The History of Developing the National Space Transportation System; The Beginning through STS-75

The format is approximately 8.75 inches by 11.25 inches. viii, 324, 20 pages. 29 cm. Illustrations (photographs and drawings). Tabular Data. Bibliography. Acronyms. Index. Illustrated covers. No dust jacket present. Space Shuttle goes behind the scenes and describes the technical aspects of the Space Shuttle. This revised 2nd edition covers 25 new Shuttle flights. This is a brief history of the technology that began the true 'space age. ' The Space Shuttle gave man the first 'routine' access to space, in much the same way that the DC-3 gave the first routine access to air travel. Dennis R. Jenkins worked as a contractor to NASA for 33 years, mostly on the Space Shuttle Program in a variety of engineering and management roles. After supporting the first few space shuttle launches at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), he spent five years activating the Vandenberg Launch Site in California before the facility was closed following the Challenger accident. Returning to KSC, he supported recovering from the accident and a variety of special projects. In 2010 he became the USA project manager for the Orbiters on Display Working Group that delivered the space shuttle orbiters to the National Air and Space Museum, Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, California Science Center, and the KSC Visitor Complex. Afterward Jenkins became the project director for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center that will ultimately display Endeavour as a full launch stack. The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was the Space Transportation System (STS), taken from the 1969 plan led by U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development. The first (STS-1) of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights (STS-5) beginning in 1982. Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. They launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), conducted science experiments in orbit, participated in the Shuttle-Mir program with Russia, and participated in the construction and servicing of the International Space Station (ISS). The Space Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1,323 days. Space Shuttle components include the Orbiter Vehicle (OV) with three clustered Rocketdyne RS-25 main engines, a pair of recoverable solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and the expendable external tank (ET) containing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Space Shuttle was launched vertically, like a conventional rocket, with the two SRBs operating in parallel with the orbiter's three main engines, which were fueled from the ET. The SRBs were jettisoned before the vehicle reached orbit, while the main engines continued to operate, and the ET was jettisoned after main engine cutoff and just before orbit insertion, which used the orbiter's two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines. At the conclusion of the mission, the orbiter fired its OMS to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. The orbiter was protected during reentry by its thermal protection system tiles, and it glided as a spaceplane to a runway landing, usually to the Shuttle Landing Facility at KSC, Florida, or to Rogers Dry Lake in Edwards Air Force Base, California. If the landing occurred at Edwards, the orbiter was flown back to the KSC atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a specially modified Boeing 747 designed to carry the shuttle above it. The first orbiter, Enterprise, was built in 1976 and used in Approach and Landing Tests (ALT), but had no orbital capability. Four fully operational orbiters were initially built: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and A.…