The Space Shuttle That Didn't Reach The Runway - Why Did Atlantis Land Short on STS-37?
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- čas přidán 4. 04. 2024
- In 1991 Space Shuttle Atlantis returning after STS-37 was forced to land on a lakebed runway at Edwards Air Force Base which had never been used by a shuttle before and wasn't included in mission plans.
But across the US the weather made it the only option, and to compound things, in addition to the runway being unfamiliar, the winds threw a few curveballs at them resulting in an approach that landed over 3000 feet before it was supposed to.
Wayne Hale published his excellent first person account of this mission:
waynehale.wordpress.com/2024/...
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"Make sure the lake was suffiently dry that it could handle a space vehicle" is a magnificent phrase.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who felt that way! 😂
That’s happened before. We are not alone.
Good thing there was a warehouse full of shamwow's nearby
Picture landing a 747 with no jets, just gliding in , chop about half the wings off, and then come in for your one- time shot not on a concrete runway, but on Daytona Beach.
Yeah, they're pretty good pilots.
Like Mrs. Lovell said, " if they could make a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could LAND it "
I don't know if you know the work of David Sedaris, but once he did an entire essay where he just read cooking instructions from China. ("When I read the phrase, 'cut the penis into small pieces and arrange attractively,' my first thought was ... HOW?")
I worked the STS-37 landing convoy on TV-2 and I remember the radio chatter when everyone realized how short Atlantis was going to be. Made for an interesting drive to the orbiter.
End of the day, she and the crew got back safe 👍
BS
@@junejabarbidubi3173retard
This video was so good I had to watch some of it twice.. thanks for sharing the comment.
As for the "BS" claim: prove it or stfu.
Just because you've never gone anywhere or done anything interesting in your life doesn't mean others haven't.
@@junejabarbidubi3173 flerf detected
If this is the landing I think it is, I sustained an injury because of it. I was working in an oilfield southwest of Bakersfield when the shuttle came over. It created a sonic boom that sounded like a small explosion directly behind my head as I was bending over a valve. Not expecting this, I faceplanted into the valve, cutting my forehead and getting a concussion that led to a lost time injury of 4 days bedrest before the doctor cleared me for work. I don’t know if you have ever been part of an accident investigation, but chance event and accident are terms that are not allowed in the root cause analysis. In addition, the report must contain a method to prevent future accidents. The wording of the final report was so twisted that it was actually funny.
I've read a similarly weird work-related incident report where the injury was due to an AT missile hitting an APC. Questions like "Did the tool causing the injury work as intended? Unfortunately, yes.", "What could have been done to prevent the injury? Build inert missiles." etc.
@@CBDuRietz 😂
Where I live, the government's sample form for incident reports includes a space for a picture of how the injury happened. Clearly some desk jockey had visions of photos of an injury re-enactment. The reality is that you get a paper form to fill out, and you try to draw a cartoon of how exactly this all happened. Which is a hilarious result on the form no matter what the accident was.
I don't laugh out loud often, but your comment got me 😂 This is one of my favorite things to do on paperwork when prompts are confusingly non-applicable and I know it won't get me in trouble
Sorry to hear it resulted in an injury though!
Love it! My mom actually designed the STS-37 patch! The video was super interesting!
Asking astronauts to risk their lives to deliver cargo is one thing, but having them poop into bags is just a bridge too far
Poop in a bag in zero G. Talk about un-fun activities, especially for the females.
Yet they managed it in all previous programs, with the exception presumably of Skylab. Though if that went wrong hardly a show stopper.
Some will think it’s a consequence of mixed gender crews, I say in space, no one gives a crap. Patronizing too.
It is as it is ....
I have to wonder if the pilot needed that poop bag following touchdown. I kinda expected those pressure suits to be soiled.
The unisex toilet on the ISS is private to the extent that a screen prevents direct observation. However, it’s neither sound proof nor odor proof. Astronauts have to be grownups about these things.
Hearing that the toilet was a critical piece of equipment, it begs the question about toilet redundancy. 🤔
Guess where I'm just reading....
Plastic bags and zip ties.
@@jimmywrangles but thats not redundancy, that is a contingency plan.
@@Ganiscol It was all the redundancy you were going to get.
@@andreasu.3546 bad planning, NASA!
Just another plug for Wayne Hale’s blog. A treasure trove written by a relentlessly decent and thoughtful guy.
Wayne is the man!
I was an ISS (not Shuttle) flight controller from 1998-2012. I met/worked with Wayne Hale several times. As Scott said...really REALLY knew his stuff. He rivals Gene Kranz (best known for Apollo 13 mission) as a predominant Flight Director (realtime operations) and Program Director (management operations).
Best friend John here. Yeah. I can get an approach to runway 4 at Edwards. Outside chance you'll die, but should be able to land with just a few decades of prison time.
Just wanted to let you know I'm there for you.
BFF's forever. ❤ John
They said a Cessna into Red Square would be bad idea, but someone had to try it.
Hi John🙋🏻♂️
There's a joke about a GA pilot who lands at Area 51 or Edwards by mistake. The CIA grill him and swear him to secrecy and send him home. The following day he lands there again with his wife. The CIA are pissed, but he says "I swear I didn't tell a soul, but can you please tell my wife where I was yesterday?"
@@ABrit-bt6ce The Cessna. Always been a perfect fit for the Russian air defence blind spot. Last week, Ukraine sent an autonomous Cessna 1,200kms into Russian territory to take out their largest military drone factory. :)
@@duckofdeath3266 I've seen the RC Cessna but didn't understand the context. Thanks.
Hey Scott, I’d like to offer a tiny bit of trivia.
You said this wasn’t the slowest shuttle landing. Well technically it depends on if you are talking about airspeed or groundspeed. STS-37 main gear touchdown was at 168 KEAS (airspeed), but 156 KGS which is the slowest ever groundspeed for a shuttle landing. However, on STS-28, Brewster Shaw touched down at 155 KEAS - the slowest ever airspeed for a shuttle touchdown, but his groundspeed was actually 157 KGS which was 1 knot faster than Steve Nagel’s groundspeed on STS-37.
mmK
And *that*, kids, is why we read the comments on CZcams videos.
How is the air speed and ground speed so different when you're basically touching the ground.
@@Ilove3SGTE wind
@@Ilove3SGTE
Because of differences in surface winds at touchdown. STS-37 in this case had a higher headwind than STS-28.
You being a pilot now made this video a whole lot better! This happens with airliners as well but we have power to compensate for all the computer errors on the descent path all the way down.
Except if you are in an unpowered glider
@@patricktho6546 Actual gliders glide pretty efficiently and have a lot of margin for error. Gliders typically have a glide ratio of between 30:1 and 60:1, so for every foot of altitude you lose you can glide 30-60 feet horizontally. The shuttle's glide ratio starts at is 2:1 at supersonic speeds and improves to 4.5:1 during approach and landing, so for every foot of altitude it loses it only gets another 4.5 feet horizontally. So in a glider, every foot of altitude you have gives you about 10 times as much ability to maneuver and reposition as in the shuttle.
I think you really meant to write "...all the HUMAN errors on the descent path.."
Yeah, "computer errors" because the humans didn't enter the data correctly.
@@ShalashalskaNow try it with a paraglider after the headwind picks up 😊
To fly into edwards, get your plane into the static display during an airshow. Saw a couple of RV pilots there a little over a year ago and that's what they did. Also, great place for an airshow because it's in a supersonic corridor. Three booms at the show, and the Thunderbirds! Awesome!
There's an airshow happening in October 2025!
@scottmanley See you there in Oct 2025!!
I'm a simple man. I see Scott uploads a video about the shuttles, I watch it :)
I'm a simpler man, l see Scott uploads a video, I watch it :)
@@NoName-zg2te Absolutely valid
I'm a simple man
@@dermotgannon4895 Im a simp man
I see Scott uploading *anything* I watch it... :-)
I didn't even know that happened. Thanks!
Any landing where you can walk away is a success.
On two or four legs?
😊
It's a _good_ landing if you can use the aircraft again!
Naw, that would mean that I had a "successful" landing that costs $25K. Still have bent airplane parts in my music room to remind me.
@@UncleKennysPlace You're still with us, I'd argue that's at least some level of success :)
@@jantjarks7946
Three in this case.
5:03 I can certainly help with this. I promise you'll be able to land there. Once. You may never get to do anything else ever again, but you'll get to land there once.
My uncle worked for NASA during this time period. His job title was Director of Safety. I asked him once is that just for the vehicle assembly building and he said , no, no , no, Im over all of NASA safety. he died about 12 years ago.
I've never been able to find any reference to him on the internet. Im still not sure exactly what he did but I remember him talking about having to go out to Edwards every time a shuttle landed out there.
He had a background in law enforcement and public safety. He was not an engineer and that caused some problems when he would tell the engineers they couldnt do something for safety reasons. So NASA got a college somewhere to give him an honorary degree so the engineers wouldn't complain so much that a policy wonk was telling them how to be safe.
I miss the shuttle, it was so cool.
Shuttle was a fail, America couldn't launch astronauts for a lot of years until a South African came to the rescue.
And still nothing can bring back a sattelite back to earth for repairs and relaunching.
Also performing an EVA on a sattelite.
It was not the expected succes, but a different kind of it.
Politics were the issue we had no replacement launcher foe humans in the US for decades.
@@patricktho6546 yes, it was the politics of the country that hindered it. Even today we wouldn't have the ability to do what we did in the past, like repairing the mirror in the Hubble telescope.
Space Shuttles killed more people than the Manson Family or the Son of Sam.
If I were to pick a single success criteria for a space vehicle, it would be zero fatalities.
@@LasRozasDeMadrid I love the Space Shuttle but it was a political monster, and whenever politics is involved you have absolute greed, selfishness and stupidity.
The space shuttle..... What an amazing machine.
LOL. Talk about landing short when I was a flight engineer on 130's out of Little Rock when we would land on the assault strip you would always see tire tracks/ruts about 20 feet before the beginning of the strip in the grass. Oppppps.
15year Ac-130 mechanic here.
Hercs don't need no runway anyhow!
My mind is blown ones again! Thank you for telling us about this, i had no idea this happened!
Would love more of these!
Thank you Scott!
One of the big ironies about this that you didn't mention is that Kennedy wound up improving in time and would've been just fine for a landing that day. Surprised Wayne didn't mention that, but in all the space news articles of the time, especially AvWeek, it was a huge deal.
love the shuttle vids scott, keep it up!
My husband, Donovan Conrad, worked in building 5 as a tech for years and was able to fly the simulator for years on 3rd shift before the program started scheduling training 24/7. Therefore he was one of the best pilots on the shuttle. He had more flight hours than most of the astronauts. He was consulted on STS 37 and showed them that he could land at 155.
Fascinating episode here Scott.
Thanks
Amazing story Scott! Roy Bridges is a relative of an exwife. We saw a launch a year or so before it blew up (challenger?). Amazing engineering technology and astronaut skills. Totally amazing. Mr Bridges an extremely humble and polite man. RB
If you listen to the mission audio you can hear Steve Nagel was annoyed but keeping his cool when welcomed back. "Postflight Analysis showed the wind velocity profile outside of the 'Edwards Maximum Design Wind'. Early in the HAC tailwinds were 100 knots. The Final touchdown speed was 167 KEAS with a right crosswind of 10 knots and a sink rate of 2.3 feet per second -- STS-37 Flight Crew Report p. 26 From the recommendations it would seem the crew was given nothing specific about the STA observations.
I think these are my favourite Scott Manley videos. "Here's a cool space story that I'm going to take 10 minutes to tell you about."
WOW! What an adventure in flight! Thank you for bringing us this story and the archival recordings to picture it with!
Hi Scott
Thanks for telling this amazing story ❤
Love these kinds of historical stories, Scott!
Thank you for the great information. Learned alot about the landing fields. and never knew about the short landing.
The pilots for the shuttles are amazing.
Very nicely done! i'll stay tuned. thanks
You’ll love this Scott. Long ago I was supporting test flights out of Edward’s. We had an urgent trip out there from Orlando and flew in one of the corporate jets and landed at Edward’s. There was just me and another guy as passengers and we got a call from the pilots to come up front as we approached. The pilot said “which one should I land on?” Meaning the concrete runway or the shuttle landing strip. Had to be one of the coolest experiences ever.
But which one did you land on?
Weellllllll......we are waiting....
@@kiereluurs1243 The regular concrete one. I’m assuming that was the only real choice.
Fascinating story, thank you!
Rally great story! Thanks for posting.
Thank you Scott Manley
Great job Scott, very interesting history of the Shuttle. What a great way to fly, lol
Thanks Scott!
CGP Grey likes the little gem about the runway names.
I knew as soon as i saw the title, Wayne Hale''s blog post was the inspiration😄
Fantastic. I always learn something new from you.
I loved Wayne's post about this and was glad to see you cover it. That said, I'm really upset that you didn't break out your E6-B whiz wheel to explain crosswind components! 😉
Your posts are always such a treat! I learn so much from them. Thank you Scott! I was a USUA BFI (United States Ultralight Association, Basic Flight Instructor) at the time. I taught in a top mount Quicksilver Sprint II.
I flew within a mile of the 747 piggybacking STS-37 back (I was 250’AGL or so). What a sight!
I was lucky enough to fly from Edwards because one of my students was a member and he took me up in a T-34. I think he was an F-16 driver ...but he sure loved flying that Quicksilver! What a great memory! My business was called Magnificent Flying Machines and we flew from a small field called Brian Ranch out near Crystalaire airport. I still fly a Sprint II but don’t teach anymore. Antelope Valley is a truly inspiring place to fly.
☺
Love these nuggets of history!
I love these stories. Normally, I would not even think about this type of thing. Or, if I read about this, would think nothing of it and miss out on such a fantastic story.
oh hell yeah. HELL yeah. i forgot about this one! i always think the white sands landing is super interesting too - would love a video about alternate landing sites if you ever have enough to say about them!
Wow this was a really cool story. So much goes into these little jaunts into space, makes you really think what will go into future space flights that are to other planets and beyond.
This was a great story. I love Concord and eclipses so what a great combo
"I'm in the Air Force."
"Oh, that's cool! What do you do?"
"I measure the dryness of dry lake beds."
The people who do it manege the whole airfield. Pretty good people
"I'm in the Air Force."
"Oh, that's cool! What do you do?"
-"I measure the dryness of dry lake beds."-
"I play a key role in decision making. I decide whether or not it is safe for the Shuttle to land."
As always on a space shuttle landing video I have to post this amazing and hilarious presentation; never gets old:
czcams.com/video/Jb4prVsXkZU/video.html
wow - holding a brick off the ground at 157 kts, "come on bessy, just a little bit more...." - thanks for the vid sir
Love these recent videos about unusual shuttle landings! Would you consider making a video about the single shuttle landing at White Sands Space Harbor?
I know it makes no sense to have a favorite orbiter.. but Atlantis is mine. Saw Discovery a number of years ago, so awesome to see in person
"Hello this is Scott Manley" should be a ringtone. Best voice on the youtube.
I was lucky enough to see the shuttle land at Edward's in the early 80s. 😊
Thanks!
That was fascinating
Very interesting story about the STS-37 landing. The Edwards Dry Lake is an incredibly forgiving surface for landing. Some emergency backup landing sites are also dry lake beds.
There are so many stories like this that will never see the light of day, but at least folks like Scott can highlight a few of them. I guess you could also jump down the Wikipedia rabbit hole but then you don’t have the Scottish accent so not really worth it then.
I mean... _Surely_ there's a TTS engine with a Scottish profile for you to download and have it read whatever you've got on screen! 😁
@@DUKE_of_RAMBLEbut none of them are *Manley* enough
@@Barty.Crowell _Ha!_ 😋
Although, there's certainly enough content to train a voice synthesizer on... 🤔
Like the shuttle mission that almost burned up but was saved by a steel door rather than the aluminum frame after a tile was lost.
I got to see this missions return trip to the cape. The shuttle and carrier landed in Oklahoma to refuel. It was majestic seeing the combination trundle down the runway and then taking off. Aerospace nut since birth, this is one of my core memories with my mom and dad making sure I got to see it.
I remember being in an aircraft that used that overshoot once, rotated just about the end of it. Hot, altitude and a full load of fuel on board. Flew in ground effect for a while as well, till those 4 jet engines had burned off enough fuel, and gotten up the speed, so we could climb. Trees were companions for a few minutes, as well as the town we went over at a little above treetop and rooftop height.
Sounds like Aerosucre
Yea did someone not calculate TOLD correctly or what? Thats scary as hell, being stuck in ground effect.
@@MattH-wg7ou Probably not calculated correctly, or they figured they could get away with it. Helped by a 6km long runway, not by it being 41C that afternoon, and bright and sunny. We did land mostly empty, part of the fuel load was transferred en route as practice for the other planes.
How much fuel does one "burn off" down the length of the runway?
I was stationed at Edwards AFB (South Base B2 OTE project) was there watching it & with our flight line truck we had ability to be close vs everyone else.
Night Landing was better, I sat in drivers seat of our maintenance van with high beams shining onto runway. Wind rushing was something to hear couldn't sew much till touch down about 200 yards directly in front of me. 😊😊😊
I got to watch STS-40 land at Edwards summer '91. My dad's cousin was on the mission. Two things still stick in my mind from watching: that steep glide (drop!) slope coming in was downright scary to see, and the double sonic boom.
Hi Scott!
Land safe!
The first several landings were done on lake beds and not paved surfaces. I just found that out a couple months ago. I didn’t remember that as a kid.
_Enterprise,_ 1977.
Great video
The space shuttle was insane in retrospect. Yeah we have Dream Chaser and X 37B but it was the size of a Starship landing like an airplane
Apollo to the moon and back - don’t tell them about the inconvenience of pooping in a bag for 2 weeks.
Knead germicide capsule into bag contents.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Just what I "knead" on my trip to the moon.
I watched most of these shuttle landings. It was a great time to be around Edwards Air Force Base.
What did the Orbiter sound like on glide to landing?
@@RideAcrossTheRiver
You heard the sonic booms. It's how you knew the shuttle was close.
Edwards has a sitting area for people to watch anything going on.
As for hearing the sound going by the shuttle as it lands. We were not on top of the shuttle.
Really interesting!
Black rock desert! Glad the shuttle never had to bring her on the playa. Having flown around burning man, I'm just happy I never had to deal with hypergolic fuels.
Scotty thanks for the footage I've never seen before and your analysis of what in the Navy when I would drop Nukes as ephemeris data. High wind speeds in the upper atmosphere would cause havoc on a free falling cylinder of mass distruction. Just saying.
Also Naked Records are my favorite house to spin. You get it
5:10 great bunny trail tossed it. That’s a nugget of gold.
That was Great!
I’ve spent a lot of time landing on those lakebed runways over the last decade. There are dangers associated with not landing on the marked areas, as there can be large fishers that the USAF fills in on the lakebed runways.
Nice info
"STS-37...Edwards Tower...stand-by, I have a number for you to copy..."
Watched this Landing live in my office. Had the only TV on my floor in Houston. It was packed.....
I'm pretty sure this is one of the landings my dad took me to. We used to make the 15-minute drive from Boron whenever the shuttle would land at Edwards.
I like how after the one time they landed at White Sands, _Columbia_ puffed gypsum dust into orbit the rest of her career. RIP crew of STS-107.
Amusing you should talk about _Atlantis_ and mention the toilet being a mission critical part...
On the final shuttle mission, as if sensing it was no longer needed, there was a mention of the toilet door slamming open and become partly detached when it landing at KSC
Maybe the refurbishment team knew when readying it before launch. Such knowledge can affect work quality whenever humans are involved .
The shuttle pilots were amazing. Once committed to landing they had no go around option which is kind of nuts in a vehicle of that size. But they pinned every one. Massive respect to all the shuttle pilots.
Thanks Scott.....
Old F-4 Shoe🇺🇸
It's so cool that there are SO many moving parts and decisions to be made for a successful space mission. The sheer number of little details guarantees that we get handfuls of these murphy's law stories where ofc the one runway they didn't train on is the only one they can land on
I never realized that. I'm pretty sure that's the one I went to see while stationed at VAFB. It seemed further away than I expected, but I'd never seen a landing there so I had no reference.
I second Wayne Hale's blog; should be required reading for anyone interested in STS specifically, and space exploration in general.
I miss you scott❤❤❤❤
A fascinating tale. What serious Space Shuttle aficionado doesn't know the name Wayne Hale? A true legend from the glory days.
Scott, you refer to the HAC as "heading alignment cone", but the documentation I have refers to it as _heading alignment cylinder._ That is from a text file titled *Space Transportation System Technical Reference Manual* that I downloaded from a BBS in the '90s. Unfortunately I have never been able to find it on the internet. Fly safe.
I've also heard it called Heading Alignment Circle, perhaps in a nod to any Flat Earthers out there. ; )
Go for... "Launch the Compton Gama ray observatory", how cool is that?!
The instrument was simply called GRO at Ball, while I was there at KSFC supporting another program CRRES I ran into another Ball worker bee who had been there a long time maybe a year supporting GRO? Not certain the exact timeframe. The Spacecraft also had a Ground emergency when they pulled the Battery connection while in the PHSF (Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility) I think that was during a fueling operation, the Battery power wires were dangling when somehow the inner connector insulator insert came out, wasn't good, the battery was rather large. Ball furnished the Star Trackers for the STS (On Orbit Navigation) Fun memory thanks!
ISTR many modern missions using clones of the Ørsted star tracker design from DMI or DTU . Ørsted was a smallsat mapping the Earth magnetic field as an update to a 1960s NASA program .
Never heard about this incident! Every landing that I watched coverage of, touchdown was at the exact spot that CapCom announced just after reentry.
I can definitely get you into Edwards.
Being allowed to leave on your own accord, ehh... 😁
7:02 Ron Weasley's Dad must be proud to be able to play around with such advanced muggle technology
So much words for a short Story
I admit I had trouble seeing the risk of a short landing, given the point Scott made about the runway being an arbitrary point in the lakebed. That photo of the layout is just featureless nothing aside from the landing markers, so as long as you're lined up straight it's just a slightly different patch of dirt than intended. Not like that other runway, where the same approach might involve bumping across a meadow and a road in the space shuttle before getting to pavement.
Amazing that these space shuttles go out to different planets and galaxies and return to earth like gliders
after seeing footage of inside a shuttle moments before it breaks up on reentry, seeing any footage inside a shuttle gives me the heeby jeebies. I can't imagine stressing about landing problems while ignoring the fact that you could just explode at any second just getting there
Wild.
I was stationed at Edwards AFB from 01 to 02 ( I cross trained to another career field so I wasnt there very long) Other then the history and seeing some cool aircraft it is by far the most depressing base I was ever stationed at. It is the pinnacle of middle of nowhere. It was a 70 mile round trip to go to walmart for anything.
Man I'd like to hear the in-cockpit comm on this one!
It _might_ not be that dramatic given astronauts always sound cool as a cucumber on comms.