It is a beautiful bird, tough to believe that chapter is almost over. I can distinctly remember various articles on different shuttle options and the controversy, fears, complications around the heat tiles, and various other delays - but they built the incredible thing and it worked fairly well. I am sorry I’ll never get to see one blast off, bet it’s quite an experience feeling all that power, even from miles away.
Just last week I learned an interesting fact:
Do you know those thousand of tons of water that are injected into the chamber below the rocket at ignition - That isn’t being done to cool anything, so much as a sound dampening measure without which the sonic forces would disintegrate the rocket. pretty amazing stuff.
The main engines don’t use rocket fuel, they combine oxygen and hydrogen to propel the orbiters, the reaction makes a cloud of water… they are not rocket powered, they are CLOUD POWERED orbiters. Anything you can say about the shuttles sounds amazing! They have computers, dozens of them! Remember how amazing that was, back in a time when only large institutions had computers?
How can anyone be anything but grateful to have a Space Shuttle! They are amazing!
What’s going to happen to all the video of them now? If we can’t see them in action, then the videos become invaluable history.
Here’s more on that sound suppression thing, http://www.nasa.gov/missions/shuttle/f_watertest.html
“The system includes a 290-foot-high water tank filled with 300,000 gallons of water, and it empties in 41 seconds during a launch. Water pours from 16 nozzles on top of the flame deflectors and from outlets in the Shuttle main engine exhaust hole in the MLP at main engine ignition, which occurs approximately 7 seconds before liftoff.”
Like you said, everything about the Shuttle is Oh Wow
TALK ABOUT A RAINBIRD
{Incidentally, these images are of a test after a bunch of pumps and “nozzles” were replaced a few years back.
Everybody came out to watch.}
Impressive as they are, the shuttles are mainly a 1970’s technology in the 21st century.
Too expensive to refit with modern tech, they have outlived their useful life. NASA needs
a modern heavy lift vehicle with a capacity near the Saturn V’s, whose plans are long lost!
I am wicked glad that my local Science Center, Los Angeles, is getting Endeavour, which
is quite the coup. I’ll be there when that exhibit opens.
Impressive as they are, the shuttles are mainly a 1970’s technology in the 21st century.
Too expensive to refit with modern tech, they have outlived their useful life. NASA needs
a modern heavy lift vehicle with a capacity near the Saturn V’s, whose plans are long lost!
I am wicked glad that my local Science Center, Los Angeles, is getting Endeavour, which
is quite the coup. I’ll be there when that exhibit opens.
Yea, well I’m a seventies guy too, and getting close to out living my useful life also… so excuse me if I gloat
But, you touched on something I wish I knew more about.
I also heard that pretty much all of the Gemini plans disappeared.
What’s the deal?
Do you know anything about it?
TeachScience is quite correct about the shuttles using 1970s technology. That was one of the NASA requirements imposed on Rockwell because they wanted to keep the costs down by minimizing development of new materials and processes. Too bad, because if they had allowed that, we’d probably be able to get another five or ten years usable life out of the shuttles.
So Edeavour is coming home since it was built in Downey, just a few miles south east of down-town Los Angeles.
So what is the deal with the:
“Saturn V’s, whose plans are long lost!”
Or the rumor I’m aware of that most of the Apollo space craft plans are also lost… missing?
Oh they’ve probably gutted those ships a hundred times over, with updated technology each time. 1970’s frame, engines, launch pad sure. But Saturn, Soyuz, and other rockets will take technology back further than the 1970’s! You know what that means, time for a new design! I’m certainly not one to nostalgize dated tech, but the Space Shuttles are pioneering and special. Hubble, the International Space Station, Stardust, Kepler, Oddessy and Spirit rovers… those ships have quite a history to live up to.
To clarify, the plans are extant on microfilm, but the blueprints are lost. We need a new heavy lift vehicle with similar capabilities to the SV, not a retread of the SV.
A return to the Moon or a manned mission to Mars (both wastes of resources IMO) will need a vehicle similar to a Saturn V.
To clarify, the plans are extant on microfilm, but the blueprints are lost. We need a new heavy lift vehicle with similar capabilities to the SV, not a retread of the SV.
A return to the Moon or a manned mission to Mars (both wastes of resources IMO) will need a vehicle similar to a Saturn V.
Hmmm.
Still wish I knew more about it and the supposedly missing Gemini plans.
But, I’ll be honest the reason it intrigues me is because of goons like Stephen McIntyre who have made missing ancient original data retention a corner stone of their attacks on climate science.
So it seems interesting that the plans to billion dollar engineering projects disappear into the void. Oh it’s on micro-film… sure… how do we know the originals weren’t tampered with before photographing… eh
That is so harsh!
I’m certainly not one to nostalgize dated tech, but the Space Shuttles are pioneering and special. 
Hubble, the International Space Station, Stardust, Kepler, Oddessy and Spirit rovers… those ships have quite a history to live up to. 
