1986/1987 TDRS Deployments

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:24:59 +0100, "John Geenty"
wrote:

Just a quick question. Some of the manifests for the 1986 shuttle flights
list TDRS-D as being deployed from STS-61M in July 86 and TDRS-C from
STS-71D in Feb 1987. Is this just a typo, or was there a technical reason
for flying D before C?

It may be related to the technical problem (decoder system?) that
caused the TDRS-B delay / STS-51E cancellation. TDRS-B went back to
the factory to have the problem fixed, and then returned to the Cape
only to be lost on STS-51L. Depending on where they were in the
production schedule, fixing the decoder box might have been easier for
TDRS-D than TDRS-C, so TDRS-D moved ahead on the launch schedule.

Brian

However, the original question still remains: why fly TDRS-D before
TDRS-C?

There are a few things in the NASA manifest from that time that I find screwy.
One question I have, that is similar is why was Spacelab 3 (STS 51-B) flown and
scheduled before Spacelab 2 (STS 51-F)?

-A.L.

In article ,
MasterShrink wrote:
One question I have, that is similar is why was Spacelab 3 (STS 51-B) flown and
scheduled before Spacelab 2 (STS 51-F)?

Almost certainly, they were originally slated to fly in order, and then
some piece of hardware needed for Spacelab 2 ran late.
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