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who I was coming to talk to and that you'd probably call me on some of that, and I'd get around to having to talk about the space shuttle computers. Space shuttle computers are about vintage 1970, and I really ought to have a little pop quiz to see if anybody can guess the memory of the space shuttle computers.

Audience remark: 168K

168K was a very close guess. It was a little too high though.  128K is the honest answer of the memory of the space shuttle computer. Not to worry, we're going to upgrade come December all the way to 256K. So the Shuttle Program should be entering the 1980's any time now.

It became very clear to me that basing a 15-to-20 minute talk on the high technology of the space shuttle computers was not a good topic for today's talk. What I'd like to do is talk 15 or 20 minutes on what we've accomplished in the Space Shuttle Program, a little bit about my involvement in it and about what we have planned for the future. Then I'd like to spend some time answering whatever questions you might have. So as I'm talking, why don't you think about what you'd really like to be hearing about instead of what I've decided to tell you about. Feel free to ask questions on anything ranging from, "What's it like to be in the space shuttle?" to "What are the plans for the future of the Space Program?" I'll be happy to spend some time answering these. 

The Space Shuttle Program, as most of you know, was conceived back in the 1970's.  In the mid-1970's, roughly, NASA came to the realization that this thing was really going to work—there really was going to be a Space Shuttle Program.  Fortunately for me and a lot of other lucky people, that meant that NASA needed more astronauts.  They only had 25 astronauts or so at the time, who had come in during the mid-1960's.  NASA hadn't accepted  any new astronauts for over 10 years.  In 1977, they put out the word that anyone interested should apply.  As you might expect, they got a lot of applications. 

They accepted a group of 35 of us.  We came to NASA in 1978.  A lot of people are curious about the type of people that they take into the astronaut program.  Let me just tell you about the cross-section of that group because it's representative of the astronauts that are in the Shuttle Program right now. 

Twenty of those 35 were scientists or engineers.  Only 15 of the 35 had what people considered the traditional test pilot background for astronauts.  That's generally true of the astronaut groups today.  Well over 50 percent of the astronauts are scientists or engineers, and less than 50 percent are test pilots. 

Of those 35 accepted in 1978, six were women. We were the first six women to enter the Space Shuttle Program.  Just a side note, all 35 of the astronauts that came in 1978 have flown as least once on the space shuttle.  In fact, the flight that was successfully launched this morning-—I'm sure you were all up at 4:30 a.m. watching the shuttle launch-—is the first crew in several years that has not had someone from that group on it.  The astronauts that flew today have all been accepted into the program since 1978, actually from 1980 on.  So, NASA has a very active program of recruiting and accepting new astronauts, about 15 new astronauts every two years.

The first shuttle flight wasn't until 1981.  Those first four shuttle flights, as many of you know, were just considered to be test flights of the space shuttle.  Nobody had ever tried to launch something like this before.  It's not your typical symmetric looking rocket.  It sort of looks like an airplane hanging on the side of a big tank.  There were a lot of questions as to whether something that size and shape could actually be successfully lifted off a launch pad into orbit, and once into orbit could act like a spaceship. 

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