And to be honest, NASA didn’t screw around with crew selection. Young and Crippen were absolutely first rate astronauts and truly among the best we had.
I was 9 years old when this first shuttle launched. My mom gave me permission to get up at 4am to watch all of the "pre-game" commentary. It was exciting to watch then and was great to rewatch it here. Thank you.
I’d love for Huge Harris’ voice to be used for every rocket launch. He set a standard which no one else has come close to. Somebody needs to develop a Hugh Harris voice simulator.
I can never get enough of these launches, it is amazing what man can achieve when a team like this can get together and dream then make it a reality, awesome🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
I was born in 95 so my view on spaceships is those massive lost relics of the past, seeing this machines get developed in your lifetime must've been crazy
I was born exactly three months before Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969. Like many people my age I wanted to be an astronaut. I even had "The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual."
I was born in '67. The Apollo program was in full swing. I remember watching Apollo 17 land on the moon. But I was just a kid, so I thought it was routine.
I remember the luanch when i was a young lad and remembering the 2 astronauts could eject out of columbia and thinking this was madness and then realising why it was drop by NASA, the bug on a car window screen came to mind
I remember rushing home after a night shift.. cooking (very quickly) some bangers and mash and then plonking myself down on the sofa, right in the middle with my eyes glued to the telly… I still can’t remember how I ate that meal!🤪…. I shall never forget it.
Sorry, I'm an American. But what are bangers and mash? I have been to Europe. I was stationed in Germany (West Germany, at the time!). I'm not up to speed on British cuisine. The "telly" thing gave you away!
While you were having them Bangers & Mash, I was trying to figure out how to 'lay out' of school to watch this launch about 6 hrs +GMT. I think I had a PB & J sandwich, LOL!
I remember every second of this, as well as Apollo. Why can't we do stuff like this anymore? We seem stuck in 'reinvent the wheel" mode. It's a shame Columbia didn't survive the program.
Picture it. Me just before my 5th birthday, playing outside. My mom calls me inside. Come watch this. TV in South-Africa only started in 1976 so being able to watch something this cool at 14:00 on a Sunday was a novelty in of itself. The daily broadcasts normally only started at 17:30. Pumped in via Hartbeeshoek Earth Station near Johannesburg.
STS1 was very nearly lost as the body flap was pushed WAY past failure point by T-0 ignition of the main engine back blast - had the astronauts known what happened, they would have ejected
What a majestic time for us and glad to have lived during this era. Crip and Young, what can I say other than they had balls bigger than the universe! Young had done it all at this point, even driving that buggy on the moon rather aggressively lol, yet here he is with Crip putting it all on the line for the USA!
It’s interesting, you can see how violently the SRB fired. They weren’t supposed to fire so aggressively. Almost blew the orbiter up. The orbiter had slight damage. Including a locked flap that moved up and down 6 inches by the blast. Heavy modifications were made after this.
@@TEMPLE7D the SRB over pressure was grossly underestimated by NASA and led to the body flap of the orbiter moving outside its limit of 9 degrees. luckily it still worked upon reentry, if it was rendered unserviceable the first flight of a billion dollar shuttle would have seen both pilots eject from the vehicle at altitude.
I played Hookie on that Day to watch John Young & Robert Crippen light that Candle! It was worth the mild berating I got. Later, I was proud to go to Georgia Tech, alma mater of John Young & 13 other Astronauts, 1 that I knew personally, Capt. Alan Poindexter, RIP from a few STS missions . I don't care about SpaceX - THe STS missions were the ones.
I was 11 when I watched this magic moment on TV. For a long while I really thought the commentator was contantly directing his calls to a certain fellow called Mark. 😁
This was the first space shuttle launched with a white external tank. The rest of the space shuttle launched however used an unpainted external tank, which gives it a distinctive orange color which would become iconic of the space shuttle
I was 4 months away from being born Fact: it was suggested they do a return to launch site abort but John Young said they shouldn’t play Russian roulette
A bunch of us played hooky from work and watched this on live TV. To me, the Shuttle's acceleration off the pad (compared to the Saturn's) was the biggest thing I remember from that day. That and the roll after lift off.
The first flight of the Shuttle was meant to start a new era in spaceflight, an era in which it would become cheaper, safer and routine. Of course,it turned out to be exactly the opposite - more expensive, more dangerous and anything but routine, with so many delays. This was the first flight of a crewed space vehicle with astronauts aboard, making it the most dangerous flight ever. This was also the first US spaceflight to end on land and not with a splashdown. The flight went well but tiles were missing, though not in a crucial area of the Shuttle, an early indication of the falling debris problem which would destroy Columbia 22 years later. Commander John Young, the only Moonwalker who flew on the Shuttle, made his 5th flight, the first astronaut to do so and would command the first Spacelab mission on Columbia 2 years later. Pilot Bob Crippen made his first flight and would later command the mission to repair the Solar Maximum Mission satellite. 42 years later, crewed spaceflight is still not routine with only a few launches every year. Whether Starship will remains to be seen. SpaceX has managed to make launches cheaper and more routine with its Falcon rockets but so far only uncrewed flights. Starship is a much more complicated vehicle with 33 engines and it will be much more difficult to make spaceflight cheaper, safer and routine with people on board. We just have to wait and see.
That simply isn't true. $196 billion dollars for 134 missions to orbit. That includes hauling and building the ISS, the Hubble telescope, various top-secret military loads, and countless communications, weather, geologic satellites. We've sent more money to Ukraine in the last 2 years. :(
Can anyone clarify what John Young said at 55 seconds in his transmission? He mentions "max q bar" but can't make out what he said before that. Did he say "434 max q bar reading?" Also at about 1:40 into the launch Brandenstein says, "Roger Columbia on the nice ride," but didn't hear the crew transmit anything before that which he was apparently replying to?
@@thomasfx3190Total nonsense BS. No “wrecks were expected”. Had we somehow known 2 orbiters and 14 astronauts would die after only 135 missions the program would never have been funded.
Oh, that disappointment when all the 🍊 came in... Let's save some weight & money, they said. Let's spare all the white paintings for the main tank, it also looks great in orange, they said... And the whole Florida State seniors were happily driving their ⛳ carts ever after... 😢
@@lunarmodule5 I'm sorry for posting unqualified remarks, sometimes. The main tank of course was called external tank. I started to just call him "Rusty", one bad day 😂
Because they got more performance from the SRBs and main engines than the simulations predicted pre-launch, they were reaching points in the launch profile earlier than they expected, so the calls by Houston that informed them they had reached certain abort points were going to happen sooner than the crew would have trained for in all the Sims they flew pre-mission. Hope that makes sense! Regards LM5
"Columbia is now turning towards, its precise window in space for main engine cutoff ... 40 seconds" "Columbia now 39 nautical miles altitude 42 nautical miles downrange" "Columbia you are looking a little hot and all your calls will be a little early" "Young and Crippen really moving out now. Velocity now reading 6200 feet per second" "What a view, what a view" "Glad you're enjoying it" "G800 to LOS" "Columbia Houston, we have 40 seconds to LOS" "You're looking good burning over the hill" "We will see you in Madrid and we enjoyed the music" "Bob thank you" "We enjoyed it, just wanted to share some with you."
I dont monetise my videos - YT puts ads on whenever and wherever it wants to - I have no control over it - sometimes it is because of a "copyright" issue - but sometimes not -
@@codymoe4986Uh you left out 40 flights per year (one month turn around per orbiter), reduce costs, and 400 mission with no loss of vehicle or crew. None of of those design criteria were met. Turned out way more expensive than ELVs, only 8 missions per year and lost 2 orbiters killing 14 astronauts.
My son and I call the STS acronym the Suicide Launch System - You are riding on rockets that can't be turned off once they ignite. SRBs are great on payloads that are expendable. Humans are not expendable.
@@Deploracle An SRB failure is a guaranteed loss of vehicle and loss of crew. One out of 134 (actually 268) is NOT “pretty well” on a crewed vehicle with no provision for escape.
@@executivesteps As CosmicGuy said above .. had the Morton Thiokol engineer's advice been heeded .. the Shuttle could have had a perfect launch record. The SRBs didn't fail .. they were forced into use beyond their design parameters. The humans lit the candle .. the rest is history.
Considering that they never did an unmanned launch of the shuttle, this is arguably the most daring mission ever undertaken by astronauts.
It sure was.
And to be honest, NASA didn’t screw around with crew selection. Young and Crippen were absolutely first rate astronauts and truly among the best we had.
Indeed, you'd have to be brave to step aboard that beast. It's easy to see why they seek test pilots.
@@iitzfizz they didn't even have the luxury of a few unmanned test flights of the vehicles. Very brave indeed.
The moon landing was more daring 😌
I was 9 years old when this first shuttle launched. My mom gave me permission to get up at 4am to watch all of the "pre-game" commentary. It was exciting to watch then and was great to rewatch it here. Thank you.
Cool story bro
Fun fact: STS-1's launch was exactly 20 years after Yuri Gagarin's flight!
From a tiny one-man capsule to a giant delta-winged spaceplane!
@@jimbodeekwe've come so far....
@@jimbodeekand from the first launch of STS-1 in 1981 down to the last launch of STS-135 in 2011. 30 years of service of the Space Shuttle.
Hail Columbia
@@scarecrow108productions7and 14 death
John Young, Bob Crippen, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders all have one thing in common: the biggest balls in the history of space travel.
Vladimir Komarov too
STS-1 and STS-51-J are successfully first launches
I’d love for Huge Harris’ voice to be used for every rocket launch. He set a standard which no one else has come close to. Somebody needs to develop a Hugh Harris voice simulator.
I can never get enough of these launches, it is amazing what man can achieve when a team like this can get together and dream then make it a reality, awesome🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
This launch was amazing, not even an unmanned test
Fun Fact: This was one of the space shuttle launches to be shown on the countdown to Music Television's Launch of the channel on August 1st, 1981.
I was born in 95 so my view on spaceships is those massive lost relics of the past, seeing this machines get developed in your lifetime must've been crazy
The last shuttle launched in 2011, you should have seen it
I was born exactly three months before Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969. Like many people my age I wanted to be an astronaut. I even had "The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual."
I was born in '67. The Apollo program was in full swing. I remember watching Apollo 17 land on the moon. But I was just a kid, so I thought it was routine.
It's literally happening right now again through SpaceX.
@@sstroh08the magic just isn’t there with SpaceX. The shuttle was something truly special.
I can only imagine the excitement the engineers and scientists had seeing their baby finally shoot for the heavens.
"There she goes, our Collie's all grown up!"
🤝🤝🤝❤❤❤🙂
I remember here in UK when it was being broadcasted on BBC and ITV news simultaneously. I was 3 years old and got excited by what I saw
Craziest test flight in history. Props to Crippen & Young!
I remember the luanch when i was a young lad and remembering the 2 astronauts could eject out of columbia and thinking this was madness and then realising why it was drop by NASA, the bug on a car window screen came to mind
I remember rushing home after a night shift.. cooking (very quickly) some bangers and mash and then plonking myself down on the sofa, right in the middle with my eyes glued to the telly… I still can’t remember how I ate that meal!🤪…. I shall never forget it.
Sorry, I'm an American. But what are bangers and mash? I have been to Europe. I was stationed in Germany (West Germany, at the time!). I'm not up to speed on British cuisine. The "telly" thing gave you away!
@@jusnuts1443 ha! … sausages and mash potato, a quick tasty meal .. usually served with baked beans 😅
What time's dinner? Sounds fine to me! @@MrSteamDragon
Sounds like you had some quick mashed potatoes & cooked veggies I would say.
While you were having them Bangers & Mash, I was trying to figure out how to 'lay out' of school to watch this launch about 6 hrs +GMT. I think I had a PB & J sandwich, LOL!
I remember every second of this, as well as Apollo. Why can't we do stuff like this anymore? We seem stuck in 'reinvent the wheel" mode. It's a shame Columbia didn't survive the program.
Picture it. Me just before my 5th birthday, playing outside. My mom calls me inside. Come watch this. TV in South-Africa only started in 1976 so being able to watch something this cool at 14:00 on a Sunday was a novelty in of itself. The daily broadcasts normally only started at 17:30. Pumped in via Hartbeeshoek Earth Station near Johannesburg.
Great memories
STS1 was very nearly lost as the body flap was pushed WAY past failure point by T-0 ignition of the main engine back blast - had the astronauts known what happened, they would have ejected
It was shock waves from SRBs that did the damage not the shuttle's main engines.
@@samwheat1302 thats correct yes
Awesome.. I have a Kiwi newspaper for STS1.. thanks from NZ 👍🇳🇿
Amazing video, thank you very much lunarmodule5 👍👨🚀
Hail STS-1 ❤
Thanks for all your support this week Walter - you have been working like a champ as John Young would say
@@lunarmodule5 👍👨🚀
Hail Columbia!
Recuerdo cuando era muy chico, y tiritaba de emoción, gracias.
What a majestic time for us and glad to have lived during this era. Crip and Young, what can I say other than they had balls bigger than the universe! Young had done it all at this point, even driving that buggy on the moon rather aggressively lol, yet here he is with Crip putting it all on the line for the USA!
They did have ejection seats.
This was the most epic thing to happen since Star Wars hit the movie theaters!
40yrs later, we are getting into fun times!
It’s interesting, you can see how violently the SRB fired. They weren’t supposed to fire so aggressively. Almost blew the orbiter up.
The orbiter had slight damage. Including a locked flap that moved up and down 6 inches by the blast. Heavy modifications were made after this.
It had nothing to do with how the SRBs fired, it was an overpressure wave. The water sound suppression system was modified and the issue was fixed.
@@lovetopew9054 if you say so ☺️
@@TEMPLE7D the SRB over pressure was grossly underestimated by NASA and led to the body flap of the orbiter moving outside its limit of 9 degrees. luckily it still worked upon reentry, if it was rendered unserviceable the first flight of a billion dollar shuttle would have seen both pilots eject from the vehicle at altitude.
Comparing this launch to later one's, it seems the boosters lit, only a second or two after the mains. There was a "quickness" to the process.
I can’t watch this and NOT hear Countdown by Rush in my head. I was 10 years old and remember watching this in Ms Bromowski’s classroom.
Didn't the shockwave knock some heat tiles lose on launch? Thank God they made it back safely!
Apparently it did, because it led to major improvements in the sound suppression system before STS 2.
yes and the srb overpressure came very close to rendering the body flay useless,which would have resulted in a bail out at altitude.
Yes - 16 of them; most located on the OMS pod but also 2 near the nose.
I was 11 years old. The brought a TV into the room for us to watch. We were all on a knife's edge
I played Hookie on that Day to watch John Young & Robert Crippen light that Candle! It was worth the mild berating I got. Later, I was proud to go to Georgia Tech, alma mater of John Young & 13 other Astronauts, 1 that I knew personally, Capt. Alan Poindexter, RIP from a few STS missions . I don't care about SpaceX - THe STS missions were the ones.
BRAVO! BRAVO!
I was 11 when I watched this magic moment on TV. For a long while I really thought the commentator was contantly directing his calls to a certain fellow called Mark. 😁
What does actually "mark" mean in this scenario? I'm pretty curious.
This was the first space shuttle launched with a white external tank. The rest of the space shuttle launched however used an unpainted external tank, which gives it a distinctive orange color which would become iconic of the space shuttle
@@jamesholton2630 STS-2 also had a white tank..
Yes, that one too
I remember watching this as a five year old.
I remember waking up at 5am to watch this as an eighth grader.
Wow!
Now, that's awesome!
President Reagan was watching the Columbia launch from the White House while recovering from the assassination attempt.
The day after he got out of the hospital. Prior to being shot he had been scheduled to visit Houston during STS-1 but that was cancelled.
No bullshit ..10 minutes long and right to it. Youre shortest upload eve? Dramatic as hell 👍
Perhaps - but it captured the moment!
6,500 ft. /sec at that point in the ascent.... a speed of almost a mile and a quarter per second! That's hauling !! USA USA USA!!
I was 4 months away from being born
Fact: it was suggested they do a return to launch site abort but John Young said they shouldn’t play Russian roulette
Where history was made…
The first time was remarkable for the "sports car" acceleration off the pad--this ain't no Saturn V!!
A bunch of us played hooky from work and watched this on live TV. To me, the Shuttle's acceleration off the pad (compared to the Saturn's) was the biggest thing I remember from that day. That and the roll after lift off.
@@edwardgiugliano4925 Yep..love that roll program!!
Notice how they removed and swung the vent hood lot earlier than later flights.
The first flight of the Shuttle was meant to start a new era in spaceflight, an era in which it would become cheaper, safer and routine. Of course,it turned out to be exactly the opposite - more expensive, more dangerous and anything but routine, with so many delays.
This was the first flight of a crewed space vehicle with astronauts aboard, making it the most dangerous flight ever. This was also the first US spaceflight to end on land and not with a splashdown. The flight went well but tiles were missing, though not in a crucial area of the Shuttle, an early indication of the falling debris problem which would destroy Columbia 22 years later. Commander John Young, the only Moonwalker who flew on the Shuttle, made his 5th flight, the first astronaut to do so and would command the first Spacelab mission on Columbia 2 years later. Pilot Bob Crippen made his first flight and would later command the mission to repair the Solar Maximum Mission satellite.
42 years later, crewed spaceflight is still not routine with only a few launches every year. Whether Starship will remains to be seen. SpaceX has managed to make launches cheaper and more routine with its Falcon rockets but so far only uncrewed flights. Starship is a much more complicated vehicle with 33 engines and it will be much more difficult to make spaceflight cheaper, safer and routine with people on board. We just have to wait and see.
That simply isn't true. $196 billion dollars for 134 missions to orbit. That includes hauling and building the ISS, the Hubble telescope, various top-secret military loads, and countless communications, weather, geologic satellites.
We've sent more money to Ukraine in the last 2 years. :(
Can anyone clarify what John Young said at 55 seconds in his transmission? He mentions "max q bar" but can't make out what he said before that. Did he say "434 max q bar reading?" Also at about 1:40 into the launch Brandenstein says, "Roger Columbia on the nice ride," but didn't hear the crew transmit anything before that which he was apparently replying to?
that the pressure at max q is 434 bar
Muse have been Hella exciting watching it irl
It was, and back then nobody said "hella" or "irl."
It's such a shame that the shuttle was expensive and risky.
@$10,000 a pound to LEO it was a bargain! 2 wrecks in 153+ launches was expected, the astronauts knew it.
@@thomasfx3190 fun fact: the risk rate was predicted to be less to everyone until after the last launch
It was safe and decidedly inexpensive.
@@thomasfx3190Total nonsense BS. No “wrecks were expected”. Had we somehow known 2 orbiters and 14 astronauts would die after only 135 missions the program would never have been funded.
É um belo de um CGI
9:24 Watching a space shuttle lunch as a kid when your parents shows up suddenly.
I'm afraid to watch because there is commercials that ruin my experience...Thanks RUclips
Yep commercial kicked in at ignition
I wish they would have updated the shuttles with Nuclear engines. Then used them as deep space ships.
What propulsion are you getting with a nuclear engine?
@@TEMPLE7D do you mean Specific impulse or what?
@@bobleece4152 Oh that? Ehhhhhhhhh. That technology is still being worked on.
@@TEMPLE7D Nuclear propulsion has been around since the 1950's. Here's a link. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket
@@bobleece4152 so why haven’t we used that as a viable fuel instead of these explosive rockets?
Steve Nesbit on the call.
Floodlit in the hazy distance
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapours, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon
Rush - countdown
John “Mark” McLeaish
Didn't STS-1 have a chase plane following the shuttle through launch?
There were chase planes up ready in case there was a RTLS abort and to take film and pictures of the launch from 30,000 ft+
Oh, that disappointment when all the 🍊 came in... Let's save some weight & money, they said. Let's spare all the white paintings for the main tank, it also looks great in orange, they said... And the whole Florida State seniors were happily driving their ⛳ carts ever after... 😢
I know, right?
@@lunarmodule5 I'm sorry for posting unqualified remarks, sometimes. The main tank of course was called external tank. I started to just call him "Rusty", one bad day 😂
So I'm guessing by the context that the orange emoji means "orange external tanks"?
Didn't it save a truck in weight, to not paint it?
@@paulguthrie4857 Leaving it unpainted only saved ~660 lb. A pickup truck weighs more.
What did they mean by “your calls will be a little early?”
Because they got more performance from the SRBs and main engines than the simulations predicted pre-launch, they were reaching points in the launch profile earlier than they expected, so the calls by Houston that informed them they had reached certain abort points were going to happen sooner than the crew would have trained for in all the Sims they flew pre-mission. Hope that makes sense! Regards LM5
"Columbia is now turning towards, its precise window in space for main engine cutoff
... 40 seconds"
"Columbia now 39 nautical miles altitude 42 nautical miles downrange"
"Columbia you are looking a little hot and all your calls will be a little early"
"Young and Crippen really moving out now. Velocity now reading 6200 feet per second"
"What a view, what a view" "Glad you're enjoying it"
"G800 to LOS"
"Columbia Houston, we have 40 seconds to LOS"
"You're looking good burning over the hill"
"We will see you in Madrid and we enjoyed the music" "Bob thank you"
"We enjoyed it, just wanted to share some with you."
Shuttle was only a dream, in reality, it never came close to what was promised.
❤
The only thing that might have made it better is if Jack King had done the narration.
White paint on the external fuel tank - when NASA was worried about foam degrading and coming off. That's not gonna be a recurring theme at all....
Recurring theme? Coold you do a Top 10 list please?
@@codymoe4986STS-107
If you listen carefully, right after SRB sep you can hear something that sounds like a woman saying "Oh, yay!"
Why is it that people / onlookers have to stand that far away from a launch ?
So that they don't get injured or killed if the things needs to be destroyed.
супер
8:00 KSP Chatterer ;)
The main NASA camera feed covering the launch was terrible.
You do understand this was in 1981? They didn't have 4K cameras back then
6:55--T -10
W
I bet this space shuttle cost $1 billion
$2 billion in fact.
It literally only cost like 200 million and it was well worth it
Don't watch this. They interrupted the actual launch with a rude commercial for something that nobody will buy.
I dont monetise my videos - YT puts ads on whenever and wherever it wants to - I have no control over it - sometimes it is because of a "copyright" issue - but sometimes not -
Have to be brave to get in that deathtrap
I wouldn’t say death trap despite the two losses. They just should have learned faster from the outset and listened to the engineers
A death trap from the outset and a miracle only two crews were lost.
It was actually fairly safe but they shouldn’t have needed 51 l and 107 to show them
To bad it couldn’t do what it was designed to do.
What was it designed to do? Oh yeah...Deliver crew and cargo to LEO and return to Earth...
Exactly what it did, well over a 100 times...try again...
Bit like me then!
It's was the most successful NASA program ever. Most everything large that is in orbit today was put there by the shuttles.
@@codymoe4986Uh you left out 40 flights per year (one month turn around per orbiter), reduce costs, and 400 mission with no loss of vehicle or crew.
None of of those design criteria were met.
Turned out way more expensive than ELVs, only 8 missions per year and lost 2 orbiters killing 14 astronauts.
My son and I call the STS acronym the Suicide Launch System - You are riding on rockets that can't be turned off once they ignite. SRBs are great on payloads that are expendable. Humans are not expendable.
The SRBs did pretty well though .. only one failure in 134 flights.
@@DeploracleWhich resulted in loss of crew and vehicle.
@@executivestepscould’ve been avoided though if they would’ve listened to engineers.
@@Deploracle An SRB failure is a guaranteed loss of vehicle and loss of crew.
One out of 134 (actually 268) is NOT “pretty well” on a crewed vehicle with no provision for escape.
@@executivesteps As CosmicGuy said above .. had the Morton Thiokol engineer's advice been heeded .. the Shuttle could have had a perfect launch record.
The SRBs didn't fail .. they were forced into use beyond their design parameters. The humans lit the candle .. the rest is history.
although the space shuttle program was a massive failure, it's fun to think about what could have been
Far from a failure.
Give me a break....
@@lovetopew9054 Yes, very FAR from being a failure. Trolls are everywhere it seems.
@@crocodile1313 probably trolls. Nobody’s that ignorant, then again…..
Lots of SpaceX fans have been programmed to say this. I guess that is part of Elon's selling point. Nothing could be farther from the truth though.