Quotes About Orbiter

One of the jokes on our flight is that, if we have a normal entry day going, the plan is for me... to actually take the orbiter first and fly it for maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then hand it on over to Scooter.

So, whenever Scooter was the Pilot, he never had a chance to fly the orbiter. So, the joke is: I'm going to have a chance to fly it first and hand it over to him.

I witnessed the building of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first orbiter to be launched into space.

As suggested earlier, postflight investigation found that the computer failures had been caused by particles in the GPC amplifiers. The general-purpose computers had not been given the normal zero-gravity "particle impact noise detection" tests. So, again, we were lucky that the computers did not totally fail. If GPC 2 had failed during entry and we had used the recommended procedures to fix it, we would have lost flight control of the orbiter. That would have been very bad for us.

I see it as one of my jobs to make sure that, it sounds ridiculous, but to make sure the folks are eating, make sure folks are getting enough fluids, make sure folks are, you know, comfortable in the orbiter.

I enjoy going out to the plants, the factories where just some sub-element maybe of the orbiter or the space station is built. Those people take such pride in that component, and they build it to perfection, and it's just a pleasure to see that.

NASA Lunar Orbiter V photo, No. MR 168).