WEBVTT

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NASA's reusable shuttle orbiter.

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Part of a new, less expensive, space transportation system.

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A spaceship that will put our country in the earth orbit freight business.

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This is Orbiter 101 as it rolled out of the hangar in Palmdale, California.

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It has been named the Enterprise.

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It has taken four years to go from the orbiter design stage to the nearly completed spacecraft.

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These were some of the steps along the way.

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The next stop is NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center near Lancaster, California.

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It is here that the Enterprise will be mounted piggyback atop a 747 for approach and landing tests.

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Everything is nearly ready for the upcoming tests, according to Director of Space Shuttle Operations, Isaac T. Gillam.

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Yes, the facilities are nearing completion.

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The 747 is currently being modified at the Boeing plant in Seattle, Washington.

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We expect them to begin flight testing of this aircraft, with these modifications,

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in December, and to transport it here to Dryden in January of 1977.

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These are the astronauts who will be involved in the first test flights of the space shuttle.

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Joe Engle, Dick Truly, Fred Haise, and Gordon Fullerton.

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We asked Gordon Fullerton to describe one of the typical shuttle missions into space that will begin in 1979.

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The shuttle system that is launched vertically.

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About halfway up, the solids burn out and drop off,

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and the orbiter continues on into orbit using the thrust from the main liquid engines.

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The payload bay doors are opened once the shuttle is on orbit,

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and the payload inside is deployed or operated depending on the type of mission that's to be flown.

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Once the mission is complete, then,

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the doors are closed the smaller rocket engines

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that you see in the upper left and right corners of the aft part of the orbiter,

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are fired to slow the orbiter enough to cause it to re-enter the atmosphere.

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It makes a nose forward, nose high reentry, slowing at speed until finally it is flying conventionally as an aircraft.

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However, un-powered, and makes a gliding approach and landing to the runway.

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The reusable space shuttle, a new transportation system, with economy its major asset.

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A transportation system capable of delivering 65,000 pounds of payload into orbit.

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Drugs, metal alloys, electronic crystals, and glass lenses all can be produced in weightless space.

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Far superior to anything made on Earth.

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Satellites will be manufactured more inexpensively, because they can either be repaired in space or returned to earth.

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These are but a few of the jobs the space shuttle can do as it works for us in space,

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and flies back to land like an airplane, up to 100 times.