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CNN Sunday Morning

How the Space Shuttle Program Took Off

Aired April 15, 2001 - 09:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's turn the way-back machine to April 12, 1981.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: In a place accustomed to high stakes and tense moments, this was a morning that would not soon be forgotten: For the first and only time in NASA history, a rocket designed to carry humans would fly its maiden voyage with people strapped onboard, Commander John Young, the veteran who once brushed moon dust off his boots and his rookie pilot Bob Crippen.

For three years they trained for this moment, watching, fretting over a complex system that often failed to cooperate.

BOB CRIPPEN, COLUMBIA PILOT: We were having problems with things like our main engines blowing up on the test stand and our thermal protection system -- the infamous tiles were falling off. So we had a little technical problems to overcome. I guess that's not unusual when you're doing something as ambitious as a space shuttle.

O'BRIEN: Their first step was sure-footed. During the two-day mission, Columbia did everything its designers said it would.

JOHN YOUNG, COLUMBIA COMMANDER: I was really pleased at the way the vehicle performed in entry, because it performed pretty much like we thought it would. And I was just absolutely amazed that we'd figured it out so well.

O'BRIEN: It was the ambitious answer to: what next? for the audacious upstart agency that put man on the moon. Even as the Apollo astronauts romped, their managers in Houston were putting together plans for a reusable space vehicle, a machine that would build a space station that would be a staging point for missions to Mars.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now for the first time in space we are going to be able to ignore gravity.

O'BRIEN: But NASA's days of routine access to a blank check were over, and so were the grandiose schemes.

BONNIE DUNBAR, NASA ASTRONAUT: Decisions that were made in the early '70s were, from what I was told, at that time clearly budgetary. We were competing, at the beginning of the shuttle program, with the Vietnam War and other pressing budget realities.

O'BRIEN: So from the outset the shuttle program was underfunded and oversold. To woo Congress, NASA managers promised a shuttle fleet would make space travel cheap and easy; two week turnarounds -- as routine as preparing an airliner for flight.

The space agency was desperately trying to deliver on that process when Challenger exploded the myth.

CRIPPEN: Probably one of the toughest things that I did, personally, in my life was participating in trying to get the shuttle back flying again. We did that; we were successful; it's a great vehicle and continues to fly in a very robust fashion.

O'BRIEN: Robust indeed. Space shuttles and their crews have snatched and repaired satellites, fixed a myopic telescope, conducted hundreds of experiments, visited the Mir space station and most recently began building a new outpost in space. It's the most reliable launch vehicle in the world, and 20 years later there is not a successor in sight.

YOUNG: It does everything in space with human beings that you need to do, and to replace it with something that does as much as it does, now that would be a tough one. Sure would.

O'BRIEN: But keeping the shuttle fleet flying won't be easy. While each orbiter is rated for 100 missions, many shuttle systems are antiquated. NASA says it will take billions to upgrade the fleet for the long haul that apparently now lies ahead. And once again, there is no blank check for NASA's dream machine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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