Listen to Bruce McCandless, the Space Shuttle crewman who made the first untethered spacewalk
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The second try at launching the space shuttle Columbia was a success today but it was marred two hours later whew photographs from space showed that some heat-resistant tiles had been ripped from its rail section.

But Mr Leroy Day, director of systems management at the space centre at Houston, said ‘the missing tiles were “not critical” and there was no danger to the craft or to the crew.

If the tiles had fallen from the front of the underside of the shuttle, it would have been extremely worrying. The extreme heat at those points when Columbia reenters the atmosphere at the end of its mission might have set the shuttle on fire.

At the tail end though, the worst that could happen would be slight damage to the skin beneath the tiles. Mr Day maintained. Pictures of the gaps left by the tiles were relayed to Houston by television cameras on the craft.

The television photographs show that 13 or 15 tiIes are missing or damaged. Photographs of the rest of the exterior of the spacecraft will be taken by high-resolution ground-based cameras to see if any more are damaged. These cameras belong to the Air Force, and are normally used for military surveillance.

Mr James Smith, an expect en the tiles, said that in some areas of the craft where the fuselage is extra thin, just one missing tile could cause a fire. But Mr Neil Hutchinson, the mission director, said: “We have no reason to believe we have any more tile problems anywhere. People aren’t running around thinking about any doomsday thing.”

The astronauts, Commander John Young and Captain Robert Crippen, seemed unconcerned about the tile problem when they appeared live on television from the space-craft. Dressed in T-shirts and slacks having taken off their space’ suits early in the flight, they bounced happily in the gravity-free cabin.

“This space craft has worked as advertised all the way along “, Captain Crippen enthused. “This vehicle is performing like a champ.”

The 3,20O silica riles have been the chief cause of the delays, at high cost, in the development of the reusable shuttle, which was originally planned to go into space three years ago. It has proved extremely hard to stick them to the surface of the craft firmly enough to prevent them being shaken loose by buffeting.

Future flights will carry a repair kit to allow astronauts to replace missing tiles in space. No such kit is on this maiden flight.

The discovery of the missing tiles came after the initial phase of the launch had gone superbly. After lift off, the booster rockets were shed as planned over the Atlantic and are being recovered. Then the feel tank, its load of 1,500 tons of liquid hydrogen used up in the first 8½ minutes of flight, was ejected in the Indian Ocean.

Then the clam-like doors above the cargo hold were opened successfully, baring the empty hold-space.

After having to call off the Iaunch on Friday because of a last-minute computer problem, the Cape Canaveral technicians breathed a sigh of relief When the Columbia rose from its launching pad less than four seconds after the planned time of 7 am (1 pin British summer time). An impossibly bright shaft of flame spurted from its rear. There was a roar and rumble as the space ship, clasping its giant fuel tank and twin booster rockets, climbed into the sky, leaving behind a heavy, straight tiller of thick, white smoke.

Doctors said that at the time of the launching, Captain Robert Crippen, the pilot, whose first voyage into space this is, had a pulse rate of 130—nearly twice normal. The hearts of space officials here, who know the future of the space programme depends on a successful completion of this mission, can scarcely have beaten more slowly.

President Reagan had earlier set the tone for regarding the launch as a national triumph. In a message to the astronauts, he said, in part “Through you, today, we all feel, as giants once again. Once again we feel the surge of pride that comes from knowing we are the best, and we are so because we are free.”

America has launched vehicles and men into space before but has never had a craft it could bring back. This is the shuttle’s unique quality. The mission will have succeeded only when it reenters the Earth’s atmosphere on Tuesday and lands in California.

The crew had their own theory about what went wrong on Friday. On previous space flights the traditional astronauts’ breakfast was steak and eggs.

On Friday, Young and Crippen had bacon and eggs instead. Today they switched back to steak and the Columbia sailed away on time.