Return to Space

Here is a little quiz for you. Name the orbiters in the original space shuttle fleet.

The orbiter Discovery and its new and improved external tank and solid fuel boosters rolled out to Pad B on June 15. The window for launch is now July 16 – July 31. This means that we are less than a month away from return to flight with STS-114.

I can remember when we returned to space after the loss of the Challenger. I was at work and the plant manager wheeled a television into the plant and stopped production so that everyone could gather around to watch. It was one of those kinds of events. I still remember the roar of applause and cheers from everyone in the plant as we watched the launch.

STS-114 commander Eileen Collins says that the crew is ready to go. They are very confident in the improvements made to the entire space transportation system, enough so to climb aboard and light the candle in July.

When asked if she thinks that it is worth the risk, she responds that the need for humans to explore makes it worth the risk. She states that we are taking just tiny first steps – we are flying the space shuttle, building the space station, preparing to return to the moon and then go on to Mars – in the beginning of manned exploration of space. Commander Collins agrees that there are still risks, but she feels that the shuttle is safe enough to take those risks. She equates what we are doing now to what the early explorers did setting sail into the Atlantic in those tiny little boats. Those boats, she explains, were a lot less safe than the shuttle is and she thinks that those early explorers were crazy to do what they did. But that is where we are now, taking the first tiny steps of exploration into a new world.

The answer to the quiz is this: There were six orbiters in the original fleet. We have lost Challenger and Columbia in accidents. The remaining orbiters are Discovery, Endeavor, and Atlantis. The first orbiter of the fleet was an experimental/test orbiter that never made it into space – the Enterprise.