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Old 01-25-2017, 10:42 PM
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georgegassaway georgegassaway is offline
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No, that was the third time Enterrpise was stacked. Well, technically at least the 5th time it was stacked (stacked at least 3 times at MSFC in 1978). So let's say Vandenberg was the third facility it was stacked at

Pathfinder was a full-sized mock-up built at MSFC that was originally meant to literally "find the path" for how to handle Enterprise later. So, Pathfinder was hauled down the same roads, picked up by cranes, raised up, and lowered into the Vibration Test Building in order to confirm that it would fit, and give the crews experience handling an orbiter without risking damaging the REAL thing when Enterprise arrived later. And Pathfinder was CRUDE, since it only needed to have the same rough dimensional shape for fitting in place, and mass for balance. It did not need it to look realistic. No cockpit, no rounded nose, no OMS pods, no airfolis - flat slab wings and flat vertical tail. Years later it was overhauled to look "pretty".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Pathfinder



In 1978, Enterprise was flown into Marshal Space Flight Center. I was THERE when it was flown on on top of the 747, they did a low altitude flyby down the runway, 1000 feet or less, really impressive, before circling around downtown Huntsville and landing at the Redstone Arsenal Airstrip.

It was stacked in the Vibration Test Building that was built for testing the Saturn-V and modify t hold the shuttle stack (Russia never had such testing for the N-1, which is a big reason why the N-1 failed). They did three series of vibration tests, one fully loaded (water ballast in the ET), one with a partial load (SRB’s close to empty, IIRC, and ET water ballast at about the level it would be close to SRB sep), then without the SRB’s, shortly after SRB sep. So they had to stack and de-stack it three times.

Quote:
In October 1978, space shuttle Enterprise underwent a Mated Vertical Ground Vibration Test at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s Dynamic Test Stand. The test marked the first time all shuttle elements -- an orbiter, external tank and two solid rocket boosters -- were vertically mated. The test verified that the shuttle performed as expected in its launch configuration.






Later, it was taken to KSC, and used for various test fit checks, interfacing, and stacking inside the VAB. It was rolled out to pad 39A on May 1, 1979.



As for Vandenberg and the shuttle, you could Google a lot more. The wiki below is about SLC-6, originally intended for Titan-III Gemini MOL launches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vande...aunch_Complex_6

When MOL was cancelled later it was heavily modified for shuttle launches. There were many issues, including exhaust trenches built for Titan boosters, thet was not really as big as desired for shuttle SRB's, much concern about that. Even more concerns were about the new composite SRB cases. The SpySats to be flown out of there, with Polar Orbits, required the shuttle to be a bit lighter in order to carry the heaviest spysats. So the Steel cased SRB's were to be composite SRB's instead. Much lighter, that improved the payload launch mass. After the Challenger accident, a lot of things were changed, and the USAF and NRO backed out of the shuttle program as quickly as they could get contracts going to fly those sats on Titan-III's again within a few years.
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