Shipshape Shuttle : Crews at Rockwell’s Palmdale Plant Finish $50-Million Project to Renovate the Discovery

It was redecorating time in the high desert.

On the to-do list: tile work, a new door, some electrical rewiring, new insulation and a few cracks to be sealed.

Estimated worker-hours: 400,000. Estimated cost: nearly $50 million.

The refurbishing job is on Orbital Vehicle 103, better known as space shuttle Discovery, which has made 21 trips into space since its inaugural flight in 1984. Every three years, the space programs’ orbiters--the winged spacecraft that house the astronauts during shuttle flights--go into the shop at Rockwell International’s plant in Palmdale for refurbishing and upgrading.

Work on Discovery began in October with its arrival on the back of a specially equipped 747. It’s scheduled to be done by Tuesday, when the jet returns to take it home to Cape Canaveral, Fla.

“We’re on schedule, tight,” said Dan Brown, who has been in charge of the Palmdale operation since 1973. Brown walked the short distance from his office trailer to the giant hangar where Discovery stood almost completely obscured by scaffolding. The imposing spacecraft, informally called the space shuttle, is officially the orbiter. To NASA, the shuttle is the entire assembly of the orbiter and its rocket engines and fuel tanks.

Amid the sound of dozens of power tools and at least a couple radios tuned to country-western music, hundreds of workers toiled at a variety of tasks on, in and under the orbiter. For each worker who crossed his path, the affable Brown had the same basic question:

“You done, yet?”

Brown made his way over to a workman slipping on a linen “bunny suit” that must be worn by all those who enter the orbiter to keep it as free of dirt as possible.

“You a little behind, boy?” Brown asked.

“No, Daddy,” came the quick answer from the bearded worker. “I’m right on time.”

About one-third of the refurbishing project dealt with the thermal system, the insulation and outer skin of tiles that protect the shuttle from the cold of space and the intense heat generated by the friction of reentry into the atmosphere at the end of a mission.

The outer surface, which is 122 feet in length, is covered with 23,000 black tiles designed to withstand temperatures up to 2,000 degrees.

“No two of the tiles are shaped exactly alike,” Brown said. Each was custom designed to fit into a huge mosaic along the curved surface.

About 420 tiles on Discovery were replaced during refurbishment because of signs of wear from reentry heat and corrosion on the ground.

Each had to be manufactured on site from silicon blocks.

Rex Coffey, of Palmdale, was standing on a platform under the spaceship, testing the thickness of the new tiles.

When he found an anomaly, he used a tool similar to a dentist’s drill to shave a bit away until it was within specifications.

Coffey, 39, said that by the time he is done with a tile, he is confident that he will not have to be concerned about his work living up to the test of space.

“I don’t worry,” Coffey said, leaning over the scaffolding. “I know I did it right.”

That cockiness is justified, Brown said, by the fact that no orbiters have ever had a major malfunction in flight. (The Challenger tragedy was caused by a failure in a solid fuel booster rocket, not the orbiter itself.)

Coffey, like most workers on the project, was hired just for this job. He will be laid off when it’s completed and will have to pick up other work until the Endeavor arrives Aug. 1 to be refurbished.

The on-again, off-again nature of the work is stressful, Coffey said, but he would not want to give up his place on the shuttle refurbishing team.

“There’s no one else in the country doing this,” he said.

On the top and sides of the shuttle, workers were finishing the installation of new white insulating “blankets,” thinner than the original.

“We learned we didn’t need it to be as thick as we first thought,” Brown said.

“The temperatures turned out to be not as high as we had planned for.”

Use of thinner insulation saves weight. The Discovery that goes back to Florida will be approximately 1,700 pounds lighter than when it arrived in Palmdale.

That’s only about a 1% weight savings overall, but even that much of a reduction saves a considerable amount of fuel, Brown said.

All of the shuttle refurbishings, with one exception, have been done at the Palmdale plant. “The Cape has a facility for this,” said Brown, “but they don’t have the skills we have here.

“They did one,” he added with a smile, “but they didn’t get it done.”

The major upgrade to the Discovery this time around is a new docking port, designed to link up with a planned international space station.

The construction of the station in space is scheduled to begin late next year, with the shuttles playing a major role.

The rewiring of the dock was overseen by Al Hoffman, 42, manager of the plant’s electrical and avionics divisions.

He admitted to feeling a little nervous when one of the shuttles is in space.

“It’s not really worry,” Hoffman said. “It’s just a bit of anxiety.”

But would he fly into space in an orbiter, given the chance?

“I wouldn’t mind a bit,” Hoffman answered without hesitation.

The same is not true of his boss.

“I like the ground,” Brown said. “I’m a golfer.”

Brown headed out of the hangar, stopping in the machine shop to see Gordon Brydges, known to all, including the astronauts who periodically visit the plant, as Curly.

Brydges, 62, who has been with Rockwell for 41 years, has worked on every shuttle as a machinist.

“How you doing, good buddy?” Brown asked.

“Ahead of schedule,” answered Brydges.

“You have never been on schedule your whole life,” said Brown. Both laughed. This is obviously an exchange they have often.

“He says bad things about me,” said Brydges, “but when they get in a bind they come calling for Curly.”

“He’s right,” Brown said as he made his way back to the office.

“When you get in a hole, Curly will stay all night if he has to. He will . . moan the whole time, but he’ll get it done.”

Heading back to his trailer, Brown paused and looked back at the hangar, where workers swarmed over Discovery, as they would all day and into the night through the weekend to meet the Tuesday departure deadline.

“This weekend,” he said with a smile, “is going to be hell.”