Here's the back side of the LO2 T-0 Umbilical mated to the Columbia, taken from inside the TSM. A whole lot of engineering and testing went into this. The big flexhose is Liquid Oxygen [LOX].



The yellow carrier plate has "feet" on the bottom (lower left in above photo) that rest in indentations in the orbiter. Those are hooked up first, then the rest of the carrier plate is rotated forward until two collets near the top lock into place. Those shock absorber things on the side are called "links" and guide the carrier plate back into the TSM at T-0. In this second view below, you can see the cables that violently peel the T-0 umbilical off the side of the orbiter at T-0. There's a massive 2-ton dropweight in the back of the TSM held in place by an explosive bolt. At T-0, the bolt blows, the dropweight falls, and the umbilical is pulled off the side of the orbiter. When the umbilical is safely back inside the TSM, two explosive thrusters blast the clamshell door closed so the flames don't impinge on the precious quick-disconnects on the umbilical. I was told those QDs cost a quarter million each. I believe it.



I've seen high-speed video taken from inside the TSMs at T-0, showing the umbilical being retracted by the dropweight and cables. Sadly, I don't find any of that on YouTube. This is the best I can find. You can see the umbilical being yanked back into the TSM just after the SRBs light. Fast forward to 5:00 minutes:

[youtube]https://youtu.be/wlz5u1OBe_c[/youtube]

Edit: Better view of umbilical retraction at 9:00

Edit #2: View from inside the TSM at 9:30!!!

I have literally hundreds of similar "progress photos", and all the negatives (1989 was before digital cameras, remember.) When we finished the job, I offered all the 8x10 photos and negatives to NASA DE [Design Engineering] and, would you believe, they didn't want them?

Maybe they'll scavenge the hold-down posts off the MLPs? Here's a shot of Columbia on MLP-3 which gives some perspective on the 32' tall TSMs.

I gave all the photos and negatives to my step-grandson, who is working for the company converting the MLP for Orion. All I have is what I had scanned.

That was a great reference! Thanks for finding it. It explained what the LETF did. If people only knew how difficult this stuff was...

Yes, right place at the right time (or someone was looking out for me?). I was living in San Luis Obispo at the time, doing odd jobs. I saw an add in the paper for engineers to work on the West Coast Space Shuttle program. Since I had a BSEE and had instrumentation experience, I sent off a resume to Lockheed. I heard nothing for six months but, while I was working as an electrician, I got a call. They interviewed me and I guess I fooled them; They hired me in 1984 for $17 per hour. So, for the next two years, I drove from SLO to Vandenberg and back every day until - shortly after the Challenger accident - the West Coast shuttle program was cancelled. Lockheed had been flying me to KSC every so often for training (with a real Orbiter) and I guess the boss there liked me. When I got the official layoff notice at Vandenberg, he made me an offer to come to Florida. Since I was out of places to work in SLO, It took me about 3 uS to accept.

I called my wife and told her, "Honey, we're moving to Florida". Amazingly, she said, "OK, when?" Did I mention how much I love this woman? We're still married, too!

Some programmer types might be interested in the programming language the engineers used for shuttle testing on the ground: GOAL [Ground Operations Aerospace Language]. When I first hired on, I had to learn that because system engineers wrote their own code for launch processing. I can't seem to find any information on GOAL, but it was a "threaded" language, processing one line of code at a time in sequential order. GOAL was pretty easy to understand, being mostly written in English acronyms. I can only remember a few of the keyboard commands like, for example, S_FD, which translated to Status Function Designator. An FD was a parameter like a pressure, temperature, etc. A_AA meant "Activate Audible Alarm" which was the Sonalert alarm in the console which meant something was wrong. During processing (or even the launch countdown), it was possible to stop the program that was monitoring your system, go in and change an exception limit, and then resume the program. This was done occasionally when it was determined that an out-of-tolerance condition really wasn't a problem. I think the ECLSS [Environmental Control and Life Support System] engineers got a Silver Snoopy award once for saving a launch due to resetting a limit on the fly.

The electronics in each launch console consisted of 7400 series TTL logic. Amazing, no? The memory consisted of 50Mb Winchester drives, which were about 16" dia. hard platters...also amazing. BTW, a "console" consisted of three keyboard stations and a bunch of racks behind. The two small monitors and keypads on the right are for selecting OTV [Operational Television] cameras. The panels with analog gauges are "hardwired safing panels" which could be used to safely monitor and shut down a hazardous system should the LPS fail. The keyboard station with large monitor was where the engineers usually sat. The small photo below shows the brains of the console and the Winchester drive.



For those interested, there's more information on the Launch Processing System at The shuttle launch processing system

While waiting for the second TSM to show up, this spaceship rolled by on its way to the hangar [OPF-3]:

What a great thread. Best for ages.

Andrew

Trying a different way to post photos so they'll display bigger.

I found the following GOAL documentation using the NASA TRS (Technical Reports Server) at https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp

GOAL Technical Report
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 024395.pdf

Volume 1 - Study Overview
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 007774.pdf

Volume 2 - Compiler
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 007775.pdf

Volume 3 - Data Bank
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 007776.pdf

Volume 4 - Interpretive Code Translator
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 007777.pdf

Volume 5 - Application Studies
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 007778.pdf

That worked!

Good deal! That last link had a list of the commands we used. Brings back memories...

Somehow we engineers discovered how to send a text message from one console to another. (There were 14 consoles). I put that knowledge to use one boring night after a DoD mission. The DPS [Data Processing System] guys at C12 were wiping the onboard mass memory units. I assumed they were overwriting the data with ones and zeros a number of times. The process took many hours and the entire firing room was just sitting there glassy eyed, waiting for the process to complete so we could power down and go home. So I sent the following message to the DPS console: "I can feel it Dave, my mind is going..." Oh well, it seemed funny at the time

The secret was to let BT host the photos rather than Imageshack. BT allows up to 5Meg. Here's the riggers getting ready to hoist the LO2 TSM. The operator of that 250 ton crane is sitting in a cab several hundred feet above. He can control the movement so accurately that part of their certification test was to lower the hook onto a spray can and push on the plunger. Amazing:

I bet you guys probably quoted that movie quite a bit, just like a lot of people in various particular lines of work have a favorite flick.

Mostly Animal House Our comments on the 'net were all recorded, and the management listened to them a lot so we had to be careful what we said. One day the EPD [Electrical Power Distribution] engineer on console reported a problem to the OTC [Orbiter Test Conductor], Roberta Wyrick. She asked if the problem was intermittent or hard on. The EPD engineer replied, "No, I've got a hard on failure". Some anonymous engineer piped up, saying, "Maybe Roberta can help you with that."

I ended up being an OTC, working for Roberta (The Best Test Conductor there ever was). Before that, I was doing field engineering on the MLP and OPF-3. I learned a lot about the launch facilities and met a lot of people in that job. Before that, I was an Orbiter Instrumentation engineer. It's harder to hit a moving target

The MLP had been sitting out in the weather for many years, and we found some things that were corroded. Here's a photo of an SRB hold-down post (no belly band) and that little stanchion in front of it supports a 1" SS tube to which supplies the nitrogen purge to the SRB aft skirt during launch.



Here's how the mounting holes looked when we found them:



We finally found some Heli-Coils large enough and had the ironworkers drill out the corroded holes down to clean metal and install the Heli-Coils. We did lots of boring (no pun intended), but necessary, stuff like that.