[mrexroad]

Thanks! I’d seen about the bailout capability mentioned in passing, but had always wondered what it would be in practice (spoiler: a pole!). Also, I didn’t realize a second engine almost shut down on STS-51-F .

Per the links: “A particularly significant enhancement was bailout capability. Unlike the ejection seat in a fighter plane, the shuttle had an inflight crew escape system[12] (ICES). The vehicle was put in a stable glide on autopilot, the hatch was blown, and the crew slid out a pole to clear the orbiter's left wing. They would then parachute to earth or the sea. […] Before the Challenger disaster, this almost happened on STS-51-F, when a single SSME failed at about T+345 seconds. […] A second SSME almost failed because of a spurious temperature reading; however, the engine shutdown was inhibited by a quick-thinking flight controller. If the second SSME had failed within about 69 seconds of the first, there would have been insufficient energy to cross the Atlantic. Without bailout capability, the entire crew would have been killed.“

[whycome]

> STS-51-F

Why is the naming scheme of shuttle launches so bad

[dsr_]

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/space-shuttle/behind-the-space...

[whycome]

Wow. It's crazier than I realized!

I always wished it at least included the orbiter name in it. But I suppose the orbiter choice could change closer to actual launch.

STS-41B-ATL2

[bee_rider]

I think I know this: the F means it doesn’t have an igpu, right?

[iraqmtpizza]

You're thinking of the XFX RX 7900 XTX

[dabluecaboose]

It's doubly confusing that STS-51-F, with the Challenger, is the only exercised launch abort; while STS-51-L is the famous launch disaster for which Challenger is most well known.

[TMWNN]

Shuttle missions began and ended with simple numeric designators (STS-1, STS-2 ... STS-135). In between was the above system, because of triskaidekaphobia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions...>

[vikingerik]

To be fair, the previous history of American space missions numbered 13 did have a 100% rate of near-catastrophic failure...

[fragmede]

technically, sts-13 was a catastrophic failure, but they also technically renamed it.

[jjk166]

STS-13 was renamed to STS-41-C which was a reasonably routine mission.

[fragmede]

you're right, my mistake. I was thinking of a different mission by that particular shuttle

[mrexroad]

> “As a result of the changes in systems, flights under different numbering systems could have the same number with one having a letter appended, e.g. flight STS-51 (a mission carried out by Discovery in 1993) was many years after STS-51-A (Discovery's second flight in 1984).[6] It wasn't until STS-127 in 2009 where the flight numbering system returned to a standard and consistent order.”

Ouch, shortly after they get standardized and consistent flight numbers, the shuttle program gets cancelled. I guess computer science doesn’t have a monopoly over the difficulty of naming things.