The first test flight of the space shuttle Columbia took place in April, 1981, crewed by veteran astronaut John Young and rookie Robert Crippen. Columbia made five more flights before being joined by space shuttle Challenger in April, 1983. Discovery first flew in August, 1984, followed by Atlantis in October, 1985.
On the surface, the first four and a half years of the space
shuttle era was one of great accomplishment. The shuttle launched a number of
satellites and space probes, including the Long Duration Exposure Facility
(LDEF), as well as a number of military and commercial satellites. Astronauts
performed numerous scientific experiments, especially in the Space Lab Module,
a kind of temporary space science station, carried in the shuttle’s cargo bay.
The first tests of the Manned Maneuvering Unit, which permitted astronauts to
EVA in space without use of a tether, took place. A number of satellites were
captured and returned to Earth using the shuttle’s robotic arm. Some
satellites, such as the Solar Max probe, were serviced in orbit and released.
The shuttle took a number of non-NASA astronauts into space,
including commercial astronaut Charlie Walker. Two American politicians,
Senator Jake Garn and Congressman (now Senator) Bill Nelson were on flights, in
what must be the most unusual political junkets ever gone on.
In 1984, President Reagan announced that the space shuttle
would have the central role in the construction of the first, permanently
manned space station, later called Freedom. Optimism about the utility of the
space shuttle system played a part in the prediction that the space station
could be built for eight billion dollars in eight years, staffing eight people.
That was not to be the case.
The shuttle did not, however, accomplish a decrease in the
cost of space flight. The immense amount of time that it took to service a
shuttle, to turn it around after a flight to get it ready for a new flight,
limited the number of missions the shuttle fleet could perform per year.
Technical glitches tended to further delay shuttle flights. There was no
prospect of the shuttle ever getting anywhere near fifty flights a year. Even
if it could, expendable launchers in other countries, such as the European
Ariane, had started to eat into the commercial launch market, taking away potential
payloads from the shuttle.