mat@hou5d.UUCP (12/07/83)
Some statistics as reported in the 12/5/83 Aviation Week and Space Technology: ``Launch of the shuttle orbiter Columbia/Spacelab 1 mission here Nov 28 required greater vehicle maneuvering and higher thrust than any previous shuttle ascent to boost the heavy U.S./European payload on a northern trajectory ... ...Following main engine cutoff and two Orbital Manuevering System (OMS) burns to complete the launch process, Columbia was only 1.1 second off the required 5 336 second orbital period dictated by experiment requirements ... ...Vehicle liftoff weight was 4 503 095 lb., including the Spacelab 1 payload, which weighed 16.6 tons. [By way of contrast, the Saturn V launch vehicle consumed 15 tons of fuel PER SECOND. But wait ...] ... [the] two Morton Thiokol high-performance solid rocket motors provided about 6.24 million lb. of thrust at the 20 second point in the climb, with the rest provided by the three Rocketdyne space shuttle main engines operating at 104% power. ...This combination gave the Spacelab 1 vehicle at least 56 400 lb. more thrust than any previous shuttle launch. At the 20 second point in the ascent, Columbia was powered by at least 7.46 million lb. of thrust, a level only slightly below that generated by the Saturn 5 boosters during the Apollo program.'' Remember, though, that the Apollo moon rocket's payload on the final missions weighed over 103 000 lb (with a thrust from the first stage of about 7 700 000 lb.) Columbia pays for reusability and for redundancy. Still, the numbers are not bad at all. In the same issue, information about SRB ablator lining is given. In addition, it is reported that the external tank was thought to have hit in the same area that KAL 007 was downed. The report was corrected soon, with the splashdown about 1 000 miles south of Melbourne, at 56.6S and 143.2E. Mark Terribile hou5d!mat