Space Forum / Shuttle / March 2008

Starting at roughly 05:40 EDT on Wednesday, they downlinked 20 minutes
of video/audio covering from about 2 minutes before launch until Ops
105. (well after MECO).

Interesting to hear plenty of audio not air-to-ground (eg: between crews).

Once also sees the role of MS3 (is that the designation for the guy
sitting between/behind CDR and PLT ?) since after MECO, he he the one
with checklists talking to PLT/CDR.

Alarms appear to be fairly loud.

Doesn't seem to be that much noise recorded during launch. You do see a
major jolt at launch time, then it appears to be more like vibration.

After SRB separation, it is much smoother and you can see MS3 taking out
notepads etc. But further along, they seem to stop being active as PLT
calls for 3Gs.

Then at MECO, the "thrown forwards"  effect is far more pronounced than
on the videos from Soyuz. And the crew had very human/joyful reactions
not heard over the radio (all very professional, of course).

They almost immediatly noticed problems with the RCS jets in the back.

Hopefully NASA would make that video available either on NASA TV or via
their web site. Very interesting to watch.

Overall: definitely less formal atmosphere in the cabin than what we
hear on NASA TV during launch. Good to see that they are stll human
beings and not robots.