This short 1979 film, Space Shuttle: America’s Space Transportation System, is produced by Rockwell International’s Space Division and promotes the future of the U.S. space transportation system using space shuttles. The film primarily uses still images, but it opens with actual footage of the space shuttle orbiter Enterprise making its landing in October 1977 (00:10). The film discusses how the space shuttles are reusable cargo carriers, which launch from either the Kennedy Space Center (00:52) or Vandenberg Air Force Base. The film gives an overview of launch, rocket detachment, and moving into orbit. Once in orbit, the cargo bay doors open and the shuttle can remove a satellite and set it into Earth’s orbit. Shuttle orbiters can also fix or recover satellites, providing major cost savings. The film concludes with an overview of how the shuttles reenter Earth’s atmosphere, operating like a plane as they touch down on 15,000-foot runways. The quick turnaround on getting shuttles back into space allows NASA to make 60 shuttle flights each year with only 5 shuttles, another cost-effective feature of the program and the shuttles.
The Space Shuttle program was the United States government’s manned launch vehicle program, administered by NASA from 1972 to 2011 and first flown in 1981. Its official name, Space Transportation System (STS), was taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development.
The Space Shuttle—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank—carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and land like a glider at either the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base.
The first experimental orbiter Enterprise was a high-altitude glider, launched from the back of a specially modified Boeing 747, only for initial atmospheric landing tests (ALT). Enterprise’s first test flight was on February 18, 1977, only five years after the Shuttle program was formally initiated; leading to the launch of the first space-worthy shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981 on STS-1. The Space Shuttle program finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011, retiring the final Shuttle in the fleet. The Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31, 2011.
The first orbiter was originally planned to be named Constitution, but a massive write-in campaign from fans of the Star Trek television series convinced the White House to change the name to Enterprise. Amid great fanfare, Enterprise (designated OV-101) was rolled out on September 17, 1976, and later conducted a successful series of glide-approach and landing tests in 1977 that were the first real validation of the design.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
