Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: 30 Years Since the Spectacular EVA of Mission 61B

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: November 22, 2015 at 5:11:28 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 30 Years Since the Spectacular EVA of Mission 61B

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
November 21st, 2015
'Your Big Chance': 30 Years Since the Spacewalking Spectacular of Mission 61B (Part 1)
By Ben Evans

In the earliest EVA demonstration of building a space station, Jerry Ross and Woody Spring assemble the EASE tetrahedron in Atlantis' payload bay. Their flight, Mission 61B, began 30 years ago, next week. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Thirty years ago, next week, something unprecedented in the entire history of the shuttle program unfolded when Atlantis turned night into day across the Space Coast, rising into orbit on her second mission, a mere 50 days after returning from her maiden voyage. Roaring into the night from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 7:29 p.m. EST on 26 November 1985, Mission 61B thus secured a landing-to-launch record for a single orbiter which would never again be broken throughout the shuttle's 30-year career. During their seven days aloft, the crew—astronauts Bryan O'Connor, Jerry Ross, Mary Cleave, Sherwood "Woody" Spring, Charlie Walker, and Mexico's first man in space, Rudolfo Neri Vela, commanded by Atlantis' youngest-ever skipper, Brewster Shaw—released three communications satellites and staged a pair of spectacular EVAs to rehearse assembly techniques for Space Station Freedom, the forerunner of today's International Space Station (ISS). Little could the 61B crew have known that spacewalker Jerry Ross would go on to lead the EVAs which began building the ISS for real, in December 1998.
Beginning with the impressive turnaround of Atlantis between Missions 51J and 61B—which was, in a sense, reflective of the operational and managerial mindset prevalent within NASA during the pre-Challenger era—a mere seven weeks between launches of the same vehicle remains remarkable. When placed into context across the entire shuttle program, the next-fastest landing-to-launch turnaround for a single orbiter was 55 days, achieved by Challenger during the run-up to Mission 41C in early 1984, whilst in the post-51L era the closest parallel was the exceptional case of STS-94, in which Columbia was rapidly recycled to refly the Microgravity Science Laboratory (MSL) mission in just 84 days in mid-1997. As outlined in a previous AmericaSpace article, after Mission 51J Atlantis was returned from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., to the Cape, on 12 October 1985, where she spent a mere 27 days in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF), then four days in the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for stacking onto her bulbous External Tank (ET) and twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), before rolling out to the pad. And plugging that into the context of the entire shuttle program, the next-fastest pre-51L single-flow OPF turnaround was 30 days, achieved by Discovery ahead of Mission 51I, whilst the fastest post-51L single flow was 55 days, accomplished by Atlantis before STS-45 in the spring of 1992.
By peculiar coincidence, Mission 61B spacewalker Jerry Ross would also lead the EVAs to begin the on-orbit construction of the International Space Station (ISS) in December 1998. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
In spite of deploying three communications satellites, including the first use of McDonnell Douglas' uprated Payload Assist Module (PAM)-D2 booster, and seeing the first citizen of Mexico reach space, Mission 61B will always be chiefly remembered for its EVAs—only the 10th and 11th ever performed in the shuttle program. When President Ronald Reagan announced plans to build a permanent, U.S.-led space station in early 1984, it was quickly recognized that the endeavor would require multiple EVA hours. NASA already had plans to assemble a pair of structures—an inverted tetrahedron, known as the Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA (EASE), and a 43-foot-tall (13-meter) tower, the Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures (ACCESS)—in the shuttle's payload bay.
Mounted atop a Mission-Peculiar Equipment Support Structure (MPESS) for launch, the EASE-ACCESS assembly tasks required no specialized tools and called for spacewalkers to snap together their prefabricated segments, linking them in place with nodes, socket-clusters and lockable "sleeves." The downside was that there were a lot of parts: ACCESS had 93 tubular aluminum struts, measuring anywhere from 4.5 feet (1.35 meters) to six feet (1.8 meters) long, whilst EASE possessed six beams, each extending to 11.8 feet (3.6 meters). Due to shuttle manifest changes, numerous astronauts trained for the assembly EVAs—including James "Ox" van Hoften and Steve Hawley and, for a time, even the crew of the ill-fated Mission 51L—before settling on Mission 61B. In fact, the precise objectives of Brewster Shaw's flight had changed several times since his crew had been announced by NASA in February 1984: at first, they were tasked with the retrieval of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) in February 1985, then a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) and eventually a trio of payloads, including satellites for Australia, Mexico, and Radio Corporation of America (RCA). By the spring of 1985, their launch had slipped until the end of the year and they picked up a Mexican crewman and were later joined by McDonnell Douglas engineer Charlie Walker.
Yet it was Jerry Ross and Woody Spring who pushed for the inclusion of the EASE-ACCESS task onto their mission and the two men worked with program managers over the course of several months to choreograph a pair of six-hour EVAs. ACCESS was fairly straightforward. "Both crew members were in fixed foot restraints," Ross told the NASA oral historian, years later. "It was basically just a matter of bringing a part out, putting it onto this assembly fixture, hooking the components together, rotating to the three faces, then sliding the completed segment of truss up and repeating the process for a total of ten 'bays'. We knew that technique would be a very satisfactory way of doing business, because when a crew member's feet are anchored properly, that gives you both hands free to do work." EASE, ironically, in view of its name, proved more difficult, since it required one spacewalker to "free-float," without foot restraints, holding onto the structure with one hand and torqueing the beams with the other. It was clear that EASE might turn into their Achilles heel. "We learned to do it," said Woody Spring in a NASA oral history interview, "but also learned that free-floating is not the way to put things together."
By mid-1985, Ross—designated "EV1," with red stripes on the legs of his Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) for identification—and Spring ("EV2," clad in a pure-white suit) were performing at least one long-duration simulation, per week, in the Weightless Environment Training Facility (WET-F) at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, deliberately spending up to six hours continuously underwater at a time. For some of the "tall" work, recalled Woody Spring, they also utilized the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator (NBS) at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala. "We knew … it's absolutely essential to work with the masses and the volumes and do the choreography exactly as it will happen in orbit, so you know what to expect," Spring explained. "If you don't, you'll regret it!"
Atlantis roars into the night at 7:29 p.m. EST on 26 November 1985. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
On the eve of Mission 61B's launch, the two spacewalks had been refined into a pair of intricate dance-routines. EVA-1 would feature the assembly and disassembly of the ACCESS tower, with one astronaut in foot restraints on the MPESS and the other at the end of Atlantis' Remote Manipulator System (RMS) mechanical arm, as well as up to six assemblies and disassemblies of the EASE tetrahedron. Two days later, EVA-2 would repeat the work, but would also attach flexible cables to simulate electrical wiring and evaluate their ability to physically move the structures around the payload bay.
Three days after leaving Earth, on 29 November 1985, Ross and Spring pushed open the airlock's outer hatch and entered the payload bay for EVA-1. "What's going through your mind is: Oh, I hope I don't screw up!" recalled Spring. "It's your big chance … and they've got all the video cameras in the world on you! If you screw up, your friends will have photos and video ready for you at the pin party, too." For his part, Ross was so excited that he had to muster the strength not to let out a "war whoop of glee" when he ventured outside. ACCESS was built in less than an hour—half as long as expected—and they disassembled and reassembled it a second time. Pleasantly surprising was the "ease" of EASE, which proved far more straightforward in microgravity and the spacewalkers completed eight assemblies and disassemblies, rather than the planned six.
At one point, perched at the top of EASE, Spring was hit by the suddenness of orbital sunset and the most ethereal darkness that he had ever encountered. "All of a sudden, night fell," he told the NASA oral historian. "I just wasn't used to all of a sudden going dark, so you've got to get your visor up and get your [helmet] headlights on and then everything was cool. But I remember that little bit of anxiety, because you're up on this kind of tippy structure and you're thrashing around just a little bit." Tiredness quickly set in, as did numbness in fingers, with mental fatigue far overlapping physical exhaustion, as the men's minds raced at what Ross later described as "a million miles an hour." Ross earned the nickname "Captain Cardboard" from Cleave, owing to her having to move him around repeatedly at the end of the RMS. Logging 5.5 hours outside on their first spacewalk, the two men were back in the payload bay on 1 December, this time for more than 6.5 hours, which ran so smoothly that the jubilant Ross and Spring returned inside Atlantis … and volunteered to prepare dinner for their crewmates.
In spite of the visually spectacular nature of the EVAs, they were but one facet of Mission 61B, which also marked the first occasion that shuttle fliers had celebrated Thanksgiving away from the Home Planet, saw an unusually padlocked crew access hatch and fell victim to a touch of good-natured banter among the military astronauts. As will be explored in tomorrow's article, the shuttle manifest was so busy in the fall of 1985 and early 1986—with Columbia due to fly Mission 61C and Challenger expected to follow on Mission 51L—that Brewster Shaw's crew opted to wait until the next two crews had returned to Earth, before holding a "big" homecoming party.
Tragically, it was not to be.

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
November 22nd, 2015
'Barn Burner': 30 Years Since the Spacewalking Spectacular of Mission 61B (Part 2)
By Ben Evans
In addition to a pair of spectacular EVAs by Jerry Ross and Woody Spring, Mission 61B deployed three satellites and carried Mexico's first national astronaut into space. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Thirty years ago, next week, Atlantis rocketed into orbit on her second mission, just 50 days after wrapping up her maiden voyage. In so doing, she secured a new landing-to-launch record for a single orbiter which would never again be broken for the remainder of the shuttle's career. Rising into the night on 26 November 1985—becoming only the third U.S. piloted space mission, after Apollo 17 and STS-8, to launch in the hours of darkness—Mission 61B will forever be remembered for its two spectacular EVAs, during which spacewalkers Jerry Ross and Sherwood "Woody" Spring assembled and disassembled a framework of tubular structures in the shuttle's payload bay. Intended as part of the effort to prepare for Space Station Freedom, few could have foreseen that, 13 years later, Ross would also lead the vanguard to build the International Space Station (ISS). Yet Mission 61B involved more than EVAs: Its crew placed three satellites into orbit, featured Mexico's first man in space, and was commanded by Atlantis' youngest-ever skipper.
The astronauts of Mission 61B were a very close-knit team, drawn together by almost two years of flight-specific training, following the initial assignment of the NASA "core" crew—Commander Brewster Shaw, Pilot Bryan O'Connor, and Mission Specialists Ross, Spring, and Mary Cleave—in February 1984. At that time, only Shaw had flown before, and more than one of his crewmates described him as a "mentor" and likened him to a "mother-hen." By the fall of 1985, they had been joined by McDonnell Douglas engineer Charlie Walker, who had already flown two shuttle missions, and Mexico's first citizen in space, Rudolfo Neri Vela. He was aboard Atlantis to observe the deployment of his country's Morelos-B communications satellite. However, in September 1985, an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter Scale hit Mexico City, killing more than 10,000 people, and for a time the effect upon ground infrastructure almost forced Morelos-B to be deleted from the 61B payload. "If Morelos … does fly," noted Flight International on 9 November, "it will be placed in parking orbit until Mexico's telecommunications are rehabilitated." As circumstances transpired, Morelos-B remained on the mission, as did Neri Vela.
Unofficial portrait of the 61B crew. From left to right are Charlie Walker, Jerry Ross, Mary Cleave, "Boss" Brewster Shaw, Rudolfo Neri Vela, Woody Spring, and Bryan O'Connor. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
An interesting story surrounds his place on the crew. Neri Vela and his backup, Ricardo Peralta y Fabi, were selected in July 1985, and having less than six months to train with an unknown crew member worried Brewster Shaw. "I'm probably a paranoid kind of guy, but I didn't know what he was going to do on-orbit," Shaw told the NASA oral historian, "so I remember I got this padlock and … went down to the hatch on the side of the orbiter and I padlocked the hatch control, so that you could not open the hatch." Charlie Walker—who had flown two previous shuttle missions, in August 1984 and April 1985—was a "known" quantity, but Shaw was concerned that Neri Vela might "flip out" during launch or in space. Fellow astronaut Mike Mullane made reference to the padlock episode in his 2006 memoir, Riding Rockets, noting that future missions benefited from a similar arrangement, with only the shuttle's commander having access to the key. "I don't know if I was supposed to do that or not," added Shaw, "but that's a decision I made as being responsible for my crew. I don't think Rodolfo noticed it, but some of the other crew noticed it."
Late in their training, the 61B crew posed for an unofficial portrait, featuring engineers Cleave and Walker in white lab coats, Shaw wearing a "Boss" badge, O'Connor dressed in leather cap and goggles as the barnstorming fighter ace, Ross and Spring in space suits and construction helmets … and Neri Vela in a traditional serape and sombrero. "That photo could not be the official one," admitted Spring in his NASA oral history, "because the Mexican government took a little bit of umbrage at Rodolfo being dressed up in a serape and a sombrero, but then post-flight we went down to Mexico City … and the first thing they did was take us to the folk ballet, where everybody is dressed up exactly like that!" In the photograph, Spring also posed with a stuffed kangaroo toy in his lap, honoring one of 61B's other communications satellites: Australia's Aussat-2. Their third satellite was Radio Corporation of America's (RCA) payload, Satcom K-2, which was, at the time, the highest-powered domestic communications satellite in service. Its size and weight also required it to be boosted into geostationary orbit using McDonnell Douglas' uprated Payload Assist Module (PAM)-D2 booster, which was embarking on its first flight.
If Woody Spring considered the moments before his first EVA as being more anxious than the launch itself, that did nothing to detract from the excitement of Atlantis' second climb into orbit. "It was a perfect night," he recalled. "We had a full Moon, the day before Thanksgiving, severe, clear, not a cloud in the sky; it was a gorgeous night." Spring was seated on the shuttle's middeck, together with the payload specialists, whilst Ross sat upstairs, directly behind the pilot, and Cleave occupied the flight engineer's position. With five minutes to go, O'Connor—the first shuttle pilot from NASA's 1980 astronaut class to draw a flight assignment—activated the three Auxiliary Power Units (APUs).
Not until relatively close to the flight did the crew realize that they would be launching at night. As the final seconds ticked away to launch, O'Connor glanced across the cabin toward Shaw and noticed that the commander had momentarily removed his gloves to wipe sweat from his hands. "Oh, my God," O'Connor thought. "My commander, who's been through this before … his hands are sweating! Why aren't mine sweating? I need to be nervous now, if he's nervous." The sound of Atlantis' main engines igniting, said Spring, was like a roomful of lions, roaring, directly behind him. "And you can feel it," he remembered. "This vehicle's alive. Then the main engines gimbal, getting ready. From the moment of main engine start, you get one and a half seconds where the vehicle actually swings about three degrees of arc and then comes back again, then the Solid Rocket Boosters ignite." With a force akin to a sledgehammer blast, they were propeled away from the launch pad in what Spring could only describe as "a barn-burner." The launch, Shaw recalled later, could be seen from as far away as the Carolinas and the south end of Florida. Eight minutes later, in a preliminary orbit, Spring released a pencil and watched it float freely. He let out a whoop of delight as Cleave giggled with excitement over the intercom. They were in space.
The high-powered Satcom K-2 satellite, atop the first PAM-D2 booster, is deployed from Atlantis' payload bay. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
A busy mission got underway almost immediately, with Spring supervising the deployments of the Mexican and Australian communications satellites and Ross overseeing the release of Satcom K-2. Morelos was sent spinning out of the payload bay ("with a resounding thump," according to Spring), early on 27 November and, after the crew had slept, was followed by Aussat later that night. Finally, the cube-shaped Satcom was released on the afternoon of the 28th.
To say that the 61B crew had a good time together, on the ground and in orbit, is something of an understatement. Years later, Ross recounted that O'Connor and Spring were the comedians, with the latter producing the idle jokes and the former mastering the dry wit. "He will sucker you in on some really serious discussion," Ross said of O'Connor, "and then hit you over the head with a two-by-four with some joke or comment!" Before launch, O'Connor had recorded the Naval Academy song, Anchors Aweigh, and hidden it somewhere in the middle of Army's aviator Spring's Walkman music cassette. A couple of days into the mission, with the lights turned off and the crew ready for sleep, Spring suddenly screamed, "O'Connor, you son of a b***h!" The prankster had completely forgotten about it, but was quickly reminded. "It was his Peter, Paul and Mary album," O'Connor recalled with glee, "and it was right in the middle of I've Got a Hammer … and suddenly up comes this really loud Navy fight song!"
Thanksgiving on the second day of the mission offered the chance for the crew to eat irradiated turkey, pumpkin bread, mashed potatoes, beans, and a somewhat tasteless concoction which was labelled "gravy." In fact, many foods which tasted fine on Earth were quite different in orbit: shrimp cocktails resembled battery acid, laced in sawdust, and Spring found the grapefruit juices appalling. Neri Vela also brought along some Mexican foodstuffs, including flour tortillas.
"The landing," said O'Connor, "isn't nearly as exciting as the launch." Re-entry was over the darkened Pacific Ocean, and cloud cover restricted their view of the runway at Edwards until Atlantis was a couple of kilometres above the ground. Shaw brought her in to a perfect landing at 1:33:49 p.m. PST (4:33:49 p.m. EST) on 3 December 1985, an orbit earlier than planned. There was a slight tail wind, and both Shaw and O'Connor were concerned about the integrity of the brakes and tires, but the vehicle slowed to a stop, right on the centerline. Thus ended the ninth shuttle mission of 1985, which enabled Mission 61B to contribute to another record, which to this day remains unbroken: the greatest number of piloted spaceflights in a single calendar year.

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved