May 1, 1979 - Enterprise becomes first shuttle to roll out, laying groundwork for shuttle operations at KSC.
Following a year of vibration testing at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, space shuttle Enterprise was delivered to Kennedy Space Center in April, 1979. Over the course of three and a half months, the mockup orbiter would validate Kennedy’s modifications to accommodate the new fleet of space vehicles, which were a radical departure from the capsules the center was built for.
Enterprise was used to validate the new Orbiter Processing Facilities, and the procedures in them. Following this, the orbiter was then used to test and validate hoisting and movement operations in the Vehicle Assembly Building. Finally, technicians practiced assembling a shuttle stack by mating Enterprise to a pair of SRB’s and an External Tank.
On May 1, 1979, the first-ever shuttle stack departed the Vehicle Assembly Building for LC-39A. Although the crawler has a maximum speed of 2 miles per hour, the stack was driven at various speeds in order to test vibration stresses during crawler transport. This was later used to determine optimal rollout speeds for future shuttle missions.
Once at the pad, technicians practiced fueling the External Tank for the first time - a critical step for Coulmbia’s Wet Dress Rehearsal in the month’s prior to her maiden voyage. This test revealed an undiscovered problem that endangered the orbiter and it’s crew - ice buildup at the tip of the ET, where supercold Liquid Oxygen was venting.
Engineers designed the Gaseous Oxygen Vent Hood - or beanie cap - to safely reroute vented LOX away from the shuttle stack. The beanie cap wasn’t originally part of LC-39′s modification’s for shuttle, but testing with Enterprise prompted the addition.
The Enterprise stack returned to the VAB in early August, and the orbiter flown to Palmdale, California by October. The three months Enterprise spent on the pad marked a visual departure from previous operations at the cape. Instead of a single, pointy rocket on the pad, a squat, winged vehicle surrounded by service gantry’s was seen. This would later be a normal site on the space coast as the shuttle fleet performed 135 missions over 30 years.
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
prguitarman
gracieabrams
romaincrisis
snowghoul
