OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. -- The space shuttle Columbia arrived at Tinker Air Force Base Monday riding piggyback on a Boeing 747 for the last leg of a journey that began April 12 and took it around the world 36 times.
Thousands of people had crowded onto the base prior to the space orbiter's arrival at 3:53 CDT and thousands more were waiting their chance to get a close-up look at the first re-usable spacecraft.
Tinker officials expected approximately 100,000 people to pass through the base to take pictures and just look at the spaceship from a public viewing area 1,000 feet away before the craft's departure for Cape Canaveral Tuesday morning.
The mother ship, with Columbia strapped on top, circled the Oklahoma City metro area for nearly 10 minutes before making the final approach, allowing thousands more to get a glimpse of the craft.
The Columbia left Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Monday morning after a more than three-hour delay caused by a missing tailcone strut.
At the Kennedy Space Center, Columbia will be refurbished for its next orbital mission, expected in the fall. Like the other three ships in the shuttle fleet, it is designed for about 100 space missions.
The Columbia, which made a dramatic maiden voyage around earth in 36 orbits earlier in the month, was deserviced at Dryden Flight Research Center, a process that took several days longer than had been anticipated.
It was mated Sunday to the back of the 747 but a tailcone strut was found be slightly damaged and a new one was called for. It arrived Monday morning but delayed the flight to Florida.
An earlier delay was caused by high winds across the Mojave Desert which prevented the fitting of the tailcone over the shuttle's three aft engines.
'It seems like everything that could happen to us happened, but we're glad they happened on the ground and not during the flight,' Deke Slayton, NASA space flight test director, said of the delays.
He said NASA anticipated using Edwards as the landing site for at least three more shuttle space flights and the orbiters would probably stop at Tinker on each of the return flights to Florida.
Oklahoma Gov. George Nigh, Oklahoma City Mayor Pattience Latting and former astronaut Tom Stafford, an Oklahoma native, welcomed the crew of the 747 mother ship and Slayton, who flew escort to the 747-orbiter combination in a T-38 chase plane.
'All of us, in our hearts, were waving a great big American flag,' Nigh said on behalf of the throng of onlookers.
Pilot Tom McMurtry said the 747 maintained a speed of about 345 kph and flew at 13,000 feet most of the way to avoid rain. He said it would continue at that altitude Tuesday on the second half of the 2,300-mile journey to Cape Canaveral.
The Columbia, the first reusable spaceship, spent 54 hours orbiting the earth 36 times and made a spectacular landing before a crowd of more than 300,000 people at Dryden's dry lake bed runway April 14.
Its post-flight servicing took longer than engineers had planned because, as one NASA spokesman said, it just hadn't been done before.
While Columbia has the spotlight, the next shuttle spacecraft are being made ready for their turn.
The No. 2 ship, Challenger, sits in the high-ceilinged Rockwell International plant at Palmdale. The stubby delta-shaped wings have been attached to the fuselage and more than 8,000 of its 30,662 heat-resistant tiles have been bonded to the aluminum alloy skin.
Challenger will be completed next April, Rockwell officials said, and it will be shipped to Kennedy Space Center two months later.
Next to it in the giant hangar is the Enterprise, the prototype of the space shuttles which was tested at Edwards two years ago. It has no engines and was not built to orbit or return through the extreme heat of the atmospheric entry.
It will be evicted by September to make room for the assembly of the third shuttle, Discovery.
Columbia, once at the Cape, is to be outfitted with a more comfortable crew module than it had for its first mission. It will make the next five orbital missions.
Challenger will make the sixth flight and Discovery will be brought on line for the 16th. Atlantis, the last of the four ship fleet, will make the 53rd mission.
