Martin Marietta Aerospace Shuttle Columba External Tank First Flight Memorabilia

Description

Martin Marietta Aerospace Space Shuttle Columba External Tank First Flight Memorabilia c.1981
Two Medallions and Original Presentation Material
Items are all in Very Good Used condition with no tears, stains, writing, or dog ears
Please see all attached pictures
Shipping includes a Tracking Number
The Marshall Space Center was named manager of the Shuttle External Tank projects.
In August 1973, NASA named the Denver Division of the Martin Marietta Corporation for negotiation of the contract for the design, development and test evaluation of the external tank. NASA stipulated that tank assembly would take place at Marshall’s Michoud Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana.
In October 1975, Marshall reported that fixtures were nearing completion at Michoud for manufacturing the external tank, which stood 154 feet tall and was 27 feet in diameter. Weighing more than 1.5 million pounds, the tank was designed to hold more than a million gallons of propellant. Several of the fixtures at the site were more than half the length of a football field and several stories high. Two fixtures at Michoud, each supported by massive steel tripods anchored in concrete on each side, were so imposing that they were nicknamed "Trojan Horses."
During the first half of the 1970s, tooling required to build the tank was assembled at Michoud. Some of the tools weighed up to 300,000 pounds. In the first few months of 1976, more than 1,298 tons of material -- mostly smaller items -- for tooling and fixtures had been delivered by some 78 trucks from a supplier in Dallas, and other loads were expected. “Before all required items have been delivered, an estimated 225 trucks will have been involved, about 75 percent of which would carry oversize loads,” NASA reported.
Tooling size required floor strengthening and other modifications at Michoud. In addition, training programs in aerospace manufacturing techniques were in progress for locally-hired machine operators who had experience in less precise ship-building.
In November 1975, the critical design review for the external tank was completed at Michoud, clearing the way for production. By July 1976, workers were assembling the first tank. By April 1977, hydrostatic testing -- pressurization with water -- had been completed on the liquid oxygen part of the tank. Then, on September 9, 1977, the first external tank poked its huge nose out of the main assembly building at Michoud and rolled slowly out on its transporter into the sunshine.
In a brief ceremony preceding the rollout, Marshall Director William R. Lucas told those present that the rollout was particularly noteworthy. “The external tank is of first-order importance to the space shuttle system. It not only contains the propellants that operate the main engines, but it also becomes the structural backbone of the system with both solid rocket boosters and the orbiter attached to it."
Following Lucas' remarks, the main Michoud building opened and the tank rolled out to the cheers and applause from the spectators. It was then pulled to the Michoud dock and loaded on a barge for the trip to NASA National Space Technology Laboratories, now known as Stennis Space Center, in Mississippi.
On July 6, 1979, the first flight external tank was delivered to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where it would be mated to the orbiter, Columbia, for the first flight of the space shuttle in 1981.
STS-1 (
Space Transportation System
-1)
was the first
orbital spaceflight
of
NASA
's
Space Shuttle program
. The first
orbiter
,
Columbia
, launched on 12 April 1981 and returned on 14 April, 54.5 hours later, having orbited the Earth 36 times. Columbia carried a crew of two – mission commander
John W. Young
and pilot
Robert L. Crippen
. It was the first American crewed space flight since the
Apollo–Soyuz Test Project
in 1975. STS-1 was also the only maiden test flight of a new American spacecraft to carry a crew, though it was preceded by
atmospheric testing
of the orbiter and ground testing of the Space Shuttle system.
The launch occurred on the 20th anniversary of
the first human spaceflight
, performed by
Yuri Gagarin
for the
USSR
. This was a coincidence rather than a celebration of the anniversary; a technical problem had prevented STS-1 from launching two days earlier, as was planned.
The External Tank (ET)
provided propellant to the Space Shuttle Main Engines from liftoff until main engine cutoff. The ET separated from the orbiter vehicle 18 seconds after engine cutoff and could be triggered automatically or manually. At the time of separation, the orbiter vehicle retracted its umbilical plates, and the umbilical cords were sealed to prevent excess propellant from venting into the orbiter vehicle. After the bolts attached at the structural attachments were sheared, the ET separated from the orbiter vehicle. At the time of separation, gaseous oxygen was vented from the nose to cause the ET to tumble, ensuring that it would break up upon reentry. The ET was the only major component of the Space Shuttle system that was not reused, and it would travel along a ballistic trajectory into the Indian or Pacific Ocean.
The NASA Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF)
is an 832-acre (1.3 sq mi; 3.4 km2) manufacturing complex owned by
NASA
in
New Orleans East
, a district within
New Orleans, Louisiana
, in the United States. Organizationally it is part of NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center
, and is currently a multi-tenant complex to allow commercial and government contractors, as well as government agencies, to use the site.
The facility was originally constructed in 1940 at the village of
Michoud, Louisiana
, by the Higgins-Tucker division of
Higgins Industries
under the direction of
Andrew Jackson Higgins
. Construction was done on behalf of the United States government for the war production during
World War II
of plywood
C-76 cargo planes
and
landing craft
.
It came under the management of NASA in 1961, and was used for the construction of the
S-IC
first stage of the
Saturn V
rockets and the
S-IB
first stage of the
Saturn IB
rockets built by Chrysler Corporation. It is home to the first stage of the last-constructed Saturn V, SA-515, built by The Boeing Company. The factory's ceiling height limitation - 12 meters, was unable to allow the construction of the bigger
Saturn C-8
direct Moon vehicle, was one of the major reasons why the smaller C-5 (later renamed Saturn V) was chosen instead of the originally planned Moon vehicle. The runway was slowly transformed into Saturn Boulevard in the 1960s with the middle becoming a heliport and decommissioned by the 1970s.
The majority of the NASA factory's history was focused on construction and production of NASA's
Space Shuttle external tank
(ET). Beginning with the rollout of ET-1 on June 29, 1979, which flew on
STS-1
, 136 tanks were produced throughout the Space Shuttle program, ending with the flight-ready tank ET-122, which flew on
STS-134
, rolled out on September 20, 2010. A single tank produced at the facility, ET-94, was not used in spaceflight and remained at Michoud as a
test article
.
Modular parts for the
International Space Station
were
fabricated
at the facility in the mid 1990s until 2010.