From The F-14 Tomcat To The Space Shuttle | Test Pilots | Hoot Gibson Episode 10

From The F-14 Tomcat To The Space Shuttle | Test Pilots | Hoot Gibson Episode 10
Hoot Gibson, Top Gun, Space Shuttle Astronaut, commercial pilot, air racer, and RC enthusiast. Listen to the story of a great American, an icon of aviation, and a national hero.

HOOT GIBSON SERIES SEASON 1:
EPISODE 01: https://youtu.be/sPH1kSa-6zE
EPISODE 01 EXTENDED: https://youtu.be/wWsY7tuWa8w
EPISODE 02: https://youtu.be/t1cQtJ9iCtw
EPISODE 03: https://youtu.be/t1cQtJ9iCtw
EPISODE 04: https://youtu.be/iC0n2jK2A2s
EPISODE 05: https://youtu.be/fC2TcF817JA
EPISODE 06: https://youtu.be/b-a65NXn85w
EPISODE 07: https://youtu.be/DNrpZneJEBM
EPISODE 08: https://youtu.be/mf-IjzqJBpo
EPISODE 09: https://youtu.be/esJjwizqgk4
EPISODE 10: https://youtu.be/L78Bmm2xNsc
EPISODE 11: Coming Soon
EPISODE 12: Coming Soon
EPISODE 13: Coming Soon

FULL PLAYLIST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBI4gRjPKfnO5CF3r1r0FHXLAytdsO-J-

The Space Shuttle Atlantis (OV-104), at the time the youngest in NASA’s shuttle fleet, made its third flight on a classified mission for the United States Department of Defense (DoD). It deployed a single satellite, USA-34. NASA archival information has identified USA-34 as Lacrosse 1, a side-looking radar, all-weather surveillance satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Atlantis’ Thermal Protection System tiles sustained extensive damage during the flight. Ablative insulating material from the right-hand solid rocket booster nose cap had hit the orbiter about 85 seconds into the flight, as seen in footage of the ascent. The STS-27 crew also commented that white material was observed on the windshield at various times during the ascent. The crew made an inspection of the shuttle’s impacted starboard side using the shuttle’s Canadarm, but the limited resolution and range of the cameras made it impossible to determine the full extent of the tile damage.

The problem was compounded by the fact that the crew was prohibited from using their standard method of sending images to ground control due to the classified nature of the mission. The crew was forced to use a slow, encrypted transmission method, likely causing the images NASA engineers received to be of poor quality, causing them to think the damage was actually “just lights and shadows”. They told the crew the damage did not look any more severe than on past missions.

One report describes the crew as “infuriated” that Mission Control Center seemed unconcerned. When Gibson saw the damage he thought to himself, “We are going to die”; he and others did not believe that the shuttle would survive reentry. Gibson advised the crew to relax because “No use dying all tensed-up”, he said, but if instruments indicated that the shuttle was disintegrating, Gibson planned to “tell mission control what I thought of their analysis” in the remaining seconds before his death.

Hoot Gibson’s Hangar, aviation’s premier podcast, hosted by America’s premier aviator, Hoot Gibson, “The Man That Can Fly Anything.”

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#shuttle #F14 #testpilot