Talk:STS-5

Operational vs experimental[edit]

The article states that:

While the shuttle was declared "operational" after STS-4, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), in its report on the loss of Columbia during STS-107 in 2003, asserted that the orbiter should never have been considered operational and that, while not intrisically unsafe, it was in fact an experimental vehicle. The CAIB's rationale was that civilian and military aircraft that are considered operational must have been tested and proven over thousands of safe flights in their final operational configurations, whereas the shuttle had only had under 200 flights, with continuous modification. NASA operated the Space Shuttle as an experimental vehicle for the remainder of the programme.

Practically speaking, what is the difference between these two statuses? The space shuttle seems to be radically unlike other aircraft and is really a sui generis, given the cost and complexity and huge teams of people involved every single time it was launched. For this reason it is not at all obvious to the reader that declaring it 'operational' really makes a great deal of difference to the preparations and precautions involved in each launch. This therefore needs some clarification. Credulity (talk) 18:36, 12 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wake-up call "Cotton Eye Joe"[edit]

Considering the Rednex were only founded in 1994, I find it dubious that their version of "Cotton Eye Joe" is supposed to have been the wake-up call for a 1982 Shuttle mission... --Syzygy (talk) 13:11, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fire in mission control.[edit]

This feels like a relevant addition: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20258-7_13 5.90.191.66 (talk) 18:50, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]