With the first orbital flight of the Space Shuttle, the curtain rises on an era that will shape U.S. space exploration for the next decade, and perhaps for the remainder of the century. Columbia and her sister ships will be far more than odd-looking heavy-lift launch vehicles, though they will be that. Each Space Shuttle will be an element in a total transportation system linking Earth with space: vehicles, ground facilities, a communications net, trained crews, established freight rates and flight schedules - and the prospect of numerous important and exciting tasks to be done.

Columbia will be as different from previous one-use space vehicles as an ocean freighter differs from the Clermont. Although the Space Shuttle has been a long time in development and won't be workaday for several years, it will transform space travel. We will go into space not just to meet the challenge of exploration but to do many useful and productive jobs, at reduced cost, returning again and again. We are initiating an era of "routine utilization" of space, and it signifies a new epoch in the history of the planet.

As the Space Shuttle first ascends above the atmosphere, it is fitting to describe the new space transportation system; how it came to be, why it is designed the way it is, what we expect of it, how it may grow. This book is such a description. All new technologies can be expected to undergo change and adaptation. It is natural for an endeavor as revolutionary as the Space Shuttle to develop in different and unforeseen ways. For this reason, an account of the initial expectations for this remarkable venture should have value. I commend the following narrative that describes how the United States plans to make space an extension of life on the Earth's surface.

An unlikely looking flying machine Stands on its tail above the watery, thicketed Florida landscape. The time is the mid-1980s, and the Space Shuttle preparing for launch is one of a fleet of four that now plies routinely, about one round trip a week, between the United States and Earth orbit.

The first true aerospace vehicle, the Shuttle takes off like a rocket, operates in orbit as a spacecraft, and lands like an airplane. To do this takes a complex configuration of three main elements: the Orbiter, a deita-winged spacecraft-aircraft, about the length of a twin-jet commercial airliner, but much bulkier, and built to last for at least 100 flights; a dirigible-like expendable External Tank, containing half a million gallons of propellants, secured to the Otbiters belly; and, attached to the sides of the tank, a pair of reusable Solid Rocket Boosters, each longer and fatter than a railway tank car.

The countdown clocks blink to zero on the consoles in Launch Control at the Kennedy Space Center, in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center, Texas, and in the Shuttle's cabin. Three main engines in the Orbiters stem ignite, gulping liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen from the External Tank through feedlines thicker than a mans body. As they build to 90 percent of full power, in about four seconds, the two Solid Rocket Boosters begin firing in a storm of flame and smoke. The whole assemblage rises from the same mobile launching platform that was once used for Saturn V rockets that sent Apollo astronauts to the Moon.

Clear of the servicing tower, the Shuttle turns toward its destination in space and begins arcing over on its back - the crew heads-down, the tank and boosters on top of the upside-down Orbiter - and slants up over the open Atlantic, its direction controlled by slight sniveling of the engines and rocket nozzles. In their spacious cabin up front, the crew of three astronauts and a scientist feel no more acceleration than a comfortable three times normal gravity. They wear ordinary clothes, work at room temperature, and breathe normal air at sea-level pressure.

After two minutes of flight. 50 kilometers (M miles) up, the two solid fuel boosters, their work done, burn out, are cut loose from the tank by explosive separation devices, and arc pushed clear by small rocket motors. The spent boosters toast upward to about 67 kilometers, then drop back toward the sea. At 4.7 kilometers each discards its nose cap and ejects a small parachute; this pulls out a larger chute that, in turn, pulls out three bigger main  chutes.