Before the first shuttle launch in 1981, Bob Crippen, right,… (NASA )
CAPE CANAVERAL — It was three seconds past 7 a.m., April 12, 1981, when the world's first space shuttle, Columbia, blazed off the launchpad. Rowdy cheers erupted in Kennedy Space Center's firing room — until launch director George Page swiveled his chair and shot an icy look.
The launch team members shut up and refocused their attention on their monitors.
"Page had said there was to be no celebrating, no whooping and hollering, until they get to orbit," recalled Bob Sieck, now 72, then lead integration engineer. When Columbia reached orbit, 8 1/2 minutes later, they erupted again — this time with Page joining in.
America's space-shuttle era began with a roar, and crossed fingers. But over time, launches turned into a detailed routine that — when Atlantis flies Friday — will have sent 135 missions into space over 30 years.
There had never been a spacecraft like the shuttle — a reusable orbiter that could launch like a rocket, glide back to Earth like an airplane, carry up to seven astronauts and 50,000 pounds of payload and last for decades.
And to the men and women who designed, built and tested this new creation — not at all like the towering Saturn rockets that had sent Apollo capsules to the moon — the lead-up to launch was nerve-racking.
Most of them had begun their careers in the early days of Apollo, Gemini and even Mercury. When Columbia rolled out to the launchpad, it represented 10 years of work.
"We were learning as we went," said Sieck, now retired but still active on NASA advisory boards and still racing sports cars, as he did with early astronauts in the 1960s.
They loved the spacecraft they developed.
In recent interviews, computers director John Conway called it "the most amazing space vehicle ever built." To engineering chief Charlie Mars, it was "phenomenal." Testing director Norm Carlson called it "a near-perfect machine."
But in the spring of 1981, when commander John Young and pilot Bob Crippen climbed aboard for the first mission, it was unproved. It had never been tested in an actual launch. Almost every ground test had uncovered problems, from engine issues to computer glitches; there had never been a flawless mock countdown.
Everything about the shuttle was new, Carlson said.
The orbiter sat atop a 526,000-gallon, 154-foot-tall fuel tank, covered with insulating foam that sometimes didn't stick to its surface. Its liquid hydrogen-oxygen main engines were far more powerful — operating at higher temperatures, with turbines spinning faster — than anything before them. The 149-foot-tall solid-fuel booster rockets, each filled with more than a million pounds of solid fuel, were bigger than any previously used. The shuttle's soft insulating-tile surfaces were surprisingly delicate.
"To me, that was the most dangerous flight of any, including Apollo," said Carlson, now retired at 77, yet still throwing NASA parties where he serves the beans and cornbread that he helped make the traditional launch celebration food in 1981.
A few nights before launch, Mars, head of KSC's shuttle's engineering office, had a nightmare. As the shuttle left the pad, its boosters and fuel tank immediately fell away, like the skin off a banana.
"As it fired and lifted off, I thought, 'God, don't peel like a banana, don't peel like a banana,'" recalled Mars, now 75 and president of Titusville's Space Walk of Fame project.
"What was going through my head was … 'Oh, dear Lord, I hope this works,'" said Conway, then director of information systems.
The launch was perfect.
"When the solids [rocket boosters] kicked off, it was a nice kick in the pants," said Crippen, now 73. "My eyes were probably as big as saucers during that initial phase. That 8 1/2 minutes to get to orbit seemed like a minute. I was not anxious. It was just a thrill."
The feeling at NASA's Launch Control Center was euphoria.
"There probably wasn't a one of us standing there that wasn't in tears," said Lee Solid, KSC office chief of Rocketdyne, which developed the main engines.
But the initial fears that haunted Mars, Carlson, Conway and others eventually were realized.
On Jan. 28, 1986, Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing seven astronauts. The cause was a faulty O-ring joint seal in a booster, an issue NASA engineers had worried about but had decided to ignore.
On Feb. 1, 2003, Columbia broke apart on re-entry, killing its crew of seven. A chunk of foam insulation had peeled from the fuel tank during launch and punched a hole in the orbiter's left wing, allowing the hot gases of re-entry to enter. Again, engineers had worried about foam coming off the tank — but had decided it didn't pose a flight risk.