Year: 1981

Categories
Columbia Crewed Spaceflight Space Shuttle

STS-1: Columbia’s first flight

  • April 12, 1981

ColumbiaSpace Shuttle Columbia lifts off on the shuttle system’s first flight into a space, with Commander John Young (a Gemini/Apollo veteran) and Robert Crippen aboard, the first two-man American crew since the Gemini program’s final flight in 1966. It’s a true test flight in every sense of the word – every previous American manned spacecraft had been flown unmanned first to verify safety and spaceworthiness, making the shuttle’s first flight a case where everything has to go perfectly the first time.

Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Categories
Columbia Crewed Spaceflight Space Shuttle

Columbia opens the doors

  • April 12, 1981

ColumbiaSafely in orbit, the cargo bay doors are opened for the first time on Space Shuttle Columbia, revealing that some of the shuttle’s protective thermal tiles are already missing. (A later post-landing inspection reveals that more than 100 tiles are damaged, and 16 tiles are completely lost, all probably due to unexpected vibration during launch.) NASA deems the damage non-critical and gives the go-ahead for a landing, even though it’s impossible to see what damage may have been done to the more critical tiles on the shuttle’s underbelly.

Categories
Columbia Crewed Spaceflight Space Shuttle

Columbia returns from orbit

  • April 14, 1981

ColumbiaThe first shuttle to return from space, Columbia touches down on the dry lake bed strip at Edwards Air Force Base in California, two days and six hours after liftoff (and after putting a cool million miles on the odometer). The aerodynamics involved in gliding after re-entry are found to be trickier than the previous test landings of the Enterprise. Inspection of the thermal tiles lining the shuttle’s belly reveals more damage than expected, and NASA begins working to refine the process of fitting the tiles to the shuttle.

Categories
Atari VCS Video Games

Missile Command

  • April 21, 1981

Missile CommandAtari releases the home version of Missile Command as a cartridge for the Atari 2600. The manual included with the game explains the missile attack as the product of an alien invasion, not Reagan-era Cold War tensions. Though the cartridge is an instant best-seller, its programmer receives a reward that convinces him to look for work somewhere other than Atari.

More about Atari 2600 in Phosphor Dot Fossils

Categories
Computers

Small area networks on microcomputers

  • May 1, 1981

Corvus OmniNetCorvus Systems, makers of hard disk drives for the Apple II and other microcomputers, releases the Corvus OmniNet, the first local area networking hardware/software bundle aimed at small businesses, schools, and even high-end home users. Since Corvus’ 5 and 10 megabyte hard disk drives for the Apple II had initial price tags in the $5,000 range, Corvus also created the OmniNet hub to allow small businesses and schools to maximize that investment by allowing multiple computers to access it. Forseeing the future of the business market, Corvus also makes OmniNet cards for the IBM PC. Though Ethernet is already in use at this time, its expensive hardware and installation is generally limited to large business customers.

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight Salyut Soyuz

Soyuz 40

  • May 14, 1981

Soyuz 40The final first-generation Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz 40, is launched on a week-long spaceflight by the Soviet Union. With Leonid Popov and Romanian cosmonaut Dumitru Prunariu aboard, Soyuz 40 visits space station Salyut 6 for several days, and is the last spacecraft to dock at the five-year-old space station. The Soyuz 40 crew returns to Earth on May 22nd. Future Soyuz launches will use the upgraded Soyuz-T vehicles.

Categories
Science & Technology Weather & Climate

Totable Tornado Observatory

  • May 16, 1981

Weather BulletinResearchers and storm chasers from the National Weather Service’s Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma make the first field deployment of the 300-pound TOtable Tornado Observatory (TOTO) instrument package, a modified oil drum filled with meteorological instrumentation which is intended to be placed directly into the path of an oncoming tornado. The first deployment, in north Texas, yields no data – no tornado forms for TOTO to study. Over the next five years, despite several “close calls”, TOTO is never successfully placed in the direct path of a tornado. The TOTO program is discontinued in 1987.