One of the decisions space shuttle designers had to make was
about the nature of the strap-on boosters. Should they be liquid fueled or
solid fueled? Liquid fueled boosters would be more reliable, but solids
cheaper. Engineers decided on cheaper and went with solid rocket boosters.
Another decision was over how the shuttle would be protected
from the immense heat of reentry. Engineers decided on thermal protection
tiles, to be glued on to the underside and leading edges of the vehicle.
Both decisions would come back to haunt NASA in the form of
two destroyed orbiters, along with their crews of astronauts.
Rockwell began construction of the first shuttle orbiter in 1974. It was named the Enterprise, after the famous television star ship. It was designed solely as an approach and landing test article. It successfully completed a series of drop tests in 1977 from a modified Boeing 747.
The other orbiters that were ordered and built were the
Columbia, named after the sloop that accomplished the first American
circumnavigation of the globe, the Challenger, named after an American Naval
research vessel that sailed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during the 1870s,
the Discovery, named after one of two ships used by the British explorer James
Cook in the 1770s during voyages in the South Pacific that led to the discovery
of the Hawaiian Islands, and the Atlantis, named after the primary research
vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts from 1930 to
1966.