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NASA's reusable shuttle orbiter.
Part of a new, less expensive, space transportation system.
A spaceship that will put our country in the earth orbit
freight business.
This is Orbiter 101 as it rolled out
of the hangar in Palmdale, California.
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.
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.
It is here that the Enterprise will be mounted piggyback
atop a 747 for approach and landing tests.
Everything is nearly ready for the upcoming tests,
according to Director of Space Shuttle Operations, Isaac T.
Gillam.
Yes, the facilities are nearing completion.
The 747 is currently being modified at the Boeing
plant in Seattle, Washington.
We expect them to begin flight testing of this aircraft,
with these modifications, in December,
and to transport it here to Dryden in January of 1977.
These are the astronauts who will
be involved in the first test flights of the space shuttle.
Joe Engle, Dick Truly, Fred Haise, and Gordon Fullerton.
We asked Gordon Fullerton to describe
one of the typical shuttle missions
into space that will begin in 1979.
The shuttle system that is launched vertically.
About halfway up, the solids burn out and drop off,
and the orbiter continues on into orbit using the thrust
from the main liquid engines.
The payload bay doors are opened once the shuttle is on orbit,
and the payload inside is deployed or operated
depending on the type of mission that's to be flown.
Once the mission is complete, then,
the doors are closed the smaller rocket engines
that you see in the upper left and right corners
of the aft part of the orbiter, are
fired to slow the orbiter enough to cause
it to re-enter the atmosphere.
It makes a nose forward, nose high reentry,
slowing at speed until finally it is flying conventionally
as an aircraft.
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.
A transportation system capable of delivering 65,000 pounds
of payload into orbit.
Drugs, metal alloys, electronic crystals, and glass lenses all
can be produced in weightless space.
Far superior to anything made on Earth.
Satellites will be manufactured more inexpensively,
because they can either be repaired in space
or returned to earth.
These are but a few of the jobs the space shuttle can
do as it works for us in space, and flies back
to land like an airplane, up to 100 times.
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