Abstract
Despite years of planning and 60 months of flight operations, the comment above illustrates the frustration that was being felt in preparing Shuttle crews for space flight using equipment which should have been state of art, but was instead already falling behind the requirements for a rapidly expanding program.
Today, the [training] facility computers and
equipment are out of date and obsolete.
Plans exist to update the equipment [but]
over a 10-year period and are minimal.
Robert K. Holkan, Chief,
DG6 JSC Training Division.
From a memo dated April 11, 1986.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Significantly more scientific research was conducted by the three Skylab crews during their 28, 59 and 84-day missions in 1973/4. This included extensive studies in astrophysics, solar physics, Earth observations and resources, materials science and space manufacturing, engineering and technology, life sciences, and student experiments and science demonstrations.
- 2.
The Ascan training program instigated in 1978 continued, with a few refinements, through to the Class of 2004 (Group 19 “The Peacocks”), who were the final group to receive Shuttle mission training. From the Class of 2009 (Class 20 “The Chumps”), the emphasis shifted to the ISS and future space exploration programs.
- 3.
Here, Mullane is referring to a nominal five-person Shuttle crew, consisting of CDR, PLT and three MS.
- 4.
Dave Griggs was another pilot candidate from the Class of 1978 who flew his first mission, STS-51D in 1985, as MS-2. At the time of his death in an off-duty plane crash in 1989, Griggs was in training as PLT for STS-33, which would have been his second space flight. It was widely expected that he would also have transitioned to the command seat on his third mission, had he lived.
- 5.
Regency provided a programmable 64 x 64 spot touch screen that displayed switches and indicators, and component schematics. Using this, the trainers could communicate with the teaching software by touching the screen in the appropriate place.
- 6.
By the fall of 1998 and the start of ISS assembly, none of the remaining TFNG in the Astronaut Office were directly involved as crewmembers in assembly mission training.
References
Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, June 1986, p. 166.
Reference 1, p. 201.
Commission Work Session, Mission Planning and Operations Panel, JSC, April 1, 1986, p. 198.
Mike Mullane, NASA Oral History, January 24, 2003.
Steve Hawley interview with author David J. Shayler, October 2019.
Kathy Sullivan, NASA Oral History, May 28, 2009.
Shuttle Flight Crew Training, Carl B. Shelly, JSC Flight Operations, November 1980; also a Memo from Robert K. Holkan, Chief of Training Division (mail code DG6) to the Lead, Mission Planning and Operations Team/STS-51-L Data Design and Analysis Task Force, April 11, 1986 (initiated by Frank Hughes, DG6). Copies on file, AIS Archives.
The Hubble Space Telescope: From Concept to Success, David J. Shayler with David M. Harland, Springer-Praxis, 2016, pp. 213−224.
George Nelson, NASA Oral History May 6, 2004.
NASA News Release 93-032, May 4, 1993.
Go for Orbit, One of America’s First Women Astronauts Finds Her Space, Rhea Seddon, Your Space Press, 2015, pp. 413−416.
For an explanation of the middeck locker numbering systems see Linking the Space Shuttle and Space Station, David J. Shayler, Springer-Praxis, 2017, pp. 176-181.
Last of NASA’s Original Pilot Astronauts: Expanding the Space Frontier in the Late Sixties, David J. Shayler and Colin Burgess, Springer-Praxis, 2017.
Emails to David J. Shayler from Robert “Hoot” Gibson, August 20 and 22, 2019.
For details of on Mir training by NASA astronauts, see Cosmonaut Training for Astronauts, in Russia’s Cosmonauts: Inside the Yuri Gagarin Training Center, Rex D. Hall, David J. Shayler and Bert Vis, Springer Praxis 2005 pp. 274−289; also for Shuttle-Mir docking missions, see Linking the Space Shuttle and Space Stations: Early Docking Technologies from Concept to Implementation, David J. Shayler, Springer-Praxis, 2017.
STS-7 Post-Flight Training Report, Mission Operations Directorate Training Division, TD225/A192, NASA LBJ Space Center, October 13, 1983. Copy in file AIS archives.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shayler, D.J., Burgess, C. (2020). Preparing to fly. In: NASA's First Space Shuttle Astronaut Selection. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45742-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45742-6_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45741-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45742-6
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)