Eye-Witness To The Beginning, And The End, Of The Space Shuttle

By Wes Oleszewski

When the July 8th launch date for STS-135, the final flight of the Space Shuttle, was announced I had the feeling I was screwed on covering the launch. After a quick look at my calendar, I was sure… I was screwed. The family summer vacation road-trip that we had been planning for nearly a year was scheduled to depart on that same date. So, the final launch of the Shuttle would take place while I was in the family van headed up I-70. It was a pretty depressing thought, since I had been there for the very first Shuttle launch and I had recently held the hope of attending the final launch. Still, plans had been made, hotel reservations were in place and a family reunion was on the schedule. NASA’s plans had simply conflicted with those of my family.

I did my best to not mope in the open, after all, this vacation had been my idea in the first place. The best that I could do was wish for a scrub that would last a few weeks. An issue involving the Main Fuel Valve on one of the Main Engines looked promising for a while, but it was easily corrected at the pad with no impact on the launch date. I came shuffling downstairs from my office and mentioned to my wife that the problem was going to be cleared. After a quarter of a century together, she sensed what I was trying to hide. “Ya’ know,” she suggested, “if we modified our travel plans just a little bit you could go down for that launch.” I replied with some doubt, but she insisted, “You were there for the first one and it’s only appropriate that you should be there for the last one. I mean, how many people can say that?” There are lots of times when I know that I’ve married the right lady, and this was yet another one. “Sort of an alpha-omega,” I replied with a smile referring to the Greek letters symbolic for the first and the last. “Exactly.” she grinned. In less than a half hour our vacation was slightly altered and I had my plane tickets booked.

As the year 1981 began it had been five and one half years since the last Americans had been launched from the Kennedy Space Center. The psyche of the American public had been shoved through the turmoil of the late 60s and then dragged through the “change” of the 70s. So, as STS-1 was prepared on Pad 39-A the prospect of the United States starting a new and spectacular adventure in space quickly captured the imagination of a pride-parched public. Over the previous half decade the news media, having cut new sharp teeth on Watergate, had done their best to highlight every fault and failure in the development of the Shuttle. Most of the public, however, had been too dazzled by disco balls to notice. By April of 1981 a real, flight ready, fully functional Space Shuttle sat waiting on the pad as if to spite its critics.

Camping out on the riverbank in Titusville prior to the launch we all knew that we were there to witness history ... one way or another. I knew that this launch would be the ultimate in “all-up testing.” Such testing involved launching an entire, amazingly complex vehicle, as a single working unit instead of launching and testing one component at a time. This time, however, unlike the Apollo Saturns which were all-up tested unmanned, the Shuttle would be tested with astronauts aboard. It was a pinnacle in flight test that will never again be attempted or reached. A full chapter in aviation history was going to be written right in front of us and that reality sunk in to a few of us more than it did to most folks who were watching.

At Main Engine Start we saw the three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) ignite and come up to full thrust with perfection. This was in spite of the media telling us about the numerous SSME failures and even a few explosions that had taken place in development and the implication that this could very well happen on STS-1. Then the largest solid rocket boosters on earth ignited in precise unison- again contrary to media implications of disaster. Raining fire STS-1 gracefully arced into the morning sky with an earth-shaking roar that awakened the American spirit. On the river bank we screamed and shouted everything from “GO! BABY GO!” to the “WOOOO!” of rebel yells. At SRB sep. an estimated near-million people spontaneously broke into applause. We looked at the smoke trail left by the SRBs with the feeling that this was the start of something new- something big- something to be proud of. Knowing spaceflight history like I did, I tempered that feeling with the thought of “If only we can keep the politician’s hands off of it.”

Living in Florida for most of the next decade I was able to witness 17 of the next 25 launches, including the loss of the Challenger. Although I was able to often see the launches up close, sometimes my view was from Daytona Beach or the Embry-Riddle campus or even the Ormond Beach Bridge. After 1986, my aviation career took me far from KSC and the busy Shuttle spaceport. Still, when NASA successfully recovered from the loss of the Challenger and the only significant politician’s hands-on the program turned out to be President Clinton directing the construction of an “International” space station, I figured that the fleet of orbiters would be flying far into my old age. After all, each hand an individual 100 mission designed lifespan and each was only flying about two or three missions per year. It looked as if John Young had been correct when, after STS-1, he said that America was in space to stay. We were both wrong.

In a knee-jerk reaction to the loss of the Columbia in 2003, President Bush directed that NASA must do three things. First, it must set a course and develop vehicles to return to the moon and go on to Mars. Second, it must retire the Shuttle by 2010. Third, it must abandon the International Space Station by 1015. Then he directed his Office of Management and Budget to short change NASA by an annual amount for nearly $3 billion a year. This political three card monte game doomed the shuttle and left open the door for an anti-NASA president to later gut the agency. Enter Barack Obama and the cancellation of the return to the moon and the vehicles to replace the Shuttle. By allowing the shuttle program to die on the Bush schedule, and by canceling its replacement, Obama could successfully gut NASA’s human spaceflight program and reform the agency into a federal think-tank.

Thus, the mission of STS-135 became the swansong of the Shuttle program and perhaps may become the end of NASA’s human spaceflight program as well. Arriving at the KSC press site on launch morning was predicted to be “bittersweet” yet for me it was more bitter than sweet. It was 4:30 in the morning and I had planned my early arrival to beat the traffic. Although I was successful in that, I found myself parked in the third row of the over-flow and directly in front of a small gate leading through the press site fence. The predawn morning was devoid of stars as a sub-tropical weather system was smothering the space coast. Although the press site was brightly lit, the chances of a launch were quite dim as the weather seemed ready to force a scrub.

Normally, the press room is haunted by two basic categories of reporters- what I like to describe as the “hardcores” and the “meatpuppets.” The hardcores are the gang of spaceflight media who are there for almost everything, Shuttle, Falcon 9, Atlas, Delta, even Ares I-X. They are a bunch who can bring up a technical question, bounce it around each other for a few minutes and come up with the absolutely correct answer. They know each other by name, face and reputation and I always feel lucky to occasionally sit among them. The meatpuppets, on the other hand, are the people assigned by their network to cover an event of which they know almost nothing about. Of course they do such a task all the time anyway so what’s the difference. Whether covering a murder trial or an oil spill, it is all the same to them. They get handed a few notes, look into the camera or transcribe a press release and then they move on to the next story.

I was only in the press room long enough to say hello to some of the hardcores when the meatpuppet storm began. In short order media from all over the world were squeezing into the press room or setting up shop in assorted EZ-up tents outside. One of the hardcores looked around the room and quietly said “I wish they’d all go away and just let us who cover these things cover it.” Then she pointed with her finger toward individuals standing nearby as if able to be selecting people and said, “You can stay, you can stay, you can stay…” she pointed at me and paused for a second. “Hey,” I quipped, “I was at X-Prize with you… I have cred.” “Yeah,” she smirked, “you can stay.” Whew.

At recent launches there has actually been a third category of media that remained somewhat self-isolated; they were the “Tweeters.” In a good P.R. move, NASA recognized the effect that the cyber crowd can have on raising awareness of Shuttle missions. In keeping with that they began to credential persons who applied to come and simply Twitter about being at the launch. Thus a group who collectively know about as much about spaceflight as the average meatpuppet end up sitting at their computers and describing their experiences in 140 words or less. A crowd of these tweeters are thus placed into a huge white tent with their computers. Oddly, since their greatest interest is tweeting, you hardly ever see any of the tweeters around the press site. They all stay in their tent with their computers. That is, with the exception of when the astro-van drives past with the Shuttle crew aboard. Then the tweeters storm from their tent in a massive geek stampede to the roadway. There they stand and wave to the van. It’s actually quite a frightening sight as this rush of tweeters comes out of the tent. I happened to be walking across their intended path when the STS-135 stampede took place and felt compelled to run for my life! Once the astro-van passes, the tweeters simply, and quickly funnel back into their tent to tweet about the astro-van in 140 words or less.

No one at the press site really thought that there was much of a chance for a launch on July 8th. We kept joking about being there just to cover the scrub and asking what time everyone was coming back tomorrow. The weather, however, had the last word and ended up fooling even the hardcores. As the time arrived to come out of the nine minute hold, the weather simply opened up into “Go conditions.” We all came out of the press building as the clock began counting beyond T-9:00 and we simply stood there waiting. The normal “loop” that is broadcast over the outdoor loudspeakers was fairly muted so the hold at T-:31 seconds caught everyone off guard. One of the hardcores with a phone to his ear blurted out that GOX vent hood did not show fully retracted. I asked aloud toward no one, “Is there a procedure for that?” someone nearby said “If they recycle they’ll be out of the window.” Another hardcore blurted out “They’ll confirm with a camera.” and someone else said “They can do the hydraulic pressure too.” Then, suddenly, the count resumed. Indeed they did have a procedure for that. In less than a half a minute Space Shuttle lifted majestically from the pad and roared into space for the final time showing a great deal more grace than those who caused the program to end.

When it was all over the meatpuppets and their crews wrapped up their gear and left as fast as they could. The rest of us, like the crew from ANN, simply could not leave ... not yet anyway. Personally, I hung around for nearly three hours as I found it hard to get in my car and drive off of KSC. The hardcores milled around. No one talked much about the finality of the launch. Mostly we just hung out together as true hardcore space buffs. When I finally could bring myself to leave I took a long look around. The pads, the MLPs, the LCC, the VAB, all of the buildings- soon to be empty, devoid of people, these were the things I considered. The huge press site would soon be empty as well. All of the contractors who dedicated their best years to the program now would see their careers vanish like the smoke from the SRBs. This is it, this is the end- those jobs, those careers and those people are gone and they are not coming back. Unlike STS-1, when the launch represented a new beginning and amazing things to come for this nation, STS-135 represents the opposite. It represents the end of fantastic things and shows the direction that our so-called leaders have sent this nation in- and that is certainly not something to be proud of. Thus, we have the omega.

FMI: www.nasa.gov