Shuttle Launch facts
While investigating facts about Shuttle Launch Today and Shuttle Launch May 27, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Most of the smoke billowing up from a space shuttle launch is not exhaust. It is water vapor from the pool of water under the shuttle designed to absorb the acoustic shock waves that could otherwise tear the shuttle apart.
how many space shuttle launches were there?
John Davis, creator of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, was invited to see the last shuttle launch. Two guys at the launch approached him and asked if he created the show. After confirming to them that he did, they replied, "You're the reason we went to work for NASA!"
What channel is the space shuttle launch on?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what time is the space shuttle launch. Here are 50 of the best facts about Shuttle Launch Live and Shuttle Launch Schedule I managed to collect.
what shuttle launched today?
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Most of the smoke billowing up from a space shuttle launch is not exhaust. It is water vapor from the pool of water under the shuttle designed to absorb the acoustic shock waves that could otherwise tear the shuttle apart.
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One of the last procedures before a space shuttle launch is to remove the inflatable owls from the aircraft.
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Big Bird was supposed to be launched into space to encourage kid's interest in space/NASA. Instead they went with a teacher named Christa McAuliffe, who unfortunately died when the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded during take off.
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The last Shuttle flight STS-134 was delayed after an engineer committed suicide by throwing himself off the launch pad.
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In 2009, just in case Space Shuttle Atlantis was damaged while working on the Hubble, Endeavor was readied to launch a rescue mission. This was one of the few times both shuttle launch pads were occupied.
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In the early days of the Space Shuttle program, NASA aimed for 60 launches a year. By the end, the average was only 6.
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During a Space Shuttle launch abort in 1984, leaking hydrogen was causing a fire invisible to human eyes. If the astronauts had evacuated according to emergency procedure, they would have been incinerated by it.
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NASA wouldn't launch the space shuttle if the mission ran from December to January because the on board computers were not designed to handle the end if year rollover.
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The giant white clouds that billow around the space shuttle at each launch are not smoke. They are water vapor from the pool of water under the shuttle designed to absorb the acoustic shock waves that could otherwise tear the shuttle apart.
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After the launch of STS-70, NASA had installed plastic owls on and around the space shuttle to prevent woodpeckers from boring holes in the insulation of the external fuel tank.
Shuttle Launch data charts
For your convenience take a look at Shuttle Launch figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.
Why is there no more space shuttle launches?
You can easily fact check why does the space shuttle launch upside down by examining the linked well-known sources.
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was not only far from a freak accident, but that some believed the failure would be an absolute certainty, with Engineer Bob Ebeling telling his wife the night before the launch: "It's going to blow up."
Before a space shuttle could launch weather conditions such as precipitation, lightning, wind, and humidity were strongly considered.
Potato is the first plant that was launched and successfully grown inside the space shuttle in 1995.
Barbara Morgan, the backup teacher for NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-51L (Challenger), who watched from the ground as the crew she had trained with died in an explosion just after launch.
Most space shuttle launches occurred during the day time.
When was the last space shuttle launch?
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit by the Space Shuttle.
How to watch space shuttle launch live?
A man named Roger Boisjoly and his colleagues tried to stop the Space Shuttle Challenger from launching the day before the loss of the spacecraft and its crew in January 1986.
The first two NASA space shuttle launches, STS-1 & STS-2, had the main external tank painted white instead of the more familiar orange color. Designers revise the tank materials which eliminated the need for painting and just left them orange. In doing so, this also saved 600 lbs. of weight.
All space shuttles launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Soviet Union spent two decades trying to build a space shuttle, and managed to launch a single automated flight just before the USSR collapsed and the shuttles were left to rot in their hangars.
The Russians had their own Space Shuttle program in the 80's called 'Buran' that was the first space shuttle to perform an unmanned flight, including landing in fully automatic mode. It launched, orbited the Earth several times, and successfully landed without a crew in strong crosswinds.