The Space Shuttle program launches (1981)

Now retired after a thirty year career, NASA’s space shuttle fleet has gone from making history to becoming a part of it. For three decades, the giant winged orbiters symbolized the United States’ supremacy over space — for some of us, the only US manned space vehicle we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes.

On April 12, 1981 — 20 years to the day after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space — the space shuttle Columbia made her maiden flight with astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen aboard. Lifting off at 7am EST and returning a little over two days later, STS-1 was a history making flight in many ways.

The flight of Columbia marked the first time a vehicle would be flown in to space, returned — and refurbished and used again. All previous manned flights were single-use craft. Additionally, every single prior first flight of a manned US space vehicle had been undertaken unmanned — with no one on board, just in case something unexpected cropped up in the real world. Columbia‘s crew had no such luxury — while the shuttle had performed unpowered landing tests, STS-1 was a full on test flight, complete with a crew.

As a result, NASA declared the mission “the boldest test flight in history,” and little do many realize just how close to being an unsuccessful test flight it was. Upon launch, there was an unexpected overpressure wave from the solid rocket booster ignition that pushed the body flap under the shuttle’s main engines well past the point where damage to the hydraulic system would be expected, rendering a safe re-entry impossible. Luckily, no damage occurred — and when the issue was discovered later, John Young stated had they known about it, he would have flown Columbia to a safe altitude and ejected — thus losing the shuttle on her maiden flight.

Of course, Columbia survived this mishap and went on to make 26 more successful flights in the next 21 years, before her tragic loss during re-entry on February 1, 2003 .

Along with her sisters Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, history would be made as they flew 133 successful missions (out of 135 attempts) over a 30-year-span, changing the face of human spaceflight forever. – AJW