rockets that slow the craft down enough so it can re-enter the earth's atmosphere. As one NASA official put it, there would be "no electricity, no lights, no instruments, no computers and no engines." Added Flight Director Neil Hutchinson: "We would lose the vehicle."

Until Columbia's flight, fuel cells had proved notably dependable, generating electricity on all manned American spaceships without a major failure as far back as the days of the Gemini program in the 1960s. (When the electrical system faltered during the Apollo 13 mission to the moon in 1970, it was due to an explosion of an oxygen tank rather than a fuel-cell failure.) Yet 2 hr. 27 min. into the flight, Columbia's sensors showed a sharp fall in acidity levels of fuel cell No. 1. The implication of these readings was quickly apparent to the technicians: water was building up in one or more of the narrow channels that carry hydrogen into the cell, perhaps because of a blockage created by corrosion in the tubes.

The situation required prompt action.

If the water continued to accumulate, it might flood neighboring chambers, creating a potentially unstable mix that could rip the spacecraft apart by setting off a series of explosions. To forestall such a calamity, controllers ordered the astronauts to shut off the flow of any fresh oxygen or hydrogen to the cell. Then the cell was switched back on, letting it produce electricity until, as Hutchinson explained, "we literally ran it out of juice," and it became "inert and safe."

However, Houston engineers still faced a major decision. Special guidelines are established for every flight to cope with just such emergencies. If only two fuel cells are operating, they recommend cutting short the journey to what NASA calls a "minimum mission." In this case, the flight was to last only 54 hr., roughly the duration of Columbia's first flight last April. Explained a spokesman: "You no longer have triple redundancy. If you're up there and a second [cell] goes, then you're in a really critical situation. You come down--and you come down fast."

Initially at least, the controllers considered ignoring the book, since the two other cells were faithfully churning out electricity and water. Together they were delivering 16 kw, enough to light up as many as 260 household lamps and easily adequate to supply the ship's demands during re-entry into the atmosphere. But caution prevailed. One additional factor: the weather outlook for Edwards Air Force Base early this week was poor. Rainfall could easily turn the dusty lakebed into a quagmire, making it all but impossible to put down safely there.

News of the decision was radioed up to Columbia by one of NASA's first woman astronauts. At the time, Sally Ride, 30, was sitting in as Mission Control's "capsule communicator," a job dating back to the early days of the space program when it was decided that it would be best if only astronauts talked to one another. In her best Right Stuff tones, Capcom Ride announced she had "bad news" for Columbia: "We're flying a minimum mission, and you'll be coming home tomorrow." Replied Engle: "O.K., that's not so good."

Everyone in NASA could sympathize with Engle. Even before the oil filters clogged on the auxiliary power unit, heat-shielding tiles on the fuselage were loosened by a fuel spill.

The final countdown was started last Tuesday. But as the clock ticked, gremlins struck again. A bit of black-box electronic wizardry, a decoding unit that goes by a jawbreaking name, multiplexer-demultiplexer, mysteriously failed. Without it, neither Columbia's on-board computers nor those on the ground would be able to understand temperature, pressure and other vital readings from sensors scattered throughout the ship. Workers promptly made a substitution, but the new black box failed as well. NASA thereupon resorted to some cross-country cannibalism. It snatched two comparable units from a second orbiter, Challenger, still under construction at Rockwell International's plant in Palmdale, Calif., and flew the components to Florida. As workmen unloaded the precious parcel, one whispered, "Don't drop it. Don't drop it." The substitute box worked fine, though by this time lift-off had been set back 2 1/2 hr.

Meanwhile, the astronauts had returned from Houston, landing in their small T-38 jet trainers. "We are really going to go," Navy Captain Truly promised reporters and photographers waiting on the tarmac. But first there was a surprise prelaunch breakfast party for Truly, who turned 44 on the day of the launch. Said the birthday boy, a youthful-looking grandfather: "I'm going to have the biggest birthday candle I ever had."

That proved no exaggeration. Riding twin plumes of yellow flame from its two solid-fuel rockets, Columbia leaped off the pad, piercing two fluffy white clouds in the azure Florida skies, rolling over so that the orbiter was slung under its big external fuel tank like a baby whale attached to its mother. Then it angled off into the heavens. "Great ride," shouted Engle, who piloted Air Force X-15 rocket ships to the edge of space in the 1960s. Normally unflappable, Engle registered a pulse rate of up to 120 beats per minute. Truly's went no higher than 94 beats.

Precisely on schedule, Columbia fired off its two solid-fuel booster rockets. Still spewing flames, the boosters began their plunge into the Atlantic. It was days before they could be retrieved by chase ships for reuse. One improvement over the last shot: this time there were no Soviet "trawlers" nosing around the expended rockets. Ten minutes after they left the pad, Engle and Truly were circling the earth at nearly 17,000 miles an hour. Said Truly: "You wouldn't believe this; this is fun."

The fun came to a gloriously happy end.

On Saturday morning, Mission Control ordered Columbia's cargo bay closed, a must if the spacecraft was to survive the glowing heat of reentry. Making their final pass over the Indian Ocean, Engle and Truly edged the ship around so its orbital maneuvering engines faced forward. For 2 min. 47 sec. the rockets burned at maximum power, slowing the ship so it could begin its weaving, belly-up, computer-controlled descent. As Columbia grew red hot from the atmospheric friction, a cloud of heated, electrified gases enveloped the ship, blocking all communications.

Sixteen min. later, after emerging from the blackout, Engle gave his machine the test pilot's ultimate accolade: "The bird is real solid. A good solid bird all the way." From Mission Control came a relieved reply: "Well, we love hearin' it." As Engle's bird approached California's Big Sur country, it was flying faster than a bullet--at ten times the speed of sound--and dropping like a rock, 20 times faster than a similar-size DC-9 jet on landing. Finally, it came out of the blue, a tiny, glistening white speck that wrote a special signature in the sky--intermittent puffs of vapor created by the purging of excess fuel.

Engle, acting on an impulse no test pilot could resist--with Houston's O.K., of course--flew Columbia himself during the final turn, rather than letting the computer do it. With a fighter-like maneuver, he put the ship right on line with Runway 23, the same one used on the last trip. After the troubled flight, the smooth touchdown was joyfully anticlimactic. Columbia slid to earth more gently than many a commercial jet. Cheers rose up from the 250,000 people gathered on the desert floor for the homecoming, and controllers in Houston lit up their traditional victory cigars. It seemed that Columbia might yet become NASA's solid-gold Cadillac of space.

--By Frederic Golden. Reported by Jerry Hannifin/Cape Canaveraland Sam Allis/Houston

With reporting by Jerry Hannifin, Sam Allis

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.