WE HAVE IGNITION
The fastest car in the world is about to retire. Weirdly, TopGear’s having one last hurrah at a place where a Bugatti Chiron doesn’t seem so powerful after all
WORDS OLLIE KEW
PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES LIPMAN
(1) Atlantis, the fourth orbiter built, looks to the heavens before STS-79 in August 1996 (2) One of the two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft hoists Columbia over the Johnson Space Center, Texas (3) Columbia lifts off on its 16th mission. At launch the External Tank contained 680 tonnes of liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel (4) 15 hours after touchdown of the final flight, Atlantis is dragged off the SLF runway in July 2011 (5) STS-5 was the first operational Shuttle mission. Columbia rides the column of fire carrying two satellites in late 1982 (6) Memorial to the seven Columbia crew members lost during re-entry disaster in 2003. Shuttles were grounded for over two years (7) Endeavour eases back down to Earth with a nighttime landing in Florida
Looks like a ‘normal’ manual gearbox but is actually made from pure genius and magic
When exactly do astronauts receive their ‘badass soundbite’ training? Universally, they’ve a knack for memorable space-quips. Apollo 14 veteran Edgar Mitchell gave us “From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck, drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say ‘look at that, you son of a b***h’.” John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, described the tension during countdown as “knowing you were sitting on top of two million parts — all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract”. My personal favourite analysis of a space shuttle launch comes from real life TOPGUN graduate Hoot Gibson, who flew five of its 135 missions. “You just hear a massive explosion and pray you’re going up.”
Close your eyes for a second and remember the shuttle. You’re imagining the launch, aren’t you? An undeniably spectacular sequence of mechanical, chemical and sonic events as 2,000,000kg of hardware, humans and fuel roared off the pad, doing 0–60mph slower than a Honda Civic Type R but breaching the sound barrier less than a minute later, on the way to 17,500mph. Five miles a second.