Talk:STS-51-D

Walker or Baudry?
We have problem here: According to, Charles D. Walker was on the flight. But a closer look at the crew photo reveals that the 2nd person from left has a CNES logo on his suit and clearly looks like Patrick Baudry (back row). The text of the article is in line with the Nasa page, but I suspect there is an error on the Nasa page itself. Something is definitely wrong here. I'm not a specialist on the subject here (just replacing the table with the infobox template call). I would appreciate if an expert could check this, thanks. --Ligulem 23:22, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I've added a note that documents this mismatch. --Ligulem 23:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I have a mission sticker given to me in 1983 that shows that Baudry was originally slated to go on the mission, and that the shuttle used was supposed to be Challenger, not Discovery. So it seems there was a change to the original mission, and the photo at NASA was the original crew. Magic engr (talk) 03:26, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Mission nearly doomed
The TV show Seconds From Disaster in an episode about Space Shuttle Challenger.There was told about Roger Boisjoly,who made a scenario very similar to the catastrophy.He told that when he checked the engines from this flight after return,he saw the o-ring nearly burned out during launch.STS-51-D was just about to end in disaster,exploding similarly to the Challenger breakup. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.235.144.148 (talk) 16:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe that actually happened on mission STS-51-C. Andy120290 (talk) 17:38, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Aha,both was Discovery and the same month so I was a little bit confused there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.235.144.148 (talk) 04:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Dr Seddon's job assignment
The opening paragraph of Dr Seddon's article states that she was Mission Specialist on STS-51-D. This article article lists her as Payload commander. Which is right? Trappist the monk (talk) 14:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Both! I know that is a bit confusing, but both are right. She was Mission Specialist 1 for the flight, and often MS1 is the payload commander. The exceptions are the recent flights to ISS where someone on the mid-deck or another space agencies astronaut are the payload commander. Both are technically correct and she is listed in the MS1 position here. It should probably read MS1 and in the notes designate her as payload commander, so I will go ahead and change that.-- Navy Blue84  17:10, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * No offense Navy, but that's original research. I don't mean to be a pain (and I admit, I undid your edit before I noticed this talk page entry), but I'd much prefer a solid source that calls her Payload Commander for this mission before she is called such on this page. I mean, her official Biography says she was only Payload Commander for STS-58. Seems pretty straightforward. — Huntster (t @ c) 11:03, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Detailed Test Objective -- venting LOX and LH2 via side Fill and Drain Valves
In this lecture by MS2 Jeffrey A. Hoffman to his Fall 2005 Aircraft Systems Engineering class at MIT, he says (at 0:23:40) that they ran a Detailed Test Objective on this flight where they vented the LOX and LH2 lines through the side Fill and Drain Valves instead of through the SSMEs (in an attempt to speed up the venting) and the RCS was barely able to compensate for the roll. -- 124.157.218.132 (talk) 06:06, 24 October 2010 (UTC)