A dusty corner of space shuttle history

Keeping the welcome mat out
Since 1982, the runway has remained a contingency landing strip, first for a special type of "crippled-shuttle" launch abort mode where engine problems prevent reaching a safe orbit but allow the shuttle to loop once around Earth and back; and secondly, as a standby in case both Florida and California are closed due to weather (a contingency that NASA’s meteorology team calculated had only an 8 percent probability of occurring in any given December).

The weather factor also hits home on the issue of windblown gypsum getting into all the crevices of a landed shuttle, is it did in my own body’s openings and crevices (don’t ask). But NASA engineers point out that the troubles with Columbia came from a post-landing sandstorm that sprang up while the shuttle was still parked in the middle of the dust bowl. Nowadays, the field has a new concrete mating/de-service area and a paved towway, built to move any future operations out of areas with blowing gypsum sand.

When Fullerton and shuttle commander Jack Lousma landed in 1982, the runway had an immense crane called the "Stiffleg Derrick" that, together with a large conventional mobile crane, was able to hoist Columbia atop its 747 carrier aircraft and get it airborne for Florida within seven days.

That crane is now gone. It was first shipped to California's Vandenberg Air Force Base in the mid-1980s to support space shuttle launchings from the West Coast, and the shuttle Enterprise used the crane when it was sent there for fit checks at the launch pad. Following cancellation of California launch plans, the crane wound up at the Palmdale, Calif., plant where orbiters are manufactured — and it remains there to this day, too big and too expensive for ready transport.

Safest and cheapest option
NASA’s current plans are to use two, rented mobile cranes for mounting and mating operations, and with the construction technology advances in the past few decades, that’s the safest and cheapest option.

The runway area also now includes a medical building capable of full medical support to returning space travelers, even those from long-duration space station missions that provide significant challenges for diagnosis and treatment.

The rest of the veterans of Northrup Strip are ready for action, too. Fullerton, now 68 and a senior NASA test pilot at Edwards, has recently been selected as project pilot for the modified Boeing 747 that will carry the SOFIA infrared telescope. My buddy “Wayne” was Wayne Hale, now director of the entire space shuttle program (he replaced his lost ID badge with no career impact).

I’ve finally gotten the dust cleaned off, and remain as enchanted as ever with New Mexico and its space future as well as its space history.

NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA's Johnson Space Center as a Mission Control operator and an orbital designer.

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