Hello, old friend - Part 2 (viewing Enterprise)

The 25 participants of the Hubble25Social held at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, held 2 December 2014. Astronaut Mike Massimino, co-curator, is in his flight jacket at right center. Author is to viewer right and in back of the person wearing the NASA T-shirt.

Upon entering the Intrepid's Space Shuttle Pavilion, one is greeted with a large mural showing Enterprise over New York City. I had seen Enterprise twice before - once during the transfer ceremony with Discovery, with the latter taking the former's spot at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in April 2012, and then a few months later near Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, when Enterprise and her 747 carrier did a low and slow approach, circling New York City. My view was nothing like what Intrepid showed, though, not with a point-and-shoot camera!

There's a corridor leading to Enterprise itself, with signage stating the voices one hears coming from the fifth (and last) free flight of the orbiter's Approach and Landing Test. It's rather appropriate, starting with "Houston, go for takeoff," and then ending with "5... 3, 2, 1..."

And then the corridor ends and one sees this:

The back end of Enterprise, covered by a tailcone (which it didn't use on ALT-5.) Out of the four remaining orbiters, each uniquely is displayed or will be displayed in different phases of flight: Endeavour will be mounted vertically at the California Science Center; Atlantis has its payload bay doors open as if on orbit; Enterprise is on all three of its landing gear as if it just landed; and Discovery at Udvar-Hazy is at wheels stop (including rotating the wheels to line up scuff marks.)

For those who haven't been up close to a shuttle orbiter, it's hard to realize just how big it is - although most of it is its 60 feet long by 15 feet wide cargo bay. Comparing the shuttle's length (122 feet) to a DC-9 airliner is obsolete, since very few people know what a DC-9 looks like. The modern comparison would be that the shuttle is slightly smaller than an Airbus A320.

Still can't figure it out? The payload bay can fit a school bus, or my favorite comparison (thanks, Omni!) one of those tractor-trailers that blast by you on the interstate. Or the next time you're in a space or aviation museum that has a Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo capsule, marvel how small those are.

Or compare it to a Russian Soyuz capsule. The one that carried Greg Olsen is on display at Intrepid, too.  I saw his capsule when it was on display at MarketFair, a Princeton, NJ shopping mall - here's a good comparison between the size of the capsule and Olsen.

The capsule carries three people, the shuttle up to eight astronauts. The docent told us that NASA astronaut Scott Kelly - like Olsen, also from New Jersey - was also responsible for bringing the capsule to the Intrepid, helping to suggest the carrier would be a good display home.

The Soyuz TMA-6 capsule, on loan from Greg Olsen. He landed in the capsule on October 11, 2005, following a 10-day journey to the International Space Station.

Useful instructions in case a Soyuz capsule comes down in your backyard.

But I'm jumping ahead. There were just 25 people on the Tweet-Up, and they were divided into two groups. One would learn about Enterprise and related exhibits, including Olsen's Soyuz capsule. and ther other would follow Massimino as he talked about the Hubble exhibit.

I was with my wife as well as with fellow space enthusiast @MarylandSpace, who gravitated toward the shuttle. That worked out well, as I was eager to see Enterprise. I had previously been to Intrepid, but had not had a chance to see the pavilion.

There were displays on the origin of the Enterprise name. Originally, the orbiter was to be called Constitution, in honor of the document's bicentennial - which is why, with some facetiousness, I suggested that the replacement for Challenger be called Farragut, following Franz Joseph's name and numbering scheme of Star Trek heavy cruisers.

But what struck me was Enterprise itself.

With the loss of Columbia, Enterprise was pressed into service, lending some of her fiberglass wing panels - which were of the same age as Columbia - to test in order to see what caused the loss of that shuttle.

Enterprise's port wing still bears scars from when a "chicken gun" fired a foam-block projectile into it. The fiberglass cracked. If such a thing could happen, what could happen to reinforced carbon-carbon, which is less stronger than fiberglass, asked the docent?

Using a RCC panel from a production orbiter, they got the answer: A 16-inch size hole in the wing, the "smoking gun," according to a Columbia Accident Investigation board member.

One can walk around Discovery, but a barrier keeps people at arms length - and then some - from the orbiter.

A profile of Enterprise. The forward reaction control system is a dummy, painted (though incorrectly) to look like the RCS present on production orbiters. Enterprise's wings were also painted to look like flight shuttles, but retained its name on the payload bay doors rather than forward of them. Speaking of which, I was fascinated to find out from the docent that the payload bay doors are space-capable, although the payload bay itself lacks the equipment needed to support spaceflight.

Here, one can walk underneath Enterprise, and it feels like one can reach up to touch the shuttle, with interesting details few have seen or know about. After this we went to Mike Massimino and get a tour of the Hubble exhibit, which will be in Part 3:

A close-up of Enterprise's crew hatch. The "tile" pattern around it differed from production orbiters, especially Challenger, which had a "stair-step" pattern around it. Notice the rescue sticker. Columbia also had upper ejection panels during the first four missions, which were test flights, but only Enterprise retained the panels.

Not all tiles on Enterprise were dummies. On the left are low-temperature reusable surface insulation tiles, which covered most of Columbia's body. On the right, what looks to one participant as a filter is a sample of an advanced flexible reusable surface insulation, resembling a blanket. Most of Discovery and Atlantis' thermal protection system (and that of Challenger) were of the AFRSI blankets, replacing the majority of LRSI tiles.

I have yet to figure out what these disconnects are, if this was for where Enterprise was mounted onto its 747 carrier aircraft. If so, this would have been refitted for an external tank disconnect, and instead of a recessed area, would have a flipper door that would have closed after the external tank was jettisoned.

These tiles were mounted on Enterprise's landing gear door. Not all tiles on the shuttle were dummies. These were used also in the Columbia accident investigaton, when a "chicken gun" fired a projectile at the door to see if it caused any penetration. Notice the MISC designation; "real" tiles from spaceworthy orbiters usually began with V070.