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The West Germans had special reason to celebrate. They are the prime builders of Europe's main contribution to the shuttle program: the Spacelab, a self-contained scientific compartment for up to four experimenters scheduled to be car ried aloft in 1983. Said one official: "Success for America means a breakthrough for us too and signals the entry of Western Europe into aerospace." The French, who are building a conventional rocket launcher called Ariane, which could draw away some of the shuttle's business, were no less effusive. Said Le Figaro: "After their political and military failures of recent years, our friends [the Americans] needed a big technological success. And they've got one." The French public wanted to share that success. During the very hour of Columbia's homecoming, France's government-run television was to air a required, equal-time political broadcast for the April 26 presidential balloting. But viewers protested so vociferously that only twelve minutes before touchdown, France's election commission scrubbed the broadcast with the candidates' belated assent, and the French got to see le shuttle's return. "Reason," intoned Le Figaro, "triumphed at the last moment."
For Japanese televiewers, the landing occurred in the early hours before dawn, local time. But in a country that both admires and competes with American technology, some 2 million households tuned in for the event. In his message of congratulations to the U.S., Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki said of the shuttle: "It is the crystallization of your nation's highly developed technologies and scientific achievements and symbolizes the beginning of an 'American renewal.' "
The Soviets, again, complained that the shuttle is mainly a military vehicle. But they did show 30 seconds of the landing on televison. Chinese Communist newspapers, though fascinated by the idea of products labeled "made in space," excoriated both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. for casting a "shadow of war" over space.
Parked on the desert, Columbia had a decidedly unwarlike look. It survived its journey in remarkably fine style. A dozen or so of its 31,000 heat-shielding tiles had come unstuck during the thunderous ascent. But during its glowing, 2,700° F plunge through the atmosphere, a maneuver that has been likened to riding inside a meteor, not one was lost from the craft's underbelly. Only a few tiles were gouged and chipped, apparently by pebbles and other desert debris kicked up by the wheels after touchdown. After an initial going-over at Edwards Air Force Base, the shuttle will be placed atop a modified Boeing 747 for a slow, two-day piggyback return to Cape Canaveral, where the ship will be refitted for a second launch, probably in September. The astronauts will be Joe Engle, 48, and Richard Truly, 43, this mission's back-up crew.