I was listening on the launch control loop in the Blue Cube (soon to be named Onizuka Air Force Base) across the street from Lockheed Building 104 when SV-20 launched. A few seconds after liftoff, I heard, "We have no downlink." It was a repeat of what everyone had heard when STS-51L launched three months before, and I felt a dull sense of shock. "We have smoke in the blockhouse. We're evacuating."
My big golden bird was gone, just like that. And, it was the last Big Bird, the end of the program. I immediately reported to my boss in Building 104, who made some phone calls to set into motion the securing of documentation at United Technologies outside of San Jose, where the solid stages for the Titan 3 were built. Then he sent me home for the rest of the day. "There's nothing more for you to do."
It really hit the contractor engineers and technicians hard, for such a long and successful program, so vital to the stability of the strategic balance and the peace of the world, to end suddenly. If only there had been one more Bid Bird for us to work on, a chance for redemption, even though, as a launch vehicle failure, it was no one's fault at Lockheed (spacecraft), Perkin-Elmer (optical system), or McDonnell Douglas (buckets).
There wasn't anything more for anyone to do except to pack up the documentation, dispose of the tooling and ground support equipment, and clean out the desks. And we could only share the numbing sense of loss with each other, not with friends and family in the "white world." What the hell, it wasn't like seven more astronauts got killed.
Go to Part 6
Go to Part 8
2 comments:
The loss of SV-20 must have been TOUGH!! As an AF officer at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex I had been briefed into several compartments in 1980 to support those programs. I visited SCF (mostly Interrange Operations and Al Hall) and the Pentagon offices of some of the black programs. It is still an uncomfortable feeling to type those words! I got a good tour of several of the control rooms in the SCF.
By 1985 I was at the Johnson Space Center working on payload operations - mostly military flights such as 51-C, 51-J, etc. I did work on 51-L, Challenger. Shortly after that loss, I organized a trip for AF folks out to VAFB and we got some great access - including SLC-6. We were bussed right past both Titan pads shortly after the SV-20 loss and saw them in the very early stages of reconstruction. The ground had lots of big blackened areas from where the solid fuel had fallen and burned the plants.
At least after the loss of Challenger we were able to openly talk about the mission. I was thinking, at VAFB, that people who were working on the Hexagon felt as bad as we did but could not talk about it. At least we had a big beer party and ate El Onizuka's pineapple upside down cake.
Great comment! Thank you!
Post a Comment